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Can you explain your decision to use the narrative device of the journal as voiceover and part of the plot?
â??I always thought that the whole writing your thoughts is something, I don't like to do that. To me that would be the most embarrassing thing in the world, to have someone reading a diary or a journal of mine. Whenever I hear people talking about they do a writing like in AA or self help or, â??My therapist told me to keep a running journal,â?? there's something funny about that to me.

To me, the biggest fear is that someone gets your journal. It was just a way, I thought, to make the guy really naked. And I also thought, what I really liked about it is this, that this was a guy that was a self made guy, a self-medicated kind of guy who knew he was in a lot of pain and knew he needed to change but couldn't come to the point of going to see a therapist and confiding in a therapist, so he saw this ad and he figured, â??I'll do it myself.â?? That's what it was. It was kind of like do it yourself fix for a self made man. â??All right, I'll take this course and I'll discover myself and fix whatever problems I have.â??"

Man About Town is technically ambitious with split screens and CGI zooms of the city. How did you develop and get into technical things?
â??Well, it's new stuff I've never done. That was one of the joys of it. Here's the thing. I wrote this, I became friendly with Steven Spielberg. I acted in Minority Report and he liked Mind of the Married Man and he would call me.

He loved Curb Your Enthusiasm and he'd call me on Wednesdays, several times during the run of the show for two years, and we'd talk about it. I live not far from him and he said, â??Let's do a movie that's a cross between Curb Your Enthusiasm, Mind of the Married Man and the world that we live in.â??

I came in and pitched this whole idea to him and he and I worked it out. I went off and wrote it with the idea that Steven would direct it. I was thinking he'd do it for like $60 million. I was trying to think how do I do this and not make it like a TV thing? How do I try to inspire Steven as a filmmaker with these shots of shooting around the city? How do I make it wildly cinematic so that it's something for him to add to it to really take and run? He loved that. He was talking about making the movie for a long time and then finally called me and said, â??It's just too inside baseball for me and everyone's going to think it's a biographical piece. I just don't want to do it.â?? When I got the chance to do it, I had to do it for $10 million. So that was another kind of challenge, like how do I do these wild shots that I wrote with confidence because I thought Steven Spielberg knows how to do this stuff? But I had never done any of it. So it was a process and it was done on a shoestring budget. It was a lot of fun. My brother Jack did a lot of the work on it. He really did a great job, considering the resources he had.â?

And you gave yourself facial hair to look younger in the flashbacks?
â??That's funny. I just wanted to look different. That's all. I just wanted to look different and I didn't have time to get thinner.â?

When you do the Basic Instinct audition scene, do you have to get the rights to that material or does it count as parody?
â??No, we had to get the rights. That was my favorite scene in the movie. I thought that was funny. A lot of people thought it stuck out of the movie, but I laugh at it every time and the audience loves it. She did a great job, didn't she, Amber Valletta? I'm really impressed with her comic timing and comic ability.â?

But she didn't do it commando?
â??No. Not even close.â?

Was it a pain to deal with the rights?
â??I didn't. My brother does all that. My brother's an amazing producer. My brother's just gotten so good at what he does. I never hear about it.â?

Was Ben nervous about any parallels to his life?
â??Ben wasn't nervous about anything. Ben was amazing. He just wanted it to be funny and he wanted to nail the real scenes. He saw Upside of Anger and he was so nice. He saw Upside of Anger and it was right in the middle of everyone taking shots at him. I thought he was going to be cautious and he said, â??I just want to do your next movie. I want to work with you. I like your style and I like what you're doing. Let's do it.â?? And he never second guessed anything.â?