Robert Ben Garant

I would say, A, you can't really teach anyone how to write good characters, because it's something you have to teach yourself or already have innately in you as a storyteller, and, B, coming up with a good screenplay is a very, very small fraction of what it takes to be a good screenwriter.

What happens is, you write a spec, people get it, they see your writing, they see you're good, they bring you into their office, and they say, 'Boy, that spec was really good - we'll never make that in a million years. We have rights to the board game of Monopoly. What do you think about a Monopoly movie?'

It's much easier to get your material out to the public now than it was in 1988, when you basically had to get onto cable to have a joke heard across the country. Now all you need is an iPhone, and you can get your joke heard across the country.

Writing a screenplay's not rocket science, but I was in a bar, and the bartender came up to me and said, 'I saw 'Night at the Museum,' and the thing about him and his kid brought me and my kid together.' Something like that... it's like, 'Oh, right. That's why we're doing it.'

I never really saw 'The Kids in the Hall' until after we started 'The State.'

A lot of times when you're trying to do improv, everybody's doing a different style.

You hear a lot of writers talk like writing is therapy or some kind of magic art, but it's a business.

There's a studio formula of making a movie that Betty White fans and Ice Cube fans are going to love, so it's a really broad brush.

There is so much that I love about all aspects of making a film or a TV show.

You write a spec, and you pour your heart and soul and life into a spec, and you think that spec is the movie that's going to sell and get made... I've never heard of anybody that happened to.

There are a huge amount of people who sell a TV pilot every year, but most of them never get produced. It's very easy to make a living and never get anything produced.

Balls of Fury' was a 45-day shoot when it probably - hindsight being 20/20 - probably should've been a 75-day shoot with all the ping-pong action.