I feel like people want to be surprised when they get out of the movies. They want something thrown at them they didn't expect. They want stuff that reminds them of the feelings that you get when you're watching art house movies but with the fun of like a big summer movie. That's the goal, I guess.
It was so emotional to step onto the Millennium Falcon set because that was the play set we all had when we were kids. Suddenly, you were standing in the real thing. There's this rush of unreality about it.
Showing your movie to an audience... it's like your kid doing a piano recital. 'Just let it not fail. Please.'
With 'Brick,' the style with language and the way it was shot was to create a world obviously elevated from the very first frame above a typical high school.
As to whether Luke is the 'Last Jedi,' they say in 'The Force Awakens' he's going to find the last Jedi temple and Luke is the last Jedi.
Teen movies often have an unspoken underlying premise in which high school is seen as less serious than the adult world. But when your head is encased in that microcosm it's the most serious time of your life.
The overwhelming reaction on set was everybody loved the porgs. And I love 'em, so you know what? I get it if people are a little wary of cuteness in the 'Star Wars' universe, but I personally love them, and I think they have their place in the movie.
It took a while before I could sit across the table with Mark and not, every three seconds, think, 'I'm talking to Luke Skywalker.'
With 'Brick' there was the Dashiell Hammett influence, and with 'Brothers Bloom' there was a really strong Fellini influence - both those movies wore that on their sleeve.
In almost the same way you know what your grandmother looks and sounds like, you know what Bruce Willis looks and sounds like.
Hopefully with each thing that you do you're learning something, you're growing, and you're pushing yourself a little harder in some way or another. So I think you'd be in real trouble if each new thing that you create didn't feel like 'Oh, wow. I feel like I'm doing something a little different this time.'
I mean, the first 'Back to the Future' is kind of a perfect script, I think, in terms of handling time travel the best. It depends on your definition. To me, that means it effectively uses it in the story.
I do love science fiction, but it's not really a genre unto itself; it always seems to merge with another genre. With the few movies I've done, I've ended up playing with genre in some way or another, so any genre that's made to mix with others is like candy to me. It allows you to use big, mythic situations to talk about ordinary things.