This is about the daily ins and outs of a marriage. I don't want to give away the ending, but they are trying either to make the marriage work or make the separation work. Our job is to make that interesting.

I was already interested in directing when I was very young. I knew that was something I was going to be doing.

I decided to not just be about protesting or speaking out against certain things, but actually trying to get things done. That has been tremendously fulfilling for me.

If you've ever made up something on the spot and made somebody laugh, you can credit Jonathan Winters with inspiration.

Harry [Shearer] and I had an idea to do a movie about rock 'n' roll from the roadies' perspective, from backstage. Then Meat Loaf came out with a movie called Roadie and we thought, "Oh, we can't do that now." So we kind of discarded the idea.

Something is wrong here, and it's more than easy access to guns or violence on TV. It's about lack of love and attachment to loving people early in life.

Usually, I have in mind what I want to do. I shoot pretty economically, so I'm not shooting tons of stuff that I could change, all that much. I'll cut something or add a little something back, but not too much. This is maybe the producer part of me, but I'm always worried about the budget, so I shoot what I know I need to shoot for the film.