I've tried to stay away from mild satire. I want an audience to feel something more powerful for their ten bucks. If they're going to spend two hours with me, and trust me to lead them around, I'd like to take them someplace special.

We all wish we could be in more than one place at the same time. People with families feel guilty all the time-if we spend too much time with our family, we feel we're not working hard enough.

How one handles success or failure is determined by their early childhood.

Never hit anyone in anger, unless you're absolutely sure you can get away with it.

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."

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

I'd rather do comedies that strike at some bigger ideas.