I was a standup comedian, which is kind of like writing and directing yourself.
Who knew there were so many ghosts to be busted in the world?
You just have to be classy at the end of the day. That doesn’t mean you can’t go with a midnight blue tux. And if you can find a deep red tux that looks classy and classic, I think you can pull it off.
I always felt, and still feel, one of my best strengths as a director is having been an actor for a long time. Nobody knows actors and their insecurities and strengths and everything more than somebody who’s done it before.
I was brought up in a very religious household and did a lot of praying throughout a big part of my life and always thought of God as being not only a powerful father figure and the ruler of all time and dimension but also as a friend with whom I could chat and ask questions to and get advice from.
I’m from Mt. Clemens, Michigan. It’s right outside Detroit. The suburbs. I was always very heavily involved in theater back then. I was always in drama club or forensics. Anything that you could do that had some performing, I was doing it.
I’m just always a bit thrown when, in the immediate aftermath of some event which makes us feel like either God’s out to get us or He’s not doing His job as well as He can, we all still get together and continue to ask Him for help.
In a perfect world, I’d love to make 90-minute movies, but for me, a movie needs to be as long or short as it can sustain itself.
I’ve never been comfortable around groups of guys when it gets into the putting-down. My past being a kind of geek – it kind of turns into an attack on the weakest of the group.
Period costume films are fun to discover, but they’re not relatable. It’s more, ‘Wow, that’s cool – did it really look like that back then?’ Whereas with a comedy, you’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s me, that’s my friends.’ No matter what, I want people to relate.
I don’t like weddings. I never have. I find moments in them I really like, but I always look at them like, “Oh my God, we have to go to a wedding.” My problem with weddings is that they are just too long.
The awards world can be ridiculous, but I’m not one to bash it. I love awards! When I’ve been nominated for Emmys and when I won my DGA Award, I couldn’t have been happier. I always liked getting a gold star in class.
So many stars who have shows are intimidated by having people around them be funnier than them. It’s always the unsuccessful ones. Look at Seinfeld – he’s great because he let everyone be hilarious.
The more suits I owned, the more I realized the best besuited look a man can achieve comes from a harmony of three details: fabric, construction, and fit. If the suit fits you like a glove and it’s well made, you simply feel better about everything in life when you’re wearing it.
That’s the thing with women’s movies – there’s so much about kind of catfighting. And my experience is women aren’t – look, we all get in fights with people, but it’s not that face-to-face aggression.
That’s what I love about the mockumentary style, is the added thing of people knowing they are on-camera, which changes your behavior. That’s why we sometimes do what we call spy shots.
I’m not a painter who’s saying, “I want people to see my work when I die; it will be this and that.” That’s not satisfying to me.
What you want is the thing that critics love and audiences love, but that’s the hardest thing to do.
People are like, “Why are you all dressed up? Did you dress up just for me?” I’m like “No, I dressed up because I’m an adult and I felt like putting on my suit.” But I love it. Tom Ford and Ralph Lauren are my two heroes of clothing designers.
If some magic thing happens, and everybody goes completely nuts, and does something we never thought of, the cameras catch everything. That comes from having camera people who are almost like actors and writers themselves.
My feeling was that there are no victories when you’re a geek. Actually, I take that back. There is a victory: you still have your friends, and you’ve gotten through the experience alive. That’s the biggest victory you can have in high school.