I actually like and love Chevy Chase.

Ultimately, in regular television, you've got seven or eight executives and maybe 50 people in the room with dials who are deciding whether a show goes - and it's not a great way, because we're making mass entertainment.

'Super Troopers' did well but not crazy-well theatrically. But it did so well after that it - in ancillary markets - that it became impossible for us to get away from it. We'd get pulled over by cops who would thank us and then would let us go.

What I've found is that humans do laugh at the same things everywhere.

The thing about people from Chicago and the Northwest suburbs is that they're very cocky. I think that serves us well in the show business world.

A lot of people come from small towns, and they come here wondering 'Can I really make it in Hollywood?' When I went to L.A., I knew I was going to make it. There's no doubt about it. Why? Because I'm from Chicago!

History is ultimately storytelling. I think the more stories you write in life - and I've written a lot of screenplays, a lot of short stories - you realize it's your interpretation of events that people read, and they absorb that.

Philosophy teaches you to think big.

If you hang around people from L.A., they're, like, used to having their city being maligned.

I would never be comfortable with an edited name. I have never hidden the fact that I am of Indian origin.

We shot 'Super Troopers' on the side of the road in the summer in Poughkeepsie.

We've always had a philosophy that we would always go wherever the joke is.

It's never a matter ever, ever - are - we're never trying to gross anybody out, or ever are we trying to shock people. We're just trying to make it funny in a way that makes the audience go, 'You know, that was the first joke they thought of, and they weren't afraid to do it.'

There used to be lots of legitimate independent distributors: Fox Searchlight, Miramax, Lionsgate, Warner Independent, Focus Features, Paramount Vantage, Picturehouse and Fine Line. Most of them have closed.

Frankly, I love 'Scream': I think it's one of the great scary/funny movies.

Occasionally, we would shoot something and think, 'This is it; we are over the line.' But the test audiences didn't have a problem with it.

You can't halt time.

I don't like soft villains in comedy films.

I am convinced that tough villains help make a comedy sparkle because they provide a contrast to the funny guys.

I find that there's so much funny stuff in real life, and I am much more interested in super grounded, real stuff, so now I just want things to feel real and authentic.

I think that Broken Lizard movies typically have to be able to star five guys, so it's like, policemen, spacemen, a basketball team.

'Spinal Tap' influenced me, I think, specifically in making me really pay attention to tone.

A lot of comedy films, there's the opinion, 'Well, if it's funny, put it in.' But I think you have to be more disciplined than that.

What makes Broken Lizard, I think, is our timing.

I remember walking into the editing room when I was a junior in college, and I watched the guy make cuts, and I didn't know what the hell was going on. He was just putting these shots together and telling the story, and it was amazing.

What I do when I act and direct is I do a small version, go a little bigger, do a medium one, an over-the-top one, and then even bigger than that. I'll do six readings of the line. And they're not all the same. Just so I know if I was wrong about what I should have done, I luckily have this more subtle version.

In 2010, The Princeton Review ranked Colgate the most beautiful campus in America - I agree.

There was a Burger King in Hamilton, N.Y., where Colgate is, that had three sizes: Small, Medium, and Liter. I would go in there and order a large. And they'd say, 'We don't have large; we have liters.' So they'd make us order liters of cola, which I found to be just anti-American.

Showbiz works well when you give the audience what they want.

I've been watching a lot of cable shows like 'The Wire' and 'Breaking Bad' and 'Downton Abbey.' I love how real the moments are.

I've come to the realization that you can entertain people both through making them laugh and making them feel. You can be quiet, and they can feel, and you will have scored as well.

I think romantic comedies in general are marketed towards women, and I think men are half the romance, so why not have some that are truly from a male point of view.

If I had to be in the Olympics, I suppose I would do the javelin throw.

I've never thrown a javelin. What kind of sport is that? It's hilarious.

I always feel like any criminal who doesn't have a mask on is dumb: particularly the ones who don't realize that all mini-marts have cameras. I find that so hilarious. Or bank robbers without a mask. You're like, 'Have you seen no movies?'

As funny as we thought our script might have been, 'Super Troopers,' starring five nobodies, didn't fit the model of a good financial bet.

Integrity matters. What our fans think matters.

Many films you see in theaters are financed through outside sources. With big films, the studio will pay, hoping to reap the reward of their big bet. But with medium and small-sized films, outside production companies and financiers often foot the bill.

If you're not doing something or saying something in comedy, the camera is going to go somewhere else.

Look at the opening sequence of 'The Blues Brothers,' which starts at the prison. The way it was filmed, it does not look like a comedy. I thought that was great.

The smartest thing a filmmaker can do is to become a good editor.

Filmmaking, at the end of the day, is really - in addition to the story and all of the equipment and the actors, it's really about time management. And so the smartest filmmakers are the ones who sort of pre-visualize the film in their head and are literally shooting the shots they need to cut the story together.

Violence is totally accepted in this country.

Every time you jump to another format in the 'picture business,' meaning film, television, commercials, the people in the other format go, 'Ah, yeah, you made a lot of features, but you don't know how to do TV' or the commercial people go, 'Oh, you can't do 30 seconds.'

When Broken Lizard writes a movie, we reject everything that doesn't have five guys as leads, so it needs to be cops or a basketball team; that's what we can do.

I was pre-med for a semester, and then I got a C- in organic chemistry and was washed out of that program. Then I imagined I'd be a lawyer. I was gonna go to law school.

I started standup at age nineteen. I decided that the only way I was going to try show business as a career was if I could make total strangers laugh.

I did a lot of standup from ages 19 to 24 but then stopped to focus on sketch with Broken Lizard.

Growing up, I was the only Indian kid around for miles, so I ached to belong. I had a neighborhood pack of nine guys and two girls, and we hung out all the time. We played football, baseball, and broom-hockey on the iced-up lake.

Our fans often tell us that they see themselves in us. The relationship between the guys in Broken Lizard rings a bell with them, because they have their own little friend groups, with their own complex dynamics, and their own private jokes.