When we had ideas that earned there way in [Austin Powers], it began to get okay. The hook for me was 'Mini-Me.' We only auditioned one guy - Verne Troyer - and at the time I said, 'we have to get this guy, get him life insurance, whatever he needs' because there was no other way or actor to do it. It was amazing to me just to talk to him...he was Mini-Me.

From our perspective now, there is a not a huge understanding about the totalitarian Communism that Soviet Russia practiced during the 1950s - it was an atrocious system.

Dalton Trumbo was obsessed with justice.

There's people who actually have a whole science devoted to what makes a sticky meme and that idea of that question of why some ideas about how civilizations work catch on and others don't.

When we had ideas that earned there way in [Austin Powers], it began to get okay. The hook for me was 'Mini-Me.' We only auditioned one guy - Verne Troyer - and at the time I said, 'we have to get this guy, get him life insurance, whatever he needs' because there was no other way or actor to do it. It was amazing to me just to talk to him...he was Mini-Me.

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.

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.