I feel a big obligation to the audience, almost in a moral sense, to say something useful. If I'm going to spend a year of my life on these things, I want something that I feel that strongly about. ↗
It's like the old rule-if you introduce a gun into the first act of a play, it's going to be used in the third act. So if you do a movie about criminals, you have to accept there's going to be Some action. ↗
My first few films were institutional comedies, and you're on pretty safe ground when you're dealing with an institution that vast numbers of people have experienced: college, summer camp, the military, the country club. ↗
The first comedy screenplay that I wrote was Animal House and I always thought I could and should be a director but no one was about to give me that opportunity on Animal House. ↗