On the subject of the visuals, I wanted to talk to you about shooting action a little bit, because on this one you have some really fun action sequences. Especially in the first ten minutes, there’s some really good stuff. As the director of a film like this that’s a comedy, and the focus is going to be on getting laughs, are you able to get the time you want to break down and shoot the action, or to give it the focus that you want to?

Well, if you look at action scenes, you really have to think about them as their own special thing. Because the scenes can’t be just actiony, they need to also be funny. I directed the film Dukes Of Hazzard and it’s an action comedy, and the action needed to be good because in the original television show the action was sort of the star of the show. But the comedy can’t take a backseat.

So I brought in some of the guys that did the action cinematography on Dukes Of Hazzard and said ‘Look, I’ve got way less money and way less time, but this is the general length of what we want to do and these are the jokes that I need to tell in between these action pieces.’

And so together the stunt coordinator and I designed what the action would look like. We basically take Matchbox cars and we ride them around and say ‘…and then we’ll slide off the road and hit a fence and these guys will throw a speaker out…’ and you go through it all. And then I approve it, and I say ‘Ok, you guys go take three days and I’ll give you four cars and the bus, go shoot all of the exterior stuff you can and I’ll give you two doubles for the cops, and you guys shoot all these shots to tell the story’. And they go and do it, they shoot all of that stuff.

Then I’ll look at what they did, I’ll cut it together, and I’ll say ‘Ok, I need to shoot the real actors reacting to these crashes and making jokes at this exact moment’ and the car needs to be in the same spot and the same lighting and all that stuff.