I like telling stories about people with problems. I can't really put it much simpler than that.

Trees Lounge is based on my own life. Both my parents like the movie. My father, of course, thinks it's a masterpiece.

I think all comics borrow from each other. Only a few have an original voice, and I wasn't one of them. In the end, I couldn't figure out who to steal from, so I stopped doing it.

Nothing's really changed for me over the years. I like telling stories about people with problems. I can't really put it much simpler than that. Relationships are interesting to me. Not just between men and women but fathers and sons, brothers and sisters and friends.

Casting is everything. Getting the person that you imagined is this character and then seeing what they bring to it.

I talked with Quentin about where the character came from, and he told me Kansas City. I don't know how somebody talks from Kansas City, so I made him from New York.

I don't think about the characters I choose to play, analytically or consciously.