But in terms of satire and comedy, our biggest and earliest influence was Mad magazine.

I like to see love stories: romantic comedy or romantic drama.

Dying is easy; comedy is hard.

Drama or comedy programming is still the surest way for advertisers to reach a mass audience. Once that changes, all bets are off.

It's fun to do a comedy and hook people in and then hoodwink them into watching a serious movie. I like to lead in with the comedy and then hit them over the head with a drama.

I've an idea for doing a Situation Comedy myself but its always difficult to get people to listen to you because they like to put their own ideas forward.

I think we're the only jokeless show on television. I mean really, we have no setups and no punch lines. It's not a joke show. There are funny lines and funny moments but again the comedy is born of the human experience and awkward pauses are a great part of what it is to be human.

You can think of Hollywood as high school. TV actors are freshmen, comedy actors are maybe juniors, and dramatic actors - they're the cool seniors.

Especially with a comedy, you've got the clear cut goal of trying to make a scene funny. It's not like drama where you're trying to achieve some kind of emotion or trying to further the story along. You're trying to figure out what's the funniest way to do something.

Comedy is acting out optimism.

People need to be peppered or even outraged occasionally. Our national comedy and drama is packed with earthy familiarity and honest vulgarity. Clean vulgarity can be very shocking and that, in my view, gives greater involvement.

I never walked the streets of New York hoping to be a musical comedy star. For one thing, they would have thought I was too tall, because l was five feet eight and a half, and they were all little bitty things running around in the studio at that time.

Someone I've always admired is Catherine O'Hara... I think she's one of the best actresses in the country, not only comedy. I just think she's just a step aside from everybody, she's just wonderful.

I'd like to do a comedy with Emma Thompson. I admire her as an actress so much. I love her. And I didn't know it until recently that her whole career started in comedy.

I had to choose, I'd be so sad. They are flip sides of the same coin. I love both comedy and drama.