Sam Kinison was one of the most compulsive people I'd ever seen. James Belushi was that way, and Chris Farley was that way. He was incredibly talented and made me laugh so hard, and there was nothing he wouldn't say. Such a unique, amazing, cynical, realistic, but still optimistic look at life he had. It was great fun to get to know him.

I always wanted to be an actor. I was one of those lucky kids - or cursed kids - who always knew what he wanted to do.

Tucker's Witch was the first television I'd done in a while. It was just before Moonlighting, and just before you could get a little more outrageous on TV. We had a great premise.

Chevy Chase had been a bad boy with a drug problem, and had never really realized his potential. Fletch was the first movie he sort of straightened up on. And Michael Ritchie was Harvard-educated, 6'6", a brilliant director and political thinker. He was the guy the studio thought could handle Chevy, and keep him in check. And he could.

I was just dying to get out of the constraints of television, and the constraints of the parts I'd been playing. I had taken a bunch of improv classes and was performing with The Groundlings. I wanted to get into more adult, risky stuff.

I read Animal House and I said, "I will burn down a house to be in this. I have to be in this movie." I read 1941 and I went, "Well, if Steven Spielberg likes it..." But it just wasn't on the page. It was a very big, unwieldy thing, and there were so many characters. It was fun to shoot, but I didn't know what the core of it was.

I had read the Animal House script, and by hook and crook, I finally got an audition. It was a great one. John Landis followed me out into the hallway afterward and said, "I've never done this before, but you've got the job. Now don't tell anyone!" I've never had a director do that. It was one of those Hollywood-dream-come-true stories. They saw me as a surfer or cowboy, not a preppie, but someone begged and borrowed me an audition, and I went in and got it.