Films are big hits when they touch a lot of people. Things are not funny in a vacuum, they're funny because we respond to some personal dislocation, some embarrassment, some humiliation, some pain we've suffered, or some desire we have.

Whenever a critic mentions the salary of an actor, I'm thinking, He's not talking about the movie.

We tell our kids that policemen are good and God protects us and our country is noble, and at a certain point - and for some it comes quite early, five or six years old - we start to realize that it's all a facade.

With both Caddyshack and Vacation, it's not like the subjects were serious enough that they engaged my interest for another round. I love the characters, and the actors were great, but I didn't see the need to make another Vacation movie.

My only conclusion about structure is that nothing works if you don't have interesting characters and a good story to tell.

I look for the meaning in what's funny, and I look for what's funny about things that are meaningful to me.

The comic edge of Ghostbusters will always be the same. It's still treating the supernatural with a totally mundane sensibility. In the world of ghostbusting, there are certain givens. You're always going to have some new invented technology, some pseudo-science that sounds right because we drop enough familiar terms from physics and engineering, and pseudo-methodology, something that people will think they may have read something about before.