When I was around 15, I did my first movie. I was at a kids' agency, and the third time I was invited to an audition, they offered me a little part in some kiddie thing, and I earned my first money. I was very proud that I could buy my first mountain...
Many years ago, I was actually hired to write the sequel to 'Independence Day.' And I wrote a sequel. And they paid me a boatload of money to go write this thing. And after I wrote it, I read it and I gave them back the money and I said, 'Look, this ...
Police/gangster films always have a huge following and huge audience because of the power, glamour, and certain fantasy aspect they have to them. When people watch movies, they like to fantasize being in a surreal world, and sometimes a criminal worl...
There's book smart, there is street smart, there's relationship smart, there's too many different kinds of smarts to know all of them. Everybody doesn't know every kind of smart. There's money smart, there's movie smart, there's computer smart. There...
If I was to direct a movie about a super-confident guy, first of all I would hate that character. I can do a super-confident guy who crashes and burns and has to rebuild himself as somebody humble. But a super-confident guy that just gets more confid...
Look, I want to be able to make the stupidest movies ever, because they make people laugh and they make money. But that's not all I want to do. And I think I've proven to some people - the ones paying attention - that I can do more. Everybody else, w...
It's so much work to make a movie, and for me it has to get me off my butt. To get me actually writing you have to strike something inside, you have to hit a power main to get the energy. You have to strike something you care about.
I've seen some terrible plays, but I generally enjoy myself. One play I walked out of, I have a tremendous respect for the author. That was Robert Wilson, something called 'Network,' which consisted of Wilson sitting on a bunk, the dialogue of the mo...
The views of the Earth are really beautiful. If you've ever seen a space IMAX movie, that's really what it looks like. I wish I'd had more time just to sit and look out the window with a map, but our science program kept us very busy in the lab most ...
The nice thing about 'Futurama' for me personally was that it was a way to honor some of the traditional ideas in literary science fiction, not so much movie or television science fiction - although we have that too, obviously. Our situation, a workp...
Traditionally, people have been adapting novels and short stories forever. Now, they're doing it simultaneously, with an eye towards writing the movie before the novel has even come out or been finished. It's a function of this hyper-accelerated soci...
Unlike some of the time-travel movies I love, like 'Primer' or '12 Monkeys,' 'Looper' is not about time travel. It's about this situation that time travel creates and the people dealing with that situation. So narratively, the big challenge was to ha...
If 'Buffy' the movie was the true love of my childhood, 'Buffy' the series quickly became the true love of my teenage years. It was everything I'd ever wanted in a show and more. 'Buffy' quickly became an obsession, and, shortly thereafter, became my...
I'd love to do a movie with females in it, and not necessarily the female version of 'The Hangover,' but I'd love to. If I did it it'd star Juliette Lewis, because she's the funniest woman in the world. She's my favorite actress on the planet. If we ...
I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. ...
First off, I love Woody Allen. His early movies, like 'Hannah and Her Sisters,' are incredible. I also love anything by Billy Wilder, Ron Howard and John Hughes. I really grew up on the Hughes films, which are the ones I go back and watch all the tim...
At the end of the day, I want to spend time with my daughter, and this schedule enables me to do that while still having fun hosting '106 & Park.' I'm not really eager to get back into music just yet; I'm really eager to get into another movie before...
The way we work at Pixar is we write the script, but then we quickly move on into story reel, which is basically like a comic-book version of the film. And then we do our own dialogue and music and sound effects, all in an effort to be able to basica...
I joined the Madras Christian College but dropped out after three months. Telugu music director Ramesh Naidu asked me to assist him, and I did so for over a year. I did think of rejoining college, but by then, I was discovering the musician in me. I ...
I remember seeing a movie with Jose Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney where they were husband and wife, and they got in bed, and he had on polka-dot pajamas and she had on striped pajamas, and when they got up the next morning he had on the striped pajamas...
I grew up on the crime stuff. Spillane, Chandler, Jim Thompson, and noir movies like Fuller, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang. When I first showed up in New York to write comics back in the late 1970s, I came with a bunch of crime stories but everybody just ...
