Ratings have changed, viewer habits have changed and the options for the audience have grown enormously, but I don’t think how you tell a story is fundamentally different.
It’s not a bad way to live once you let go of the idea that you deserve more.
Whenever you’re playing sports with people who are better than you are, it makes you rise to the occasion.
When I was a kid going into the movies, you weren’t force-fed information everywhere you looked about what the movie was going to be.
I’m an impatient guy and tend not to like to stay with one thing for a long time. I’ll never be able to write as many scripts as I did for “Felicity” or “Alias” ever again. I’m just too impatient these days. I want to get on to the next project.
I do think there’s something about the digital age that is increasingly dehumanising us. We’re in this very weird place where we’re being pulled into experiences that aren’t really experiences at all.
I’m working on the Star Wars script today and the people in my office have covered up all my windows with black paper. I guess they wanted to make sure no one could see what I was doing. It seems rather extreme.
Withholding things in a story is no good if you aren’t building to something substantial. It becomes foreplay without the main event, and no one wants that.
It’s a leap of faith doing any serialised storytelling.
Well, we knew that we wanted to tell a story that made bold choices, and one of those bold choices was meeting a storm trooper and seeing who this person was. That’s something that had never been done.
All the times I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of a show that’s actually gotten on the air, it’s always that same mixture of excitement and utter fear.
With three kids you are just trying to survive. You can’t be fastidious.
You know, we didn’t want to kill anyone, but we knew that “Star Wars” is a generational tale. It always is. And for it to have some guts and some resonance and true stakes, I don’t think that everyone could have come through the story unscathed.
Whenever I’ve directed something, there’s this feeling of demand and focus that I like.
I’m literally open to any medium that will have me.
Well, when Kathy Kennedy, who is the president of Lucasfilm, came to me to ask if I’d be interested in working on this “Star Wars” movie, we talked about a young woman at the center of the story from the outset. And it was something that was always an important part of this movie.
I don’t think I have a signature.
I do think that at a certain point, the reboot sequel mode has to give way to original ideas and back to a place where, you know, films are, you know, a medium and the cinema is a place you go to see something that is, you know, wholly new.
I am lucky, I’m the first to admit that.
I try to work on shows that I would want to watch.