Being a doctor has taught me a lot about directing. You're doing the same thing: You're reconstructing the manifold of behavior to the point where an audience says, yes, that's exactly like people I know.

Being a doctor has taught me a lot about directing. You're doing the same thing: You're reconstructing the manifold of behavior to the point where an audience says, yes, that's exactly like people I know.

You spend ten years of your life being trained to do one thing, and you're being taught to think that it's the most serious thing that anyone could possibly do, and then suddenly you find yourself doing something that in some respects is the epitome of frivolity.

I spend a lot of my time trying to draw the attention of actors to the minute and subtle details of human behavior, which was the sort of thing I was looking at when I was a neurologist.

Comedy's about opening up and being unique, but to a point where the audience can relate to what you're saying.

Improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing. That's a kind of paradoxical thing about improvising.