It's hard to hand a script to a director, there's no question about it. You've lived with these characters, you've started with a blank page, especially when it's an original work and something not based on a preexisting piece of material. But if you don't like it, write a novel.

Most of the jokes that I wrote were funny and there always seems to be an aspect of comedy in my long-form work. I think that's how life is. I think even the more dramatic moments of one's life are often punctuated by very funny comments or situations. I like to say, "Keep your comedy serious and your drama funny, and you'll be pretty true to life."

I think everybody has a little rule follower and a little rule breaker in them.

You learn to do your best writing on story rather than off story. Very often at the beginning of their careers, writers including me do their best dialogue writing off story - the best lines, the best observations - but they haven't got enough to do with the plot to stay in.

Believe me, you can be in the middle of a beautiful take and the next thing you know you're awash in people crossing the street. You can't even find your actors.

You have to accept that the moment you hand a script to a director, even if you've written it as an original script, it becomes his or her movie. That's the way it has to be because the pressures on a director are so staggering and overwhelming that if he or she doesn't have that sort of level of decision making ability, that sort of free reign, the movie simply won't get done. It won't have a vision behind it. It may not be your vision as a screenwriter, but at least it will have a vision.

The good thing about being in advertising was a lot of the skills cross over: you have to be accountable for your jokes; you have to tell a story quickly. It's the most expensive filmmaking foot-for-foot in the world, so it does teach you how to use all of the machines and how to think of things in terms of the physical process of capturing the images. And you have to sell your work. You have to walk into whatever it is and stand up in the middle of a conference room with a storyboard in your hand and make people laugh.