It's one of the things I love about my job: it's my job to help a director tell the story, to just be willing to help.

It's the writers' job to make it positive. It's my job to make it real.

A month before graduation I got an off-Broadway job. Then I did some commercials, including one for MCI. You can only see half of me, but it paid well. Thank God for commercials.

When I was a kid, I played 'Super Mario Bros' and 'Megaman 2' and '3' for hours and hours, trying to convince my mother they were good for me because they helped my hand-eye coordination. They influenced a whole generation of people to make computers what they are now, through problem-solving and so on.

I had had some successes in the '90s, always made money, but the truth was I was like a man pushing a boulder up a hill. A huge, heavy, difficult boulder made up of some career mistakes, projects that didn't meet expectations, and twenty years of being a known quantity.

Last year, the surgery was a tough decision, but I had to make a decision based on my career. It was a decision to get healthy, and start over with a new team at 100 percent.

Building a professional relationship on respect as opposed to affection is a very good idea. Running your art projects the way you'd run a dry-cleaning business is also a really good idea. You shouldn't go into work like you're going on a date, like you're hanging out with friends.

Jimmy Iovine, he pretty much started off as an engineer and a producer, and then he started up a label. Then he built his label to have big artists like Dr. Dre and 50 Cent. Then he started up a headphone company and made it a billion dollar business. He's a genius to me.