There's nothing like walking onto a Hollywood sound stage.
The Smith Center is a theater where you want to keep the lights on. The acoustics are amazing, and this is a stage that was built for sound.
In Hollywood, I was used to being on a dirty old sound stage, and the whole crew is just scratching themselves. They don't care who you are.
People are meant to be certain places, and I think I'm meant to be on a sound stage doing situation comedy.
I loved being on the set with my stepfather. I loved the magic of movies. I went on the set of 'The Mod Squad' - I mean, can you imagine? Just walking into a living room and then walking behind the living room, and it's just flat. There's nothing I love more than being on a sound stage.
When you're directing, you see your ideas. You see them created right in front of you on the monitor and the sound stage. You get that experience all over again when you get into the editing room and you start playing with it.
When you're on a sound stage and you're shooting a fire stunt, this weird thing happens where the fire eats up all the oxygen and everybody gets a little dingy.
I love fire. I just think it's hypnotic and great, but I've got to tell you - on a sound stage, that stuff scares me.
It often happens that you leave your house in the dark, shoot on a sound stage without natural lighting, and then go home in the dark. A whole week can go past, and it can feel like 12 hours.
It goes back to a style of moviemaking I remember seeing as a child, in movies like The Man With The Golden Arm, which I think was shot all on a sound stage.
There's no job like 'SNL.' There's no other job you go to where you're like, 'Oh, this is like that live, late-night sketch variety-musical show that shoots in, whatever it is, 10,000 feet of sound stage.' There's nothing like it.
We spent a lot of time on that record with the sound and recorded it on the Paramount sound stage which is this huge room where the sound is reflected but the reflection is so late and comes from so far away that it doesn't blur the music but gives you a room nonetheless.
And you know what - and I don't mean this in tongue in cheek way - but it's like deja vu. When I walked in to WCW they were producing wrestling on a little teeny sound stage at Disney, okay? I'm walking into TNA and they're producing wrestling in a little teeny sound stage at Universal.
Working for Disney for the last eight and a half years, people come and go - production staff and actors. I stepped onto the sound stage and it was a literal time warp.
Locations are all tough, all miserable. I never left the sound stage for 18 years at Warners. We never went outside the studio, not even for big scenes.
