I don't stay in the genre because I just like all stories that have a smart hook in them and I can find a comic way through if it's a comedy or a suspenseful way through it if it's a drama.

When we did the first sequel [of the Austin Powers] , it was on coattails of the first one doing so well when it was released on video, so we really didn't know what to do with the second plot.

My biggest role as director on the film is keeping a sense of the overview - how to cast the movie and shoot it in such a way that it will cut together. And how to design the style and tone.

It's hard to imagine in this day and age the accent in Dalton Trumbo speaking voice, the Mid Atlantic mixture of an English and American dialect, so flowery and oratorical that it almost sounds theatrical. It would be uncool today, no one would ever speak that way.

That's why we had Louis C.K. portray the harder line Communist, to accuse [Dalton] Trumbo of being a hypocrite.

The DVD does make it a little easier for myself to trim things that are otherwise very difficult to let loose of - knowing that they'll make it on the DVD.

For Bryan [Cranston ] to go back in time and become this larger-than-life and somewhat theatrical guy, who performed his ideas and rhetoric in public in a melodic and flashy way, was a bit of a risk.