A Quote by Jon Watts

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.
Going forward, I would love to work with directors like Rian Johnson and Joss Whedon; people like that who are doing big films but do have really independent voices. That's kind of what I want to focus on, is always working with people with at least an independent point of view, even if it's not an independent film.
When people would ask me what I was doing, I'd be like, 'It's a horror film.' 'What is it about?' 'You'll just have to see it.' I really didn't want to explain it because it's really tough to explain without it just sounding really ridiculous.
It is one thing to tell people in theory that you can be whatever you want to be, but it is another thing to tell someone that they can be whatever they wanted to be because somebody that is just like you did it.
I really do like the independent way of working. You don't get much studio intrusion compared to when you're working on a big Hollywood film where there tends to always be loads of people interfering. The only problem, though, with independent features is that they are hard to sell.
Why do we tell stories? It's because we want to connect to people, we want to tell them who we are, we want to tell them a story that affects us, that impacts us. And to help a young filmmaker doing a short or independent film is my testament, I think, is my desire to really make sure that our younger generations get passed along all the elders' experience and to literally have the image - to literally carry them on their shoulders and say, 'This is what the world is. This is how the world operates. Let me show you how.'
I was a design ethicist at Google, where I studied how do you ethically steer people's thoughts? Because what we don't talk about is how the handful of people working at a handful of technology companies through their choices will steer what a billion people are thinking today.
I want to do more independent film. I'm blessed to be working on really quality episodic television, which to me actually feels like a sort of 13-hour film.
I was under contract with Hitchcock before I even met him. They wouldn't tell me anything about the film, or who was working on it. They had all sorts of excuses as to why they couldn't tell me anything.
You always want to make the best film you can. If anything I feel more relaxed after the Oscar. I feel like I have a chance to just tell the stories I want to tell and it's actually been really nice.
Even my mom. I have to tell her, "If you want a snack, don't go to bed with potato chips. Eat a handful of pistachios and a handful of dates."
If I'm not working, I really have nothing to do with it - I'm not hanging out and mixing with film people. Not that I have anything against film people; they're some of the best people around and some of the worst people around, just like in any business... they just gesticulate a little bit more.
Sometimes you just want to go out and tell everybody everything because you're just so full of happiness. It's almost like you're high on it and you just want to tell everybody about your experience, but you're not allowed to say anything.
The hardest stories we tell are always about ourselves. How do you explain that you have been missing your mother for 20 years? I don't know how to explain that to you. I wasn't even sure I wanted to film that, because I don't know how I felt about it. I didn't want to put her through it, and I frankly wasn't ready. Because since I was 16, I just had created my own life for myself, you know? I left when I was 12. I'm 32. And I have gotten to know my mother more through editing her and looking and watching and editing her footage, you know.
I'm not afraid of working hard at anything, whatever it is. I just always want to be the best that I can.
The most frustrating part of working in TV and film is that you have to convince someone to let you make what you want; in comics you can do whatever you want and for 1% of the budget of TV and film.
There is a sort of creative purity in an independent film, in the passion of the director, the passion of the crew. They're not getting a whole lot of money, so you know they are not there because they want to get rich. Instead, they are there because they want to make a movie. In the bigger films, I remember when I used to do those, it's just a job for a lot of people, so there is less of an intense energy devoted to the whole project.
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