Groundhog Day was pretty clean. It may have to do with some puritanical feeling that comedy is a forbidden pleasure in a certain way. They make you laugh, and laughter is somehow an inferior emotion to tragedy.

I'm not a believer in the pratfall. I don't think it's funny just to have someone fall down.

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

I'm a writer-director-actor, which I've always kind of enjoyed. I compared it to the Olympic biathlon. "Not only can he cross-country ski, but he's a terrific marksman as well." I want people to say, "You mean that writer performed a tracheotomy?" That's right, I do everything.

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

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

I've got to find a compromise where I don't feel compromised. I've got to find something equally good that they don't feel uncomfortable with. At a certain point, it's no longer about what I thought was right, but it's about this new discovery that happens with the actors. It's nice when the actor is also a writer.