Dan Curry is the funniest guy in the world. I can sit in a room with him for hours, and he's just cracking me up constantly. And Kitao is the next Terry Gilliam. A lot of comedy directors are just comedic writers, but they don't have any sense of aesthetic or visual vocabulary.
Monty Python paid me £20,000 to write, direct and assemble them - the cheapskates! I told them I'd never earned less in a year since leaving Cambridge. The first show sold out in 43 seconds and we ended up performing ten in total. We had no idea there would be such demand.
The only thing I can ever do is make a film that I can respond to. I could not make a romantic comedy for college girls. I wouldn't know how that works.
I directed a half hour comedy pilot, 'Upgrade,' and had one of the best times ever! I had such a great time directing; I would love to get to direct another project.
The real trick for me as a director is to make sure that people don't start pushing because the harder you push as a perform the less funny it becomes.
I got a young black woman agent, and she kinda just knew what I would be attracted to. She sent me this pilot for 'Insecure.' I never saw myself as a comedy director, but when I read those pages, I said, 'Wow - this is my life on the page.'
David Zucker was great! Those guys are funny. I mean, they are funny. There's a wonderful thing about doing that kind of work like Superhero Movie: You have to be real, but you also have to get the laugh. There you are, your director and the producers are right there at the monitors, and you either get the laugh or you don't. And so you just do it until you get the laugh.
I think the things that I enjoy most about directing theater, or works that are really visceral in terms of comedy and have a sort of rock and roll aesthetic.
I'm a huge, huge fan of Chris Morris. I think he's a genius, and it is not a word I use very often. I think he's fantastic.
I was, and am, a frustrated filmmaker and film student, and my passion and love for movies was so broad that, in the earlier part of my career, I stumbled into doing 'Sports Night' and was a comedy director.
Working with Lucille Ball was just a master class in how to do comedy.
The thing about For Better or Worse is the only thing that made me an okay director for that is that I have a sense of humor, and it was supposed to be funny.
I like to inject a bit of production value and flair to comedy, or at least to my little corner of comedy.
'Scary Movie' was a different type of comedy than I'm used to. I've mostly done sitcoms, so working with David Zucker, who wrote the film and who directed the last two 'Scary Movie's and 'Airplane' and 'Naked Gun,' was a lot of help.
If you check your ego at the door when it comes to comedy, you've got a pretty good shot at making a great movie that you can commit yourself to, you can jump off the proverbial cliff with, and have a great time, and the audiences respond to that.
I've come to the possible conclusion that being a comedic writer/director is like running track. You do it for a certain amount of time and then you have to stop. Or you at least have to accept that you're not going to be at the top of your game. And that's OK.
I love comedy with a passion, and I hope that shows in my work. I would never want to move an inch away from comedy. What I want to do is continue to grow and extend myself, so if anything, I'm adding things on.
I lived with Ilana Glazer of 'Broad City.' She was my roommate for a year and a half. I was living with her just as she was creating and filming 'Broad City.' Both of us, and a lot of my friends, come from the Upright Citizens Brigade theater either in New York or L.A.
