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.

What you never want to do is have a story that doesn't track emotionally, because then you're going joke to joke and you're going to fatigue the audience. The only thing that's going to string them to the next joke is how successful the previous joke is.

I always hated high-school shows and high-school movies, because they were always about the cool kids. It was always about dating and sex, and all the popular kids, and the good-looking kids. And the nerds were super-nerdy cartoons, with tape on their glasses. I never saw 'my people' portrayed accurately.

People are like, "Why are you all dressed up? Did you dress up just for me?" I'm like "No, I dressed up because I'm an adult and I felt like putting on my suit." But I love it. Tom Ford and Ralph Lauren are my two heroes of clothing designers.

I’ve never been comfortable around groups of guys when it gets into the putting-down. My past being a kind of geek - it kind of turns into an attack on the weakest of the group.

Any ensemble - they didn't call it "the all-male Expendables," for example. But it's Hollywood's fault that people say that, because there have been so few movies that have allowed women to have these leading roles, so that's Hollywood's fault.

Hey, I'm like the Wayne Gretsky of the entertainment biz - I have other people do my dirty work while I skate around and get to be a nice guy. What can I say? I'm a coward.