Sam [L.Jackson] never asks for another take because he knows what he's doing. He gives you what he thinks is the best take, and he does it on the first take.

I'm sure there are a lot of Italians who refer to themselves as goombahs and greaseballs and whatever. That's what people do. It gives them a sort of familiarity that other people don't have.

We [me and Eugene Levy] both try to play the reality of a moment and don't try to impose humor on something where it doesn't belong. Contrary to what other people seem to think sometimes.

I met [ Samuel L. Jackson ] for the first time on The Today Show. He came out of an elevator. I was promoting A Mighty Wind and he was promoting something else. He said, "I hear we're going to be working together." I said, "On what?" He said, 'The Man.' I hadn't heard his name mentioned before. I made a few calls and found out he had the script and was interested. That was it.

I never thought I'd be working with Sam [L.Jackson] .That's about as good as it gets.

I kind of realize that I have a tendency to choose the kind of films I watched when I was a kid and would go home and pretend with my friends that we were in those movies after we saw them.

I was Gator in Jungle Fever, and Chris Rock played Pookie, and those showed two very different dynamics of what crackheads were. Mine was more about the family relationships. So when people sat there and got that, they can sit there and say, "Oh, man, that's my friend." Or "That's my brother." Or cousin or somebody. They empathize, or they had something that they could latch onto, in that particular movie, of my story, and go with it.