With actors like Steve McQueen Paul Newman and Harrison Ford what made them such icons is that even in dramatic movies their characters had a sense of humor.

One of my favorite things about 'Star Trek' wasn't just the overt banter but the humor in that show about the relationships between the main characters and their reactions to the situations they would face there was a lot of comedy in that show without ever breaking its reality.

Feature-length film comedy is harder to pull off than the episodic sitcom - it doesn't have the same factory machinery up and running teams of writers putting familiar characters through permutations - but that doesn't explain the widening quality gap that makes movie humor look like a genetic defective.

When you're young you want to make every kind of film: musicals Westerns horror. Slowly you begin to hear your own voice. I hope people receive what I do as small personal films that are somewhat contrarian about their main characters.

You can't go around hoping that most people have sterling moral characters. The most you can hope for is that people will pretend that they do.

I hit the ground running without a lot of training so I had to do whatever I could do to survive as a professional and if that meant being that character 24/7 and acting out I was going to do that. I lived those characters I brought them home with me.

If you got a good imagination a lot of confidence and you kind of know what you are saying then you might be able to do it. I know a lot of colorful characters at home that would make great actors.

Since I was there in the very beginning I know the history of the characters. So I make comments about the tone and sometimes remind the writers that we've done that before.

I'm interested in the dark side of man. I'm interested in taboos and murder is the greatest taboo. Characters are fascinating in their extremity not in their happiness.

You need characters who want things. They want love they want recognition they want happiness.

I choose my friends for their good looks my acquaintances for their good characters and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

I can relate to historical characters or imaginary ones. It doesn't matter if a story takes place in the future or in the present as long as the story is compelling.

There's a wealth of literature out there which hopefully will be you know exploded in the future and I personally find it very rewarding to be involved with classic storytelling and sort of legendary characters.

I'm good at coming up with wacky characters and funny dialogue.

I tend to play characters that I can infuse with certain kinds of humour. Even the baddest guy can be funny in his own particular way. I want the audience to engage with the character on some deeper level so that they leave the cinema still thinking about him.

I would call it a comedy variety show. We have some people just doing straight standup. We usually try to have one musical act of sort. So its just people being funny in different ways not just sketch not just standup not just characters all of those things.

Sometimes comics will make the observation that it's not jokes that are funny it's characters that are funny. And isn't that true! That's why I always kill jokes. I'm terrible at them because I get the joke right but I can't get the character right and it just goes down like a lead balloon.