Quote

By the time I got to the point where I was 'starring' in movies, and I had executives telling me what lines to say, that wasn't for me. I'm really not an actor. I'm a guy who comes out of comedy, and my impetus was always to rewrite the line to make it funnier, not to try to make somebody's precious words work.

Nowadays they have 12 directors and 15 producers and 30 writers. And all the writers want their lines said a certain way-which isn't necessarily funny. I mean the lines aren't necessarily so funny to begin with.

That's what I hate about a lot of comedies, when you're hitting a line or making it funny.

I'm not good at telling a joke, but I can say a line in a certain way that makes people uncomfortable because they don't know whether to laugh or not, and I love that comedy.

People who do not have funny in them are not funny when they read funny lines. Sorry. Just doesn't work that way. Seriously, this is the biggest rule of all. You live and die with your casting decisions. Your actors are the heart and soul of the whole thing. Without brilliant actors, you will not have a brilliant film.

When you do a film, when you do a television show, eventually someone comes along and will say to you, 'Don't say that because, one, you will offend someone, or, two, no one will get that. Someone's going to be confused by that, not get the reference and feel abandoned, and then they will get angry at the entertainment.'

Every actress has a line she'll draw, where she'll say, 'This I will do and this I won't.' For me, everything has to be important to the story and the director has to be able to tell me why.

Too many writers get stuck in the trap of writing what they think is funny and not considering who they are writing it for.

One of my biggest pet peeves is that I just don't like it when characters do things that are funny to the writer, but you don't know why they're doing it and it doesn't make any sense.

I don't like actors who try to talk directors into making their part bigger and that's really lame.