I love making people laugh. It's an addiction and it's probably dysfunctional, but I am addicted to it and there's no greater pleasure for me than sitting in a theater and feeling a lot of people losing control of themselves.
I think we'll all keep pushing each other, which is a great thing.
I've recently enjoyed the Paul Thomas Anderson commentaries and the David Fincher commentaries.
I do understand the free market, having my economics degree, and if someone on the right had some good ideas, I'm not so dogmatic that I wouldn't listen to them.
I learn so much from watching films like that with commentary and then when you get to hear another filmmaker talk about their films it's a really great experience.
When I'm shooting, really the audience I'm thinking the hardest about is that first test screening audience who I want to like the film and that first opening weekend audience.
I hope we're all kind of influencing each other now to keep the quality up on those things. They seem to be getting better and better and better as there's not only sort of a film geek audience, there's also a general interest in the overall film consuming population.
When something so unjust as the black list happened, [Dalton Trumbo] would come to life in a certain way.
It was an interesting process trying to get Bob to talk about the film because he's such a shy person. He generally likes to talk when he really knows he has something to say.
My favorite laser disk ever was the laser disk for The Graduate, which had a commentary track that wasn't even the filmmakers, it was a professor, some film criticism guy who just happen to be this amazing commentator who went off into the whole theory of comedy.
I think sequels should be earned and we won't do it unless the script is better than the first one.
[ Dalton Trumbo] always said he fought so many fights, all seemingly different, but all about the concepts of fairness and justice.
The commentary track became a lot like the movie and there are some funny, long, awkward pauses that you can tell we're just trying to find stuff to say. None of us had gotten to really talk about the movie until that moment and they were in New York and we were in L.A.
The DVD does make it a little easier for myself to trim things that are otherwise very difficult to let loose of - knowing that they'll make it on the DVD.
As long as we, again, kind of keep earning the sequels with material and I'm confident Mike can, I'm in. You know I always want to do those. But I also want to keep going in some of the direction as Meet the Parents has.
Dalton Trumbo was obsessed with justice.
But I always reassure them that as far as my contractual rights can go, I will protect them and make sure that they have approval over every bit of it so that they know I won't show something that's embarrassing.
I'm not one of these directors, so far, that wants to have a whole separate director's cut of these things. So far they've turned out to be kind of the length that they wanted to be.
But I couldn't cut that whole septic tank scene out because the audience liked it so much. So I sort of fell right back into getting a cheap laugh, but I still loved it.
I was always interested in the larger picture, I was pre-law in college, and had a degree in economics. I was very interested in the big question 'how then shall we live?,' how do we organize as a civilization when we are so different, and often don't get along, yet we know at some point we have to unite for the common good? I actually really care about those issues, and I'm driven to understand how it works.
I do love DVD and I've always taken them seriously. You know, on the Austin things, we really put a ton of work into them because there's so much design involved. And in this one, we thought a lot about it and what could go in.
I figure if it's turns out well the film will have its own momentum and will carry into the video release. So it's hard to really picture the DVD version when I'm in production.
On the other track I got to talk with Jon Poll, my editor, and we go into more detail about the decisions we made in both the production and the post-production. So I hope the combination becomes something worth collecting.
The success of the second 'Austin Powers' caught us by surprise a little bit. We had decided not to do even a second one, unless the audience wanted it and we could do something better.
My biggest role as director on the film is keeping a sense of the overview - how to cast the movie and shoot it in such a way that it will cut together. And how to design the style and tone.
