Someone asked "will there be a Garfield 3?" I don't think so. I had a hilarious experience with Garfield. I only read a few pages of it, and I kind of wanted to do a cartoon movie, because I had looked at the screenplay and it said "Joel Cohen" on it. And I wasn't thinking clearly, but it was spelled Cohen, not Coen. I love the Coen brothers movies. I think that Joel Coen is a wonderful comedic mind. So I didn't really bother to finish the script, I thought "he's great, I'll do it." So then it was months before i got around to actually doing it, and I remember i had to go to a screening room in somewhere, and watch the movie and start working. And because they had had trouble contacting ...[Read more]

Yes. Wait, what? Yes, I would consider doing a Dirty Work 2. But there's so much involved. I should start a kickstarter. Because the problem is Dirty Work 1 lost so much money the movie studio had to shut down. MGM had a huge loss in their quarter, and the stock owners fled, and boy, you hear a lot about that on your answering machine. So I don't know if they want to make another one. But Artie is always hilarious.

The scripts is one of the greatest conceptual scripts I've ever seen. It's a script that was so unique, so original, and yet it got not acclaim. To me it was no question that it was the greatest script of the year. To this day people are talking about it, but they forget no one paid any attention to it at the time. The execution of the script, there were great people in it. It was a difficult movie to shoot because we shot in winter outdoors. If you ever get to go to Puxatawney, you should go, it is one of the few things that is BETTER than advertised. It's really something to see. But doing the movie, shooting the scenes over and over, it's like an acting challenge. It's like doing a play a...[Read more]

That every moment in life is precious? That the gifts of your relationships with others, don't miss it. That was one of the hardest movies I think I ever did in my whole career. Every day was literally hell, because of the nature of the subject matter, dealing with death and being in hell literally. When I watched the final movie, I felt it was extraordinarily beautiful but I felt disappointed by the ending. There was a different ending that they shot that I felt was much more true to the story. It was about reincarnation, basically, that they were going to meet again. The movie ended with two babies being born simultaneously, one in Bombay and one in the United States, and they held them up...[Read more]

I'm a big Woody Allen fan. I'm a big Alexander Payne fan, Paul Thomas Anderson... Soderbergh... but probably Woody more than anybody. People are calling TOP FIVE "Woody-ish" but if you're not stealing from Woody, you're not doing anything, you know? If you're not stealing from the Beatles, you're not making music!

I have to say that the only good reviews I've gotten in my movie life were for The Emperor's New Groove. I really, really liked that movie. It was very hard to do (which sounds crazy, because it's only the voice) but the backstory was, it was originally called Empire of the Sun. And it was myself and Owen Wilson as sort of a prince and a pauper trading places type thing. And we got a year and a half into it, and Michael Eisner from Disney looked at a rough cut and said "I don't like it." And they got rid of everybody but Spade, and they had this dopey llama idea. It sounds like they just made it up on the spot, and he liked it, and somehow those guys put together a whole new idea, and it was...[Read more]

Doing these other things [in art school] was a release, and I think it made me a better actor. Because when I was only acting, I was trying to do all of these things as an actor. I was on my own mission. I was acting for myself — to do a great performance for me, not for the movie. But that’s not my job as an actor. My job as an actor is to help the director achieve his or her vision. As soon as I got to direct my own films or escape the film world and into these other realms, when I came back to the film world, I could be pure about it. I don’t think my performance in Spring Breakers could’ve happened if I didn’t do all this other stuff. I couldn’t have lent myself to that if I didn’t have...[Read more]

I really love the way Wes writes with his collaborators, I like the way he shoots, and I like HIM. I've become so fond of him. I love the way that he has made his art his life. And you know, it's a lesson to all of us, to take what you love and make it the way you live your life, and that way you bring love into the world.

Those were not based on my testicles. However, Oscar winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis allowed his balls to be examined for the prosthetic balls to be made. Side note: Those are, no joke, $10,000 worth of prosthetic balls that you see in that movie.

I like the very moment when you think of a great idea. I also like the first time you show an audience the film, but only if it works. That also can be the worst moment of your life.

Question: How on earth were you able to gain the incredible amount of authorial control that you have over Louie? Have you had to battle with FX over any particular jokes/concepts/creative choices? Answer: I got it by demanding it and refusing to do the show any other way at all and by having the leverage that I was completely willing to walk away without doing the show and by agreeing to an extremely low budget so that they could offset the risk of giving me this freedom becuase they are risking less money. I have had conversations with them about very few moments in the show but zero battles.

I have full control. Sure, there are limits to the format I've chosen, but I think brilliant stuff comes out of working with limitations. One liners are very limiting, but that's what drew me to them in the first place.