My first student film was Orientation, which was basically the set-up for Animal House. There are a couple of scenes that we later borrowed in some form.

We got some devastating reviews on Animal House at the start.

I believe that improvisation is really just a directorial tool. It's a writing tool. It's not so much that the actors get to say whatever they want, whatever pops into their head. It's an opportunity to write the last draft of the screenplay as you're working on it.

Everybody says how hard comedy is, but, when it comes time to honor things, whether it's on a weekly critical basis or whether it's award time, at that time of the year, comedy is the poor, dumb child of dramatic work.

I remember when first, Stripes, and then Animal House came out - which I was really proud of, even though it was kind of loose and quite raucous - there were imitative movies that were not quite as good.

Also watching a movie on DVD is different than watching it in the theater.

I call it like the domino theory of reality. If you can go one step at a time and it seems to make sense, you can then take your audience into an area that is relatively outlandish.