I had always thought my fantasy career would be making indie films and doing my own thing. But then 'Superbad' came along, and it totally changed everything. It was so hilarious and smart and extreme; you could probably do a psychoanalysis term paper on the male sexual psyche going on there.

I worry that I would actually hurt my career doing something I didn't enjoy.

I remember on my very first film, which Steven Soderberg executive-produced, he said, 'Try not to repeat yourself. Do things that scare you.' Even if it's a challenge, I want people to say that this guy tried this thing. Hopefully he learned from it.

Film school didn't prepare me for the fact that you have to manage so many different personalities at every stage, and I learned nothing about what to do when a movie was finished.

I don't have a lot of men in my life. I'm married, but I have daughters. I'm surrounded by a lot of females in my world.

To give money to a woman - and here I must speak as a man - is to deny her special quality, her irreplaceability, and reduce her unique amiability to a commodity. Money takes away her name, while transforming her lover into a nameless customer of a market of appetites.

That's a paradox I've noticed, too: The news business held little romance for me, yet writing about it somehow stirred my affections.

For a century, women have binged on romance novels that encouraged them to associate intimidation with infatuation; it's no wonder that this emotional hangover still lingers.