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

I wrote on the Grammys, and a few times for Garry Shandling when he was hosting. I couldn't have enjoyed those gigs more, because I would get to collaborate and try to make people I looked up to laugh, but for the most part, when you're as talented as they are, what they really want is someone who can type fast and whose presence makes them feel in the mood to write and spew and be creative, and I was a good person to have in the room.

College is the reward for surviving high school. Most people have great fun stories from college and nightmare stories from high school.

I like to make movies the way people made movies in the '70s, where they lived and died with these stories, and cared about them, and went to war for them, and they all said something they wanted to say.

The only thing worse than a crappy TV show which Paddy Chayevsky couldn't have conceived in his worst nightmare is two megacorps fighting over who thought of the crappy show first.

In my work, there is a lot of storytelling. The storytelling is not a new thing. Back in the [Howard] Thurston days, the [Harry] Houdini days, the [Harry] Blackstone days, it was stories, but the stories were, "We're going to the Egyptian temples, and we're going to vanish the Prince of Thebes," and, "On my last trip to the Orient ..."

I used to watch 10 hours of television a night, my entire childhood. And I don't think it did all good things to me. I certainly still have social problems that are a result of being in my room alone too much.