A movie like The Apartment is beautifully directed, but you can't put your finger on why it's such a good movie. It just is, because of all these things that Billy Wilder is subtly doing. That level of filmmaking is something I aspire to.

I was a history major, but that was because it took the fewest requirements of any major. In my sophomore year I started getting back into making movies. My senior year I took playwriting classes, and I feel like that's where I learned to be a writer. I started to write monologues, and that was great because that got me really deeply into characters.

Regarding Along Came Polly (2004): "It's an amazing cast. I managed to fool a lot of people. You know, I'm very good at lying and cheating my way through meetings and I got a studio to give me a lot of money to make this movie. So it's pretty good. [NBC News interview, January 30, 2003]