I didn't go to film school. I had been an actor in movies, I had been in plays, and then I just sort of jumped into it.

I started working in New York City as an actor and did many plays. I did regional theater, smaller theaters, children's theater.

I haven't had to do anything outside of show business my whole life. I've never been a waiter. I've only worked and gotten paid. It hasn't been a classic example of someone slogging through the business.

Nothing is cut while I'm shooting. I edit between nine months and a year, and usually have around 80 hours of footage I have to get down to an 82-minute movie.

What interests me most are the emotional lives of the people. If I don't have that, it's not worth doing, frankly.

I was never in an improv group. But when I went to school, we would do it all day long with friends, not knowing what it was called.

If you don't like the people, you're just doing a sketch. Which, in most cases, is comedy minus some emotional backbone.

I would overhear these conversations of people who show purebred dogs. They spoke about them as if they were their children.

When I look back on what I've done, I think I'm drawn to obsession, perhaps.

We heard about people who went backstage at dog shows with scissors and cut parts of a poodle's hair off to sabotage the dog.

I love being with my family and just being a regular person.

Music means a great deal to me.

I like to play music, and I like to be funny, so I just do both at the same time.

You can't improvise without a skeletal structure; you can't just go in and start talking. This is a very misunderstood craft because no one else makes movies like this.

If you're deluded, you live in a place where there isn't everyone else's reality.

I don't think we've ever known what the hell's going on when we do Tap shows. It's possible the audience are effectively getting to see more of the movie when we play. You know, they know the songs, so anything we do onstage, whether we're meaning to or not, is an extension of the film. Other than that, I wouldn't understand what's going on.

My passion is more specific, in the sense that I've always liked doing comedy. I've always liked doing music. I like acting. And apparently, you need those things in movies.

I wouldn't say I'm a connoisseur of film. I like certain films, but I don't pretend to be a connoisseur of films, no.

I don't read anything about my movies before or after I do films, or any part of show business. I think that keeps me in a kind of place where I can do the work that I need to do.

When you've been a character in a movie - and this has happened when we've done concerts as Spinal Tap or as The Folksmen - people see you as characters walking out of a movie. And you appear in public, then, to play, it's a very schizophrenic thing.

It couldn't have been more nerdy or bizarre, playing the clarinet. But I studied classical clarinet, went to the high school for music and art in New York City, and then found the guitar and the mandolin after it.

I started on the clarinet. I was going to a music school - my mother took me - and the guy said, 'What do you want to play?' I said the drums, and my mother said, 'No, you don't. You don't want to play the drums.' So I said, 'Maybe the trumpet would be cool.' And my mother said, 'I don't think so.' And then the clarinet was handed to me.

I've been fortunate. I get to write films. I get to write music in films. I get to play arenas wearing a wig.

When you hear someone talking in a restaurant or overhear someone talking on the street, there are very different patterns of conversation than you would hear in a conventional movie.