Generally with the Oscars or the Emmys there isn’t much you can do until the nominations are announced. Then you know what kind of year you’re dealing with – what’s been overlooked, what the issues are.

I’ve written about 15 screenplays and they all sold – they were all sold on pitches.

It’s the biggest party in the world, and you have to keep the whole thing percolating, which is difficult because a lot of awards most people don’t care about.

I write screenplays that don’t get made and pilots that don’t get picked up, and I re-write other people’s movies, and those are all different kinds of fees.

I mean, when I started out I was billing per hour, like a shrink because you would sit with somebody and work. But most of it, if it’s for a live show it’s usually a buy-out. A flat fee.

I like that we don’t have to come out the first 10 minutes and score, you know, with joke, joke, joke. We can open it in a more novel way and keep playing different pranks as we go through the thing.

I mean, I’ve sold all these scripts and nothing’s been made. Studios have closed, stars have died. I had a director find Jesus. And the pictures just don’t get made.

I have one rave New York Times review framed next to a flop Los Angeles Times review. And it’s for the same show. These people watched the same show. That’s what happens. They love it, they hate it.

They make a humongous profit, but the people that work on the shows don’t get paid a lot because they’re working on the Oscars show. It’s the biggest show in the world.

They want to have a big movie star in that role. I'm sure a lot of other people were considered. He wouldn't be anybody's first thought. People forget that he has musical-comedy chops. He comes from musical theater, from Broadway. That's where he began, and so he has a sense of that style. It certainly is a great big acting leap for him. It's going to be interesting to see how he does it.