It's definitely difficult to verbalize. Humor is intangible. With the people who make me laugh, like Peter Sellers, it's something about his body language, the way he speaks, the way he looks.

Peter Sellers was my idol when I was a kid. He was the first person I looked at and thought, If I can do something like this, I'll be happy. If I can distill what he specifically did for me, it was: This is not sketch comedy. This is a deep, deep, profoundly deep character he creates. A seamless world, which was very different than other things I was seeing, which were very superficial, not thought out and ultimately uninteresting characters. If I can describe what he does for me, that's the best I can do. Because as you said, beyond that, why is that funny? I don't quite know.

I think it's also a shared sensibility. Perhaps, because of the visceral response people have to comedy, it ultimately creates an intimacy. You feel close with certain comedians if they tap into that place, if they share a certain outlook with you.

You're probably right. I've been asked about this for a long time and I find it hard to talk about because I end up going around in circles. Someone recently asked me, "Why is 'Best in Show' funny?" I said, "That's a strange question. First of all, is it funny? Is it funny to you? Is it funny to me?" Because that's a very different thing. And without getting into this thesis of comedy again, basically the question should be, "Is this movie funny to you?" But then there's still no real answer, so we end up chasing our tails.

It seems like that intimacy I was talking about is there between you and the other actors you work with in your films. You use an ensemble cast that has many of the same players. What draws you to them? What makes you decide "I want to work with this person"?

As you said earlier, these are people who, when you meet them, you immediately know are on your wavelength or whatever you want to call it. Not to say that it's all based on intuition. But if you are in the world of comedy, you can tell immediately if they are sharing a sensibility. And then they're basically in the club. For what I do, it's a small club. I'm not saying it can't expand. It's just that there's not 20,000 people walking around who share that sensibility. It's very specific. You meet them and you immediately recognize something in them. You know instantaneously. Eugene Levy makes me laugh. Why? Here we are again: I don't know.

You've done two mockumentaries. It seems like that is a framework that works for the type of improvisation your actors do.

I think it's very important to say that we start with more than a loose idea. It's many, many months of preparation. It's building a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, describing the characters, describing the characters' history. It's setting up a format that grids down every scene, as far as function, as far as plot and how each scene is moving the story along. And then you hang improvisation on this skeletal structure.

Without that framework, it's nothing. You can't just show up and start talking. I equate it with playing jazz. You have to know what key you're playing in, you have to know the music, you have to know where you're going to end up. After that it's up to finding players with good chops. And these actors have the chops.

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