When we were doing 'Freaks and Geeks', I didn't quite understand how movies and TV worked, and I would improvise even if the camera wasn't on me. I thought I was helping the other actors by keeping them on their toes, but nobody appreciated it when I would trip them up. So I was improvising a little bit back then, but not in a productive way.

Most of the books that I've adapted I'm doing because I love the book and I feel like it's a great work of art in itself, and when it's a great book I feel as a director or a writer that I have a responsibility to rise to the level of the original. It makes me try to reach higher.

Create your world around your work. Create your work around your life. Let other people help you shape it.

I love to bring humour into my work. Because comedy is not a huge part of the art world. And big-business film takes itself very seriously.

I start movies with people that I believe in and people with visions, you know, that I believe in. And so if it doesn't kind of come together in the right way, at least I was doing it because I believed in the person and the movie.

Not having any real direction, one writer would lead me to another.

I love collaboration of all kinds, and I love the way that collaboration pulls me into directions I wouldn't go in if I was working on my own.