I think it’s fair to say that a lot of your work falls under the category of satire. And something that I’ve seen people talk about since 2016 is the ways in which satire has become more difficult in the Trump years because it seems hard to outdo the world. Is that something that you find yourself coming up against — how to calibrate the satire in a world that can seem insane? The world is always going to seem insane, no matter what time period you’re in. I’m sure that after the Civil War, people were like, Damn, this is insane right now. If your satire is just about the anxieties of what’s happening today, then you might not be hitting upon a truth that’s universal. I like going after human flaws as opposed to the flaws of just this moment. Guilt, shame, feeling inadequate — these things are timeless.

But do you think we’re fooling ourselves into thinking we’re dealing with new problems? I mean, obviously every time period has unique problems. But we’re all the age we are right now for the very first time, dealing with the world the way it is for the first time for us. I was thinking the other day about U2. There was a single that showed up on my wife’s iPhone, a new song. And I was like, U2 has been around since the ’80s. When we were kids, that would have been like listening to a band that was around in the 1940s. All of culture has been preserved. I don’t think other generations had easy access to stuff that was made so long ago.

That easy access can mean the culture feels more static, too, because it crowds out space for newer, younger stuff to come through. I totally agree. It does feel like the culture is a little flat. You’re not seeing the decades be as distinct as they used to be, and it probably has something to do with the fact that we have so much stuff. Even with TV: You make this thing, you put all this energy into it, you never even experience it with the audience. You don’t ever get that final “Oh, did it work? Did it not work?” And then as soon as your last episode airs, there are 20 new shows, and then 20 more. Nothing has its moment in the sun.

Wait till your book comes out! [Laughs] That’s what I’ve been hearing.

Also, I don’t mean this as a dig, but on the idea of culture recycling: You rebooted the “Halloween” movies! Totally. [The director] David [Gordon] Green came to me with that and was like, “They want me to reboot ‘Halloween.’” My first thing was, “Don’t do it.” And he’s like, “I think I’m going to.” Then it was like, “OK, I have to do it with you to make sure we don’t mess it up.” So, yes, to a certain extent we’re contributing to the repackaging of old things, but we’re trying to at least put some integrity into it.

Earlier I asked whether you ever get notes about comedy, but do you ever get notes about something being over the line when you’re making a horror film? In a “Halloween” movie you did, there’s one scene where Michael Myers cuts off a guy’s tongue, and I was like, I’m out, that’s too much. It’s funny writing comedy and then writing horror. People can get offended from jokes, obviously. But for some reason with horror, there’s none of that. We’re just coming up with cool ways to kill people, and nobody’s upset about it. You’re allowed to. But say the wrong joke and you might get in trouble.