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.
I was just like, “I want to make a decent 2-D movie.” I was so worried that, instead of being a decent 2-D movie, it would have been a bad 3-D one.
The ability of a television series to make adjustments is something you’ve got to take advantage of.
I do feel like no matter what you’re doing, whether it’s music or writing a play or a poem or drawing a picture or painting something, that you’re speaking to what is it you want to express, what is it you want to see.
Pitching is always a weird, difficult thing.
It’s cool to be a nerd. There’s a general understanding that smartphones didn’t come from jocks. The digital age was foreseen by a group of short-sleeved, buttoned-down, white-shirted guys and their female equivalents designing the very stuff that’s now ubiquitous.
Every hour that you spend doing something, even if you love it more than anything, you’re not with your family. Every project that you take on, that’s another choice.
I was never really a comic-book fanatic.