Wearing a tuxedo isn't as simple as it sounds. I've been to a lot of award shows in Hollywood over the years and have seen some pretty sad tuxes. It's surprisingly easy to go off the rails.

The reason most comedies don't win awards is that the filmmakers put the comedy first. This means you have to create a story around the jokes.

I'm just an enormous British comedy fan.

Throughout my teens, I just wanted to go somewhere I could wear a Donald Duck pin and no one would care.

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.

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 always felt, and still feel, one of my best strengths as a director is having been an actor for a long time. Nobody knows actors and their insecurities and strengths and everything more than somebody who's done it before.