I guess maybe I try to make movies that are closer to real life than are many Hollywood movies. But I still try to stay within a commercial narrative a contemporary American vernacular.

To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.

'Friends' was an education in intelligent comedic banter in intelligent vernacular. It was an education in scene study. It was an education in group dynamic. I came out of there with a master's degree in comedy.