It's funny though because when I first started going to races after we met I was extremely nervous. It's like being backstage and hoping you don't trip over something or break an amp or accidentally speak into a live microphone so I was really hesitant.

It's funny because '1600 Penn' was the first time I really started to read the reviews because I am an executive producer and I wanted to see what people were enjoying and not enjoying as a means to an end right?

I mean I'm married first of all to one of if not the most wonderful women in the world. She is everything - funny attractive hard-working she has integrity she loves me to bits.

The Islam of the 18th 19th and first half of the 20th century was a poor thing. Nobody bothered about it. Islam was that funny sort of pure system of beliefs that depressed people in the Middle East held as their religion.

When I first envisioned 'Funny Games' in the mid-1990s it was my intention to have an American audience watch the movie. It is a reaction to a certain American cinema its violence its naivety the way American cinema toys with human beings. In many American films violence is made consumable.

And at the time it is funny how you can look at something and say for example with my shoulder injury when it first happened I said this is the worst thing that could happen to me. Why me why now? Now I look back and say it was probably the best thing that happened to me.

It's funny when bands or younger musicians ask me: 'So what does it take to make it?' Well first explain to me what you mean by 'making it': Do you want to be a rock star or do you want music to be your livelihood?

I think there have always been funny women from Carol Burnett to Joan Rivers. When the audience sees a woman they innately know she's worked twice as hard to get there she's had to prove that she can be the leader first and then be funny on top of it. She has to emit a confidence that she's in control.

I think being funny is not anyone's first choice.

If at first you don't succeed find out if the loser gets anything.