I feel like it's a golden age for television.

Everyone is wounded. No one is healthy enough to never screw up, when you're in combat. But, I like to show that, and I like to show how people get back from that. You have to forgive each other. When you're in the middle of a long-term commitment, the essence of it is that everyone is going to have good days and bad days, and it's about how you continue to rejoin forces.

We are at this weird moment where there's an economic model that supports creativity. People are demanding something new and fresh.

Right when I started getting solid was when I was offered a lot of writing work. And when The Ben Stiller Show was picked up, I realized there was no way for me to do stand-up three or four nights a week and run this television show with Ben. So that was the moment when I had to make a choice.

A lot of times, it's easy to trim the movie 'cause you just start losing things that you thought would be there just for amusement's sake that actually are not funny. My favorite part of the process is seeing it with an audience. I do about eight previews to see how things are working.

I bring people on to the movies to type and to help punch up and look at things. But a lot of it is, you want fun people to be around, to put you in a good mood, to try and access your creative place.

At network television you could make a show like Freaks and Geeks, and even though 7 million people watch is every week, you were considered a terrible failure, and they got rid of you and staff. Now ... It's like a world where the replacements are the biggest fans in the world. It's, the Elvis Costellos of television are the winners. Creativity is king and it's very very exciting.