From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment.

I'm Elvis Mitchell.

You can also hear the show at KCRW.com.

You certainly know my guest, Sean Levy,

because he's basically brought stunts into every comedy we know him for, from cheaper by the dozen to the ninth museum movies to his newest date night.

Sean, first of all, thanks so much for being here.

Glad to be here, thanks.

I want to ask you about that, though, because you use stunts in the way that action directors use action as a way to sort of embellish character, don't you?

Yeah, and I think that's kind of how life is, right?

We reveal ourselves through the things we say, but we, frankly, more often perhaps, reveal ourselves through the things we do.

And the way we move, the way we use our bodies.

Ben Stiller, for instance, you always want to frame him in a medium shot or wider because his hands are part of his whole mojo.

You could say the same thing for Steve Martin almost. You certainly would say, see, Martin I would actually argue that you often want to be even wider. You want to be hesitant. Because he's using torso and I'm doing things right now that are wasted on radio, of course.

Listeners can trust that I'm acting all this out.

So being aware of the way in which characters revealed, and sometimes it's through kind of physicality, sometimes through action stunts, as you say.

Walter Hill basically said in his movies that, you know, characters reveal themselves through physical action.

And you're often testing your characters, your protagonists, through the action in the films.

That's absolutely true.

My background is in theater.

I went to Yale in the drama department.

And I remember when I first started making short films in film school later at USC in the master's program,

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