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.

All my cuts are always about three hours, at the start, mainly because any scene in the movie that's 90 seconds, I probably shot a five-minute version of. If you just extrapolate that through the whole movie, I have a very long version of every scene, usually because, if there's one funny joke, I'll shoot five because I don't know if the one I like is going to work. I'll get back-ups because my biggest fear is to be in previews, testing the movie, and a joke doesn't work, but I have no way to fix it because I have no other line.

I think the world is changing and all that matters is that I'm creating things.

I put on a big show when I write something I think is funny.

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.

It's a pretty humiliating thing when you get picked last every day in gym class and then at lunchtime all the kids play sports and you get picked last. At the time I just thought, "This is awful," because it defines you as a weak person. It defines you with girls and if you're bad at sports, you get into this funny cycle where the ball never gets to you because now you're in the worst position, you're in deep right field, so you can never prove that you got better, so the cycle lasts forever.

If you develop 10 things, and you can get two or three made, that's a very high ration.