Question: You've worked with a lot of the same people since your early 20s (Bridges, Elswit, Tichenor, Sellar etc). Did you pick these people very carefully out of admiration for their work, or was it more coincidental? Especially with Elswit - did you immediately know this was your guy? Answer: Elswit was the only one who had a resume. The rest of us all found each other and started getting to work - big dreams and all... Elswit was nice enough to work with me and teach me everything. He was and is my hero.

One of the best times I've ever had making a movie. Kind of hard not to have fun with that crew. Anything Craig Robinson says makes me laugh. I think Channing Tatum is most like his character.

It’s very important that what you do is specific to the medium in which you’re doing it. And that you utilize what’s specific about that medium to do the work. And if you can’t think about why it should be done this way or needs to be done this way, then it doesn’t need to be done this way and then you should figure out what it is about this – if you want to do it – that needs to be told in the form of a movie.

It was so much fun. I loved working with my little Blackmagic camera and filming people pay music...it was stress free and inspiring...more of a home movie than a documentary.

I had a good time working on Dogma, with Kevin and the guys. The only thing I remember about it was being naked for a LOOONG time on the ground... I fall out of the sky naked, so...

he's super strange but nice.

He is SO good, and such a method actor, that Oliver Sachs wanted to hook him up to an EEG to see if he actually duplicated the brainwaves of the actual patients. No joke.

There’s another quote that I like, this one’s a little long, but I think it’s good. It’s by a guy named John Garvey: ‘I am increasingly convinced that the need to be right has nothing whatsoever to do with the love of truth, but to face the implications of this means accepting a painful inner emptiness; I am not now what I sense somehow I am meant to be. I do not know what I feel from the bottom of my heart, I need to know. The beginning of wisdom is not to flee from this condition or distract yourself from it. It is essential not to fill it up with answers that have not been earned. It is important to learn how to wait with that emptiness. It is the desire to fill up that emptiness which le...[Read more]

Someone asked "will there be a Garfield 3?" I don't think so. I had a hilarious experience with Garfield. I only read a few pages of it, and I kind of wanted to do a cartoon movie, because I had looked at the screenplay and it said "Joel Cohen" on it. And I wasn't thinking clearly, but it was spelled Cohen, not Coen. I love the Coen brothers movies. I think that Joel Coen is a wonderful comedic mind. So I didn't really bother to finish the script, I thought "he's great, I'll do it." So then it was months before i got around to actually doing it, and I remember i had to go to a screening room in somewhere, and watch the movie and start working. And because they had had trouble contacting ...[Read more]

I love when something unexpected happens in a scene. Like in Trainwreck when Lebron reaches for his wallet and acted liked he didn't realize he forgot to bring it in the restaurant.

The way movies work now, and I’m talking about mainstream industry, the only goal is to get you to buy a product. The only goal. The only goal. The only goal. The only goal. And this intention creates the movies that we sit through, and the movies that we sit through create us. In government we’ve been reduced to the same game. Through trickery, obfuscation, bullying and fear mongering, the goal of marketing a candidate is achieved. I don’t understand many things, I don’t know as much as I’d like about anything, but I’m a human being and I won’t be in competition for the right to be treated decently. I won’t play that game. Nor should anybody have to. In turn, I will try not to use whatever...[Read more]

Being well known doesn’t solve any of your problems, and I didn’t know that. I thought that it would and I had fantasies about having that. It solved certain problems practically, like I have a better chance of getting a movie made than somebody who doesn’t have a reputation, that kind of thing. Not a great chance now, but better. My own personal problems, the things that make me me, I’ve still got them. It’s a good thing to know, and I don’t know if you can know that without having it happen and realizing it. I’m so insecure; I’m such an insecure person. I’ve always been, and I am. I’ll tell you this, ten years ago, what I’m doing tonight, no way in Hell could I have done this. No way in H...[Read more]

It seems to be that the most sought after position in Hollywood with the least amount of competition is...writing....writing is the best job if you can get it....people are hungry for scripts...keep writing. Writing, writing, writing....

I've always been a fan of sci-fi. And so when the opportunity to work with the Wachowskis on a sci-fi film that is a fully original concept, that was really intriguing to both Channing and myself. And it's one of the first times you get to see the female be a heroine, versus a damsel in distress. She kicks ass, which is always a rarity in the industry. In sci-fi films, it's uncommon for the woman to be the badass. But the Lara Croft movies, Aliens... the fact you can count it is a problem versus all the action films where the heroes are always men.