I like to shoot scenes where I can see the beginning, middle and end of the entire scene. But, when you edit a movie together, you can just cut right into the middle. You don't need to see them walk into the room and put their jacket on the chair. There's always a lot of shoe leather that you can remove.

With comedy, a lot of people develop their sense of humor as a defense mechanism.

I was very combative as a creative person at that time [while The Ben Stiller Show]. I didn't understand how to play politics with the studios. I didn't know how to creatively collaborate with the people who were paying the bills, and that came up all the time on every project I was doing, and it took me a really long time to figure out how to collaborate in a healthy way.

I like working with people on their first movies. I think that you never get that level of effort again. And I think that most people only have a couple of amazing stories from their lives, so you're getting the best of them.

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

It would be so irresponsible not to speak up. I don't know what I would do in my home and in my life if I didn't rant a little bit and as thoughtfully as I can with some humor.

I did get good enough to get on HBO's Young Comedians Special, but I certainly wasn't the person who got launched off of HBO's Young Comedians Special. That would be Ray Romano that year. I had some semi-intelligent jokes, but when people would see me, they would think, "Oh, that's a good writer." No one would ever have said, "Oh, that's a good performer."