I liked writing, and I loved movies, obsessively loved movies, but I had never made the leap of thinking I would actually come out here and write stuff.

The State trained us to make other people's terrible jokes work, which is the other part of the game when you're here.

For a living I write stuff that I know is gonna sell to a studio and make a lot of money at the multiplex.

Not taking criticism of your writing personally is an enormous step towards surviving the studio system.

You need to know that going in, and you also need to be able to write all the time. So when somebody looks at you across the table and says, "What do you think about a movie where Miley Cyrus switches souls with a basset hound?" You need to be able to sit there and figure out how to make that possibly shootable.

Probably your first agent is going to be some guy who also handles dog acts.

When somebody would come in with a sketch that was not so good, you figured out in a room how to make that sketch work.