“Hollywood has to appeal to the broadest audience, and when it comes to most social and economic issues, America is progressive. Because of that, the messages that are in Hollywood movies tend to be, for instance, pro-environment.”

Dave Herman as Michael Bolton is one of my favorite performances ever.

So you’re doing that the first two or three screenings, and then finally, you dial the movie in and it’s working, and at that point, it’s 50/50 as far as what’s funny and what’s working.

“Firewall” seems both scary and protective at the same time. And how often does that happen within one word besides “military” and “government?”

My mom then got Pell Grants, put herself through college to get a degree to get a better job. Because we were broke, I then had to go to a state school.

I think that the job of art and culture is to jump on that time and realize that it’s there and to push it just a little bit faster.

This was the definition in Webster’s up until 1987 when a corporation bought Webster’s and changed it to exclude any mention of corporations.

Hardly socialism. In fact, it was a Republican plan to begin with.

We’re always looking for the backbone, the central idea, and once you have that you know everything can circle around it.

It so happens that America, according to all the polls that are out there, is pretty progressive. So you’re not going to see messages that support Ayn Randian individualism at the cost of the whole, because most people don’t agree with that.

Hollywood is for-profit, is what Hollywood is. All the studios are owned by big, megacorporations that are the furthest thing from liberal you can possibly imagine.

I’ve gotten like five laughs in movies, just off guy hugs.

It’s one thing to break stuff and damage people’s possessions, but when you start aiming at the ideology of America, that’s dangerous comedy.

Sometimes you’ll put something in and it will just die so hard that it’ll almost kill the movie.

It’s just funny that Americans have to contend with 2000 channels, and 60 different specific news sources, and the confusion that it creates, and the junk that we get to see is hilarious.

If all else fails, you can always be a pro.

The easiest time to be funny is during a fairly serious situation. That way, you can break the ice.

I always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.

I can’t imagine working without and audience.

When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we’ll be funnier to look at than to read.

Westerns are very difficult to predict whether they’ll reach an audience or not.

It’s always hard to explain why an audience ultimately responds to a movie.

The audience likes their emotions to be touched. They want to laugh and cry and feel good.

The audience is the barometer of the truth.

Of course, it’s a great joy to be able to perform. And that love affair with an audience, where you give love and they give love back – it’s a romantic situation.