I got to play Santa, too. It's really important to play Santa, you know.

[Kevin] Costner said, "You don't have to do that... this is a wide shot, so you can calm down."

The first animation thing I did was the first Transformers, the one that was animated many years ago. And I had heard that Orson Welles was doing a voice on it.

[John] Hughes was open to that [rehearsal]. This can only happen if the director and/or the writer are open to that.

I play a garbage man who moonlights as a stand-up comedian. Terrible.

The movie that's had the most effect on me is Jaws. To this day when I'm in the ocean, I'm hearing that music.

It's more like the inner workings of John Bender. He feels like he's been given a short shrift, he's not been provided the opportunities that maybe these other kids have. So he feels like he begins in a hole. And instead of trying to raise himself up, he wants to bring all of them down. That's a dynamic that's pretty universal. And so that was the real foothold on that. It wasn't like, "Oh, my high school experience is like John Bender's [in St. Elmo's Fire]."