If you're not connected emotionally to a story, then you're dead. You're as a filmmaker really just opening the door for people to lose interest and their minds to wander, for them to start picking it apart. That's what people will do, people will naturally tear stuff apart because they're trapped with it, they paid money for it. And they came into it wanting to love it. So all you can really do is piss off the audience. Unless you do things right.

I can't impress enough upon people that if you tell an honest story that people relate to and people believe and invest in, you can do anything.

God does things that fly completely in the face of what we've all been taught that He is supposed to do and every time He does this, we all just say, 'Oh, well, I guess there must be some good reason why He did that.

There's nothing worse than the sequel that's a letdown from the first movie.

When I went to high school, in the late 1970s, disco was in full swing and anyone who was into it dressed the part. I know I did.

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.

A lot of comedies fall apart because they just go from joke to joke, and the characters are all sort of being crazy off on their own.