I make movies that I enjoy making and tell stories that I want to see, so it’s hard. You never reverse engineer those things and go, “What would appeal to this or that?” Even if I tried, I don’t know. I’m an all-American kid.
I want to have a lengthy career. I want to play interesting characters. I want to tell beautiful stories, complex stories, deep stories.
I want to make movies - and I want to portray characters - that make people think. I want to make movies that have a redemptive message. I want to tell good quality stories and take out the derogatory sex, violence and language.
This is my life - I want to tell stories. There is something huge inside me that pushes me to tell stories, and tell stories for an audience and everybody.
...You believe that the kind of story you want to tell might be best received by the science fiction and fantasy audience. I hope you're right, because in many ways this is the best audience in the world to write for. They're open-minded and intelligent. They want to think as well as feel, understand as well as dream. Above all, they want to be led into places that no one has ever visited before. It's a privilege to tell stories to these readers, and an honour when they applaud the tale you tell.
We, as producers, want to tell the best stories. We want to tell the stories that people will talk about.
I think Hollywood is so driven by money, the people who are making the decisions are not necessarily reflective of the melting pot, so what stories are you going to want to tell? You're going to want to tell stories about yourself.
You want to go to a place where you work every day, where you get to tell stories that look and feel like the audience in America that are watching. You're really limited, if you walk into a room and you can just tell stories about that. So, we've been really blessed.
I want to continue to make beautiful movies. The most important thing is to be a part of beautiful stories, that's all I want. So I don't care if it's a Hollywood movie or an independent movie or a Spanish or American movie. I care about telling stories.
Fortunately, the world is full of people with information compulsion who want to tell you their stories. They want to tell you things that you don't know. They're some of the greatest allies that any writer has.
I really want to do film, but I want to do the right film. The truth for me is that I'm really driven by stories. So there are stories I want to tell, and if it's a good story then I want to do it, whatever genre it is.
I want to tell stories which require something of an audience, by way of thought, argument, emotion, because I'm more often in an audience than I am a maker of films, and that's the kind of movie I want to see.
I constantly think as an artist, as a rapper of what are the stories you want to tell? They can't all be, "I'm ill, I'm fresh, look at me, I have money." At some point, when you have an audience for it, there are stories that need to be told.
I want to tell good stories, real stories with a message and I want to play meaty characters that drive the story.
I want stories where you either hate it or love it. I want to do movies like that, where it's not show and tell, where it's not, 'This is it, and now you reveal the ending, and that's that.'
I never have people tell me their stories. I usually have to figure them out myself. Because I know that if people tell me stories, they will expect them to be remembered. And I cannot guarantee that. There is no way to know if the stories stay after I'm gone. And how devastating would it be to confide in someone and have the confidence disappear? I don't want to be responsible for that.