I can't imagine a successful comedy movie without a successful comedy performance at the heart of it.

The cutting room is where you discover the optimal length of the movie.

At a certain point, you have to convince the actors that you've done the right thing. The way I work, if I can't convince them, I've got to move on. I can't coerce them or browbeat them.

I had a lot of fun working with John Candy. We had a pretty good rapport.

I learned over the years that it's easy to appear smart referencing things that people don't know.

You can perceive life as tragic, or you can laugh at the tragedy of it and that turns it into comedy. It doesn't change the circumstances.

I always think that the writer is doing the vast majority of the director's work, in a sense. If you're a writer who is also going to direct, you're doing all your preparation: You're already visualizing everything, you're imagining how the lines are going to be read, you see the blocking in your head, and you know the rhythm and the pacing.