We got some devastating reviews on Animal House at the start.

My first student film was Orientation, which was basically the set-up for Animal House. There are a couple of scenes that we later borrowed in some form.

I remember when first, Stripes, and then Animal House came out - which I was really proud of, even though it was kind of loose and quite raucous - there were imitative movies that were not quite as good.

When you have a performer as talented as Bill Murray or as Harold, that can write as well as they can perform, you can do a final draft on the set if you think of it that way.

I call it like the domino theory of reality. If you can go one step at a time and it seems to make sense, you can then take your audience into an area that is relatively outlandish.

Everybody says how hard comedy is, but, when it comes time to honor things, whether it's on a weekly critical basis or whether it's award time, at that time of the year, comedy is the poor, dumb child of dramatic work.