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I remember when first, Stripes, and then Animal House came out - which I was really proud of, even though it was kind of loose and quite raucous - there were imitative movies that were not quite as good.

When I did that first movie, it was the introduction to all the set-up time and the waiting time that's endemic in motion pictures, and the repetition.

There was a film class in my high school in Northfield, Minnesota, which was very unusual. I saw my first Buster Keaton film there, aged about 15. It made a gigantic impression on me.

I had done student films for the School Of Visual Arts and for NYU and all these schools in New York, so those were my first film experiences, but they were student films, so I guess they don't really count.

My boy cousins used to sit my older brother and me down and take us through a film-studies course. It included 'Tremors', 'The Goonies', and, of course, 'Star Wars'. That was when it began: sitting cross-legged watching as the opening crawl goes up the screen.

When I was little it was a great time for film-making, with stuff like Mike Nichols' 'Silkwood.' The films you see in that pre-secondary-school stage stay with you in a very particular way.

I realized what interested me as a student of film was one thing and the movies that I liked were another.

My first few films were institutional comedies, and you're on pretty safe ground when you're dealing with an institution that vast numbers of people have experienced: college, summer camp, the military, the country club.

When I was in school, and even after, I did a lot of classic plays, and I guess it sort of extended into film.

My first film, 'Like Minds,' was with Toni Colette, who was extraordinary. I mean it was basically a mini-masterclass for acting on film at a time when all you could probably see were my eyebrows bouncing up and down on screen.