People like everything to work out, and anytime you don't make everything work out perfectly, you really are fighting against what most people are going to the movies for, especially in the summer.

There was definitely a period when I just felt out of sync with earth.

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.

I don't think because a story has humor in it means it's brief. For some reason, people think anything that's 30 minutes is a comedy, comedies can be longer or shorter, so can dramas.

I've made movies on every part of the spectrum, and you do understand when you go into certain movies that you're trying to elicit a certain kind of response from the audience, and people get a real sense of satisfaction when they're rooting for a character and the character pulls it off.

Something economically changed. It used to be that you needed 20 million people to watch a TV show for it to be a hit. Now, with just a few million people watching, you're considered very successful, for a lot of these streaming services, or cable channels. Now, that allows people to do much more creatively ambitious work, because it's not lowest common denominator.

I often say that ... I'm just involved in comedy, so I can be around it.