'Deadwood.' I could have watched that forever.

I don't think it matters what the frequency is of me writing or directing a movie. It doesn't really matter to anybody else. I'm just trying to put good things out there.

When Jim Carrey signed on to star in [The Cable Guy], and then they asked me to produce it, I made a very brief plea to direct - which was rejected really as quickly as anything can be.

Sometimes a story idea will come to me, and suddenly I've figured out the whole thing, and I feel like I'm collaborating with something other than myself.

The Cable Guy was underbudgeted, so it was always a debate about whether we could have more days or certain things that we needed, because the budget was determined before the script was written. So that made it a hard production on everybody. But it's also a funny thing, because it's one of those movies that cost $40 million to make and made $100 million around the world, but at the time, it seemed like a disaster that it didn't make hundreds of millions of dollars, because Jim was on such a tear. But it was actually a successful movie.

I'm always begging people like James Brooks and Cameron Crowe to come to screenings, to see what they make of it, and they're always ridiculously helpful. They also keep me brave enough to commit to what I'm trying to do. They can be great cheerleaders for risk-taking.

If you make a bad movie about stand-up, then comedians will mock you for the rest of your life.