“When I began to think about the head of the family, the storyteller, the rise of television which became the new storyteller, the break-up of the American family as an idea and then Avalon came.”

I don’t know that you can do an absurdist film and just have everybody embrace it in terms of filling out cards. I just don’t think it happens. So you have to prepare an audience.

I don’t know that you can do it as a satire. I mean, the business is crazy enough as it is. It’s like doing Wag The Dog – we took a thing that was almost completely absurd on one level, and then ultimately those things came about.

You do understand that you can’t force the situation, but in terms of how you edit, you can define that to take the audience along, whether it be a storyline or a character moment that we can play out. The more experience you’ve had, the more beneficial it is, period.

The interesting thing about movies, it’s not always – y’know, you have to have structure etc and all those things, but an audience responds, in many ways, we walk away and certain things stay in our heads that are memorable.

I play around with human things, human relationships and that, and allow that kind of talk to work in that way, on that level.

No one really has the power, and everybody’s trying to get through the day, and everybody’s nervous and desperate.

I got a chance to work with Mel Brooks on two of his films: Silent Movie and High Anxiety.

I would give the cameras to the kids in the swimming pools and they would play with them, and then I would collect them and we would upload it. If you’re in the process, you’re there.

I think when Sarah Palin opened her mouth and started talking, the more she talked, the less appealing she became.

A lot of time mistakes are very interesting – you look for the behaviour that’s not the one you expect.

I got involved with an acting school and studied for a couple years. They used to have improv exercises that you would work on and you would do improvs.

I do know when you look at some ballplayer and all of a sudden he is the size of a truck something is wrong.

There’s no downside to having too much experience.

As soon as digital editing came about, I immediately made the switch to digital.

I think we are seeing a radical shift in the business in general. The studios are making much more of the real big extravaganzas and there are other kinds of films that are coming out. I think you are going to begin to see more diversification that we’ve seen in the past.

I’ve had a lot of movies that didn’t get great numbers on test screening, but a lot of times the film was able to survive, or the studio still stayed and supported it.

The idea of 24-hour news, if you really step back, is pretty insane. Just even saying ’24-hour news’ almost has satire laced in it.

I can single handedly dispel any ideas that sexuality is acquired. Trust me, you’re born with it.

It’s impossible having five, six, seven people in a room being creative together and not fight, because you want to fight. It’s the only way creativity works, if you all put your ideas in.

I always wanted to make an album and it was an idea that came to me when we first started working on Aladdin.

People have been talking about multiverses as a philosophical idea for a long time. But the current incarnations in physics

For all the years I’d spent talking about pictures, the truth was that I had no idea how to draw or what it felt like to do it. I

When you put off a task, you buy yourself time to engage in divergent thinking rather than foreclosing on one particular idea.

If you’re a guy, you have absolutely no idea what’s going on at any time in the relationship, ever.