The idea of the straight man is very important. But I'd rather it be somebody else, because it's not as fun. And when I say somebody else, of course I mean Jason Bateman. He's born to play boring characters because he's such a bore. He's one of the most boring human beings.

It's very rare that people are exactly who they appear to be. Venice has a lot of that too, but the face of it is quite beautiful, interesting, and textured.

This pilot, by far, was the best I ever read - and I hope that insults every other pilot I worked on.

When it sort of finally sets in that you're not going to be doing that anymore... it's disappointing.

Arrested Development opened a lot of doors for me.

My first movie was this independent that I did on the Erie Canal in 1995, called Erie, that I don't know if you could even get, actually with Felicity Huffman. And then from that I did this film that was eventually called The Broken Giant later that fall. And then I kind of started getting into doing pilots.

If you have a character that doesn't have anything wrong with him, there's nothing funny about it.