When I naturally write a story and I feel that the guy is sitting across the table from the girl and flirting with her... I think, 'God, that can't be me' because I'm just too old for that part. You need a 30-year-old or a 35-year-old for that part. And so I've given myself less and less roles.
I write about what I want to write about, and so the film comes out as a very personal expression even if its subject matter is totally prefabricated.
I'll work by myself for years and then I'll think it'll be fun to et one of my friends like Marshall Brickman or Doug McGrath into a room and not be alone for the writing of the thing; to have the pleasure of taking walks and get lunch together; its sort of a fun process and then I do it and then I get back on my own for a while until I feel the need to do it again.
During the course of the year a number of ideas just come up automatically. I could be walking down the street. Or shaving. An idea will hit me and I'll write it down. Then, when I'm ready to write, I check my little matchbooks and napkins and find that it is good or it's pretty terrible. There are other times when I don't have any ideas and I'll go into a room and close the door and I sit and sweat it out for a day or a month and eventually I come up with [something].
I always write the same way. I always write with a yellow pad and a ballpoint pen on my bed. And then I go and type it up afterwards. I've always done that. Those things become habitual.
The comedies are not a million laughs on the set. Its business and the dramas are business as well, really. When I'm writing it I struggle more with drama because I started out in comedy.
To be a film director is not a democracy, it's really a tyranny. You're the head of the project, for better rather than worse. I write the film and I direct the film, I decide who's going to be in it, I decide on the editing, I put in the music from my own record collection.
I wish I was writing something much more heavy each time I did a film, and that the comedies just occasionally come out. But unfortunately you're stuck with what you're born with.
