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.

That's very important to me as well: presentation and how people perceive you, the visual of how things look, your posture. I learned that from [Bob] Fosse and Jerome Robbins, from all the great theater directors and the Busby Berkeleys. You overdeliver: visually, emotionally.

I think a lot of studios today are run by women, and we are entering a time when a lot of women have evolved in Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade and wanted to become writers and comedians.

[My] dream writers room: "'Taxi.' I need to write for someone named Judd."

I wrote for Roseanne. I wrote her stand-up act with her. I wrote with Tom Arnold. There was a period when I was working with them pretty steadily. But I would take brief gigs here and there.

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.

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