I have no trouble selling out—I’m a benevolent hack, in a certain way—but I want to pander for something I believe in.

I had developed a survival skill of using my wit to score for myself. If a scene was dying, I'd lob in these little bombshell lines that would get me some attention and a laugh without really helping the scene.

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.

I did a comedy with Al Franken about his character Stuart Smalley, which was really about alcoholism and addiction and codependency. It had some painful stuff in it. When we showed it to focus groups, some of them actually said, "If I want to see a dysfunctional family, I'll stay home."

If people offer me decent roles in good films, of course I'll take it. But I just didn't like the actor lifestyle. You end up focusing all your energy on trying to get parts you don't even want.

The rule of thumb for a director or producer - which prevents them from just sticking their names on everything - is that you have to contribute substantially more than 50 percent of the character dialogue and story.

The comic impulse is sometimes a reaction to sadness. You feel like you can make one choice or the other.