You want the audience to get your movie, and you want the audience to like it. It's as simple as that. If they don't understand what you're trying to say, you've failed. Of course, you can't get 100 percent of the crowd to understand the movie, but you know when you've reached the people you want to reach.

I've come to believe that the simpler the title, the better. Whenever I try to get cute with it, it seems to be a problem but if it's just The 40-Year-Old Virgin, people seem to know what they're in for.

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.

I hosted the Producer's Guild Awards, and it went well, and I was very happy in the moment, and it was a fun night. But I wake up the next day like someone who did crack the night before and told off the world, and I'm ashamed of the whole idea that anyone should listen to me, or the idea that I need that much approval.

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

I always see other people as predecessors and admire them.

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 ..."