Director

You can't let movies get in the way of your life.

The structure and formula are now so well-known that it's become very hard for the film-maker not to commit the cardinal sin: letting the audience get ahead of the film. So it takes some real sparkle - of which I thought 'Man Up' had plenty, especially in the writing - to keep the viewer enjoying a by-now predictable journey.

'It could be better' is the only thing that anyone should write in the margins of their own script.

It's the nicest thing when you're constantly surprised by your partner.

It's always tricky when someone who's not used to it volunteers to be an extra and you want to go, 'Listen, you're going to be sitting there for a long time.'

I mean, movies need distraction.

The trajectory of most movies is that you start off writing a sensitive movie about a couple in their 40's getting divorced, and then, three years later, you look at each other on set while you're making a film about lesbian cheerleaders. You're like, 'How did that happen?!'

I hired people who would help me, you know, like a director of photography who wouldn't blind me with jargon about ratios and pull-downs.

Being a teenager anyway is incredibly intense and every moment is invested with ferocious importance.

Look, I'd take a suggestion from my grandmother if I thought it would improve a film I was writing.

There is a scene that I wrote with the line, 'It's a terrible day when a man's daughter brings a boy home for the first time.' I'll never be ready for it, I would like to stop my children growing, I don't know how to handle it.

I have no goals or ambitions whatsoever.

Richard Curtis has an encyclopedic knowledge of ABBA, which defeats even mine.

'Waterloo' was probably my favorite. That was enormous fun and we laughed a lot.

There is a scene that I wrote with the line, 'It's a terrible day when a man's daughter brings a boy home for the first time.' I'll never be ready for it, I would like to stop my children growing, I don't know how to handle it.

I have a brilliant memory of being driven back to school when 'Super Trouper' was number one in the charts in 1980. When it came on the radio my mum just drove right past the school gates! When you're 11 years old and meant to be going back to boarding school, that's a great feeling.

There's a sports saying, if you aren't playing offense, you're playing defense, so if you are coming back for a sequel not be better but you have to aim higher and bring something else back in to the mix.

Being a teenager anyway is incredibly intense and every moment is invested with ferocious importance.

I wouldn't make the film that was an hour and half progression from sadness to despair. I'm hugely optimistic.

I wanted to write about love at first sight because I fell in love at first sight.