If you make a 'Star Wars' reference, everybody's familiar with that. It's a common reference that most people can relate to - 'Bartleby, The Scrivener,' probably not so much.

I get enough of that on the news, so I didn't want to deal with fundamentalists or any sort of thing like that. I just wanted to keep it as lighthearted as the Cold War was, which obviously it was a fun time for everybody.

I watched a lot of the James Bond movies, certainly, both the old ones and the reboot with Daniel Craig. I watched a lot of the Matt Helm films with Dean Martin, which just have these great car scenes where it's rear-projected, and they just start making martinis out of a bar in the glove compartment.

I think the animation helps divorce the violence from reality. The sex certainly doesn't look all that realistic. I think the fact that it's animated, we get some leeway because of that.

Probably I'm more of a fan of the literary references than the pop-culture references. But I do go to the pop-culture well quite frequently because people, I think, are sort of inherently ready to laugh at that. It's a free laugh almost. Usually, everybody gets it.