Every day I live by only one rule, be a good guy.

I worshipped guys like Bill Maher, Jay Leno, and Jerry Seinfeld, and was doing my variation of that. But as a young person with no political point of view or life experience, it was as funny as you can imagine.

If you work on network TV, they want to pick your casts, dictate your story and how your show works. It just becomes creativity by committee, which is never good.

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.

I like when people are very passionate about what they want to write about. Even if it's silly, you can be very passionate about it.

You should look up some of the reviews. The New York Times review is so over-the-top funny. It's hysterical. You should dig it out.

It was always the most fun thing in the world to think of a joke area and talk about it with someone like Jim Carrey, and then he would get on stage fearlessly and tear the house down. That's something I always enjoyed. It also allowed me to not be terrified.