As tempting as it seems to wear tennis shoes with your tux, don't do it. I think it looks ridiculous. If you're 14 years old, maybe give it a shot. In general, don't portray anything that says 'I'm too cool and I don't care.

At the end of the day the question comes, what are you doing for the world? You have to try to do something that's going to add something positive.

As a director, I really wanted to learn and I needed to get away from my own stuff to figure out how to just do things and work with good people.

I think things go wrong when there's not a very specific plan and specific emotional roadmap. You need to know what a scene needs to get across, and what story point that needs to be advanced, whether it's discovering someone for the first time or whether it's seeing a relationship get strained. What I do as a director is really create a safe environment that everyone can feel very comfortable in and experiment within so that they don't hold back anything.

What's great about the geek spirit is that life never seems to stop us, and they never seem to kill our enthusiasm, our optimism and our hunger to experience the world. We keep our sense of humor, we protect our dignity, we talk to our friends about the experience and then we start again fresh the very next day.

I've never been to a class reunion or anything because I'm always afraid of that one - there's going to be some 'Carrie'-like incident.

My style of comedy is very real and bittersweet, and sort of always on the verge of kind of being tragic.