I’m kind of a failure. I mean, I’ll be honest. I’m successful in that I’m getting to work on great stuff, but I think I’m a failure in all the personal stuff that is most important to me.
I’m glad I took the leap away from acting into going behind the camera because it’s much more satisfying – I love acting and I still do, but it’s much more satisfying to be able to make the stuff.
At the end of the day, I just want a movie that’s great, that people are going to love and laugh at and be affected by, and also have an emotional journey.
At the end of the day, successful box office just means that more people saw what you did and liked it, and that to me is the most important thing. That a lot of people saw it and liked it.
I have an inability to enjoy things, but that’s why we’re in comedy. If we were happy, we wouldn’t be funny, I guess.
I try not to blame the public, because the public – men, especially – have seen not great portrayals of women in supporting roles, because they’re not given the lead roles a lot of the time. Especially in comedy, they’re relegated to the adversary, which is like “the mean girlfriend.”
I couldn’t be happier to not be acting. I miss it, but I don’t miss the auditioning or trying to get work.
I can’t impress enough upon people that if you tell an honest story that people relate to and people believe and invest in, you can do anything.
I always feel in improv that nothing is ever as good once it’s repeated.
I’m really a skeptic. I’m kind of not a believer in the paranormal.
Every director should take an acting class.
Bad women’s comedies are made by men who didn’t consult enough women.
When I went to high school, in the late 1970s, disco was in full swing and anyone who was into it dressed the part. I know I did.
Hey, I’m like the Wayne Gretsky of the entertainment biz – I have other people do my dirty work while I skate around and get to be a nice guy. What can I say? I’m a coward.
If you’re not connected emotionally to a story, then you’re dead. You’re really just opening the door for people to lose interest and their minds to wander, for them to start picking it apart.
As a director, I really wanted to learn and I needed to get away from my own stuff to figure out how to just do things and work with good people.
A lot of comedies fall apart because they just go from joke to joke, and the characters are all sort of being crazy off on their own.
You want a happy ending, but not such a ridiculous happy ending that it doesn’t mean anything to anybody.
I mean Ally McBeal was sort of the closest thing I can think of to kind of being a comedy-drama but that had its own kind of style that meant it got kind of big sometimes. But it was a great show.
At the end of the day the question comes, what are you doing for the world? You have to try to do something that’s going to add something positive.