So it took me five years because in the interim I have been doing a lot of personal appearances and movies and some television series that went into the plumbing and I stopped writing for a while.

I was a class clown.

In the fifties I had dreams about touching a naked woman and she would turn to bronze or the dream about hot dogs chasing donuts through the Lincoln Tunnel.

The Broad research center represents the highest quality model of what Proposition 71 should be funding.

My son has been a class clown and it sort of ran in the family.

But I think the other is a little more like bullfighting, a little more daring and although I appreciate good acting and I liked being versatile my whole career, it kept me working.

So it took me five years because in the interim I have been doing a lot of personal appearances and movies and some television series that went into the plumbing and I stopped writing for a while.

And the only studies were - Rodney Dangerfield was my mentor and he was my Yale drama school for comedy.

But to do it professionally is a quantum leap difference and my father had to be persuaded by these kind of Ivy League professors that I should go to the Yale Drama School, another one of the stories in there.

Regis and I were inducted into the original Bronx Walk of Fame.

Comedy is still alive, and there are still funny people. Jews are still overrepresented in comedy and psychiatry and underrepresented in the priesthood. That immigrant Jewish humor is still with us.

I did the first HBO special ever in 1975 at Haverford College. Cable was new then: HBO was a Time-Life entity, with maybe 400,000 or 500,000 subscribers and maybe 50 employees.

I guess I'm pleased and proud of the respect of my peers, and that when I disappear from the scene or from this earth, I will have left a mark. They'll say, 'He did it well.' I like being funny; it opens people up.

I have a work-out regime; I am not a maniac. It sounds cliche, but stand-up comedy, doing a one-man show, helps keep me young, and yes, it is exhausting, but I don't collapse.

I have what we call a 'symphony act.' I'm the only comedian, I think, in the country that does it.

I love live theater. I get my rocks off by doing stand-up, and I am the only actor. But to show up eight times a week and not have that time for myself; to do someone else's lines? When I work for Wendy Wasserstein or Terrence McNally, Neil Simon or even Shakespeare, I do not have the right to change the lines.

I was a class clown. My father was a class clown. My son has been a class clown, and it sort of ran in the family.

I was brought up at 3525 Decatur Avenue, in the north Bronx, right next to Woodlawn Cemetery.

I wrote my book 'The Amorous Busboy Of Decatur Avenue' completely like a writer does, writing it down, re-writing everything. But in my stand-up, I improvise initially, never questioning it too closely.

I'm not against profanity. It's an important part of the language when used properly.

My 1974 album 'Mind Over Matter' was a detailed thing about Watergate. I always had some righteous indignation.

One of my greatest inspirations for stand-up was Jonathan Winters. He was a genius. One thing about him, and also Lenny Bruce, is that they were in the tradition of the one-man show. That's why Richard Pryor was so great, and George Carlin, too. They prowled the stage, they used voices, they were really talents.

The '50s were terrifying with nuclear bomb stuff but boring in a social way, and then the '60s were happening, and remember, there was no AIDS.

There are certain families who absolutely incorporate their nanny as part of the family, and there are other people, and there are codes for this, when they call in, they say, 'I am really not looking for a friend.' It is clear they will not be members of the family.

There is a cliche that probably has some anecdotal evidence on the side that comedians are very depressed people, but that's because no one is ever going to seem as funny in a normal conversation as compared to when they're up there onstage in the spotlight making a huge audience keel over with laughter.

What makes a good nanny? A good nanny is someone who really wants to do the job. Someone who loves children, who really values what she does and, of course, is valued by her employer.

When I started, there was no comedy community, no comedy industry; there were comedians.

We're gonna try and bring on all the different aspects of horror movie making and bring on guests and show all these old '50's B movies. Not the real corny ones, the real cool ones.

The thing is there have been American movies that are similar to Solaris, like Alien had a lot of things that are similar, although it's also got the horror element.

My mom took me to see Carnal Knowledge and The Wild Bunch and all these kind of movies when I was a kid.

Awards were made in Hollywood, in whatever the time it was created. They're to promote each other's movies. You give me an award, I give you an award and people will believe that we are great movies and they'll go to see them. It's still the same.

In a theater, the part is mine and I can control it as I want to. In the movies, I don't have direct contact, and I am fighting technical machinery.

I couldn't be happier about being a part of 'Hunger Games' and to play Katniss. I have a huge responsibility to the fans of this incredible book and I don't take it lightly. I will give everything I have to these movies and to this role to make it worthy of Suzanne Collins' masterpiece.

I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.

Sure, 'Twilight' is really huge right now and everybody's freaking out over it, but it will go away soon and I will be back to doing what I'm used to doing: weird little movies that nobody sees.

There are many kinds of movies in Hong Kong. Some are commercial and others are more artistic.

Making movies is eating candy. It's a very expensive candy, so you value when you can do it. So when you can do it twice at once, it's like, you know, a kid in a candy store!

It just proves good movies don't need 100 million dollars to be good.

In the past I've made movies that were pretty universally liked. You can't really hate them. You can discard them, but you can't really hate them.

I grew up wanting to make movies, and along the way I suddenly found that I had a career doing comedy.

When I go to movies I generally want to be taken to another world.

There were not fifteen people in the story department and twenty-five producers and stuff. And Roger had produced 1,000 movies and directed a couple of hundred, and their comments were always very, very specific.

You can make movies for a select audience, but you have to market it to them.You can make movies for a select audience, but you have to market it to them.

Well, it was actually - I brought the idea of doing a documentary to HBO back in 2000, when there were some press reports sort of were bandied about that there were going to TV movies based on some of the books that were out.

I don't think any actor feels comfortable watching themselves in movies. You must be very narcissistic. The problem with your own opinion of yourself is that contrary to the normal spectators, when you watch a film you are in, you only watch yourself.

Racing Stripes was so much fun to do. It's one of the funniest movies I've seen in a couple years.

I think the audience would like to see movies that are stunning to watch. I really think they'd like to see spectacles.

I feel like I'm a fighter. I've fought my whole life to get to where I'm at. I like fight movies. When someone gets knocked down, I like to root for him to succeed.

After the war, there was no industry. We lost the war. We had our whole city destroyed. No money. No studio. No film. No camera. No equipment. We would shoot in the street. We had no actors. Nothing. But we wanted to do movies. And we did the best movies in the world.