I'm always dealing with this sadness. I don't want to be Morrissey or anything, but it is a thing I deal with it. Every day, when I wake up, I have to make a decision to fight this depression. That sounds horrible but I'm fine with it; it's who I am; it's my life. I try not to let it cripple me.

I continue to do standup because there's a connection with a live audience - there are skills that you do learn as a standup comedian that help you on a set.

Whenever people hear that Kurt Cobain was a fan of my standup, it's like hearing Jimi Hendrix loved Buddy Hackett or something.

I don't find movies shocking.

I choose not to be in front of the camera. Sometimes I do get offered parts, but I really like just making movies and telling stories.

I was in punk bands when I was a kid, and then I would do stand-up in between bands - which wasn't any different from my singing.

I'm always amazed that people are interested in comedy.

I never was obsessed with comedians. When I was a little, little boy, I'd watch, like, George Carlin on 'Dinah Shore.'

Michael Moore got booed at the Oscars, so how liberal is Hollywood? Honestly, it's not liberal enough for me!

Obviously I don't hate America. I do believe that we are becoming - and I can only judge it by my lifetime, 'cause I don't know what it was like in the 1800s - but it just seems that as a nation, we are becoming really, really nasty, and not concerned with any kind of truth.

I don't read or watch anything that has to do with Lindsay Lohan.

In the rock n' roll world, I'm someone who's responsible and levelheaded.

I'm the Emily Dickinson of screenplays.

It's really hard to watch Leno. I set his chair on fire.

I do live a very Hugh Beaumont existence. I'm up every morning, taking my kids to school and all that, which obviously does interest me. But then it's taking meetings with goofballs and auditioning for crap, and then I spend a lot of time on the road.

I was really big in the '80s.

I was in Ann Arbor, and I was told that this singer-songwriter guy wanted to meet me. It was Kurt Cobain. Nirvana had just made 'Bleach.' Kurt interviewed me on a college radio station. It was very strange. He was a fan of mine, and he gave me his album.

When I first started directing, I could have chosen a more lucrative path, with sitcoms and things like that. But I knew enough after the experiences I had in front of the camera that I was not going to do that, because I was just going to work on my own things or work with people I respected.

In genre movies, you usually not only hate the characters, you sometimes hate them so much that you hate the actors playing them.

I'm really not a fan of letting the audience live vicariously through stuff.

I'm a weird mixture of being cynical but at the same time wanting to live in a world where Bigfoot lives.

I'm a redneck.

I was in this hamster wheel of being famous for being famous, much like a reality star. You would put me on a talkshow, I would say outrageous things. I was just perpetuating myself as a celebrity, and I found that really empty.

At the same time most people were getting out of college, I was offered a buttload of cash to star in a movie. I don't think most students would have said no.

The thing that interested me, there are so many filmmakers I admire - like David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino - they have these themes where there's not much going on, but they were suspenseful.

'The Blair Witch Project' is a great movie.

I think, the first movie I saw that made me go, 'How did they do that?' was 'Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster.'

People seem to think that I'm not aware of how people perceive me. But I'm the one that has to talk about 'Police Academy' all day long 27 years later. I'm totally aware of it.

Be it in the movies I make or on stage, I think it's a trap to keep doing the same thing over and over again.

I don't really pursue acting. I jokingly say that I retired right at the same time people stopped hiring me, but I really don't think I'm very good at it, and I'm not really interested in it anymore as an adult.

I like writing and directing. I enjoy telling stories, and I think it's born in a comedian to end up directing.

My daughter and my wife inspire me to make movies.

I would love to make a horror picture!

I'm not really trying to reach a big mass of an audience. My movies are done for a tiny, tiny budget, and that affords me to make them more personal.

I like stand-up. I've done it since I was a teenager, so it's kind of my first job and first kind of creative way to express myself.

When I get to make a movie, I really try to make it on my own terms.

My approach to making movies is different than other people, because I just write a lot of screenplays. I'm constantly writing screenplays.

I've probably done myself a disservice as a brand because the movies I've made. They've all been completely different.

Certainly, shows like 'Black Mirror' helped me. I should send them a fruit basket.

I've been making fun of administrations since I was a teenager onstage.

People go, 'Oh, Trump must be good for comedy,' and I go, 'Ehhh.'

If I was a young man, I might have bypassed the whole comedian-actor thing and just been a filmmaker. Then I'd probably have spent my whole life going, 'I wonder if I could have been a comedian.'

To make the films I want, I just have to live within my means and scale down my lifestyle - and be with somebody who's cool with that.

Which is worse - being a has-been or being the guy interviewing a has-been?

Every week, there's a different equivalent of Charlie Sheen having a breakdown. I knew about Kim Kardashian getting married - and then getting divorced - and there's no reason I should. I don't have hostility toward Kim Kardashian - just toward the people who take that stuff seriously.

I don't get too hung up on what people think of me.

In the past, the movies I've made are perceived as dark, but a lot of comedies are way darker.

The movies I make, I never see them as accurately portraying a life, but more like fables.

When I was at my most outrageous and destructive, I alienated almost everybody.

I had fame and wealth and things that are supposed to make you happy, but I wasn't happy, because there's no importance on having a fulfilling life. So in my mid-40s, that was my pursuit - making films that interested me, films that I would like to go see.