I think the danger in trying to set too many things up or do too much world-building in a movie so soon is you forget to actually make a movie.
— Jon Watts
To me, the best comedies get a little dark, and the best thrillers are a little bit funny. So I'm not exactly sure where I draw the line between the two.
Every film you see in film school takes on a heightened importance in your life.
For me, there's a deeper genre appreciation for what a coming of age story can be about. To apply that to a superhero world, for me, that was very exciting.
I love Cameron Crowe's 'Say Anything' and 'Almost Famous.' I think those are really great coming-of-age movies.
When you make a movie for a really low budget, it makes you really strict. You have to plan things down to the tiniest detail.
I've always been a very collaborative person, and I think 'Cop Car' and all the people I worked with who made it possible is a good example of that.
'Cop Car' was made with all of my friends. I wrote it with my best friend.
I just remember having the President's Fitness Challenge when I was in elementary school and middle school. You had to do different activities, and at the end of it, I think you got a little pin or a badge. I was like, 'How do we incorporate Captain America into high school?' You would have the 'Captain America Fitness Challenge.'
Film is a temporal medium as much as it is a visual medium: you're playing with time, and you don't have that ability where someone can pause at home. That's such a fundamental part of what makes filmmaking exciting to me. I don't really have as much interest in any other medium. I just like the control.
That's why people love Spider-Man: he's the most grounded, relatable of superheroes.
Big movie or small movie, you make this thing, and then you show it to people, and you just hope they like it. You hope it works.
I didn't even think anyone would want to make 'Cop Car,' and then I didn't think anyone would want to distribute 'Cop Car,' and then I didn't think anyone would want to see 'Cop Car.'
'Welcome to the Dollhouse' is great. Even though it's about a girl in middle school, to me, that feels like the most honest reflection of what being a kid around that age feels like.
I only realized I could potentially make movies after seeing 'Ed Wood.'
I think 'Badlands' is my favorite movie because it reminded me of where I was from.
If you think about it, now that Spider-Man is in the Marvel universe, that means that Peter Parker was probably, like, eight years old when he saw Tony on TV telling the world he's Iron Man. And when you start thinking about it as a whole world like that, it gets really fascinating.
There's this great panel - I forget what the actual comic is - of Spider-Man in the rain holding an umbrella and eating some Chinese takeout. It's like, that's the essence of 'Spider-Man.'
There's a lot of similarities, I think, between a thriller and a comedy because it's all about tension. It's about building tension and setups and payoffs and misdirections and surprising people and sort of pushing the boundary.
I think it helps if you have a clear vision of what you want.
On an independent film where you're working with just a handful of people, you don't have to explain anything because no one cares. You can do whatever you want. There's no one there to tell you not to do it.
Since being at Marvel, I've been watching everything over and over and over again, all the movies, and seeing how all the movies connect has been very satisfying for me.
Talking to someone you have a crush on is as scary as fighting a super-villain.
When you're writing something to direct, you just write exactly what you're going to do. You don't have to write it in a way for other people to understand or interpret.
Something I learned early on in my career is there's no use trying to fool anybody about what you want to do on a project where there are other people involved, rather than your own thing.
You go to the movies to be transported. That's the responsibility of filmmakers and the people that hire the filmmakers - to try and find new dreams we can all share together.
I love the movies. Everyone always says the same thing about the shared cultural experience, seeing things on the big screen, the church of the cinema... But on top of all that, as a filmmaker, I love having people be trapped in a movie theater, forcing them to watch what I made.
Sundance is like a genre.
It's really cool to do, like, a 'Harry Potter' evolution because you can really take your time with the character development: really, like, don't rush past the implications of great power and great responsibility.
I have a tendency to check out when the stakes are too high in a movie.
'Clown' started as a fake trailer for a nonexistent movie.
I had a recurring stress dream since I was a kid 10 years old. My friend Travis is driving, and I'm afraid we're going to get in trouble. We keep passing people I recognize, and no one is doing anything. Travis keeps driving faster. I've had that dream a long time.
We always talked about the sequel to 'Clown' being called 'Clowns,' like an 'Alien'/'Aliens' sorta thing, where you have multiple clowns. And just really make it, in the way that 'Aliens' was an action movie, do the same thing. Action-horror. That would be great.
I've always pre-vized my movies, just on my own. Even when it was, like, zero-budget things, I used this programme to do storyboards because I can't draw that well.
People know the broad strokes of what it's like to be Spider-Man, but I wanted to really get into the details.
By having Spider-Man exist in the same universe as the Guardians of the Galaxy... C'mon, that opens up so many possibilities!
What's nice about having kids close to the age they're playing is that you can actually capture awkwardness.
When we were kids, we would just go walking: just walk in a direction and hope that you were gonna find a crashed alien spaceship or buried pirate's treasure or something like that. You never did. You'd find, like, a coyote skeleton, something like that. That was the most exciting thing you'd ever find.
I think every kid is a 'Spider-Man' fan at some point.
I liked writing with my friends and making our own little stories. Making a movie like 'Spider-Man' never even crossed my mind.
You get really scrappy when you're making things for zero dollars, and you just have to keep thinking like that. It's not like, 'Oh, we now have a little bit more money, let's do things differently.' If you just keep boiling it down to the simplest possible way to make it, I think that always ends up being the best.
There was a time when I just loved 'Indiana Jones' so much. I was in fourth or fifth grade, and I wore a fedora like that one to school every day. It was so dumb.
It's all about making an experience. You go to the movies to see something you've never seen before. You want to get different people out there with different voices. So you see awesome huge spectacle or just a small unbelievable story you've never seen before.
I was definitely the kid who was the chicken, who didn't want to say the cuss words.
I wouldn't say I was a massive comic fan growing up, just because I now know people that really are, and I would never claim to be in that same category.
A great thing about kids is they're just themselves and can't help it a lot of the times.
I love 'River's Edge.'
I was going to be a chemical engineer - I was a science nerd - that was the plan. I secretly applied to USC and NYU and got a scholarship to go to NYU based on a dumb animated short I made. It was a huge shock to me and my family.
The movie I made with my friends in my hometown based on a dream becomes a stepping stone to 'Spider-Man.' I wish I could say this was an amazing, calculated path but... It's so weird.
My attitude is one movie at a time. I don't want to get ahead of myself.
