The success of the second 'Austin Powers' caught us by surprise a little bit. We had decided not to do even a second one, unless the audience wanted it and we could do something better.

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.

There were two writer's unions in those days[ during World War II ] , the studio-friendly guild called the Screen Playwrights, and the more activist Writer's Guild. The studios were fairly upset that their group wasn't effective, and they sought to punish the other union by labeling them as Communists.

It seems like you can't actually have really bad hair or be bald and run for President of the United States.

I hope we're all kind of influencing each other now to keep the quality up on those things. They seem to be getting better and better and better as there's not only sort of a film geek audience, there's also a general interest in the overall film consuming population.

[Dalton] Trumbo wrote this incredible pamphlet, almost on the level of Tom Paine's 'Common Sense,' called 'The Time of the Toad.' It's an exquisitely written treatise regarding the black list era.

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.