Jonathan Levine Quotes
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On '50/50,' even though it was 8 million dollars, it was all acting-intensive.
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I really hope everyone who saw 'Twilight' sees 'Warm Bodies,' but at the same time... I don't resent the comparison on a level of quality because I don't judge other movies like that. Now that I make movies, I see how hard it is to do everything. I pretty much love all movies.
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I learned some big lessons on my first film, a horror film which was never released in the U.S., even though we sold it to Harvey Weinstein for a lot of money.
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I grew up with Woody Allen and early Spike Lee movies in which New York was such a specific character. The city has a certain vibe and beat which really informs your entire existence.
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I really like it when movies take a song and use it to counterpoint a scene.
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I really like using genre to tell a story about characters but also use it as a Trojan horse to tell social or cultural commentary. That's where the best stuff, especially in the zombie genre, comes out of.
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I don't often watch something I've done on TV. Usually, I'll change the channel and watch something else.
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I've had a couple of family members deal with cancer, and I remember that moment where they're going into surgery, and you just have no idea what's going to happen, and it's really scary.
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As I continue to evolve as a filmmaker, I'm going to continue to do different stuff.
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As a director, your expectation and reality don't always match up, and I think that that's... I think it's a little jarring.
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Right after 'The Wackness' came out, it was a really exciting time, and then it was a bit disappointing when it came out. Even though not that many people saw it, I was still getting offered some movies. I was thinking that people would just stop calling me since it didn't do very well at the box office.
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If you know how to shoot a scene, then you know how to shoot an action scene. If you've seen an action movie, and you watched it, and you paid attention to how scenes are constructed and where the camera is and how the camera moves, then you know how to do it.
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I think it's cyclical. Zombies have been around for ages, and vampires have run their course; we've had so many vampire movies.
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Genre is a really great shorthand you can have with an audience. In the same way you can use music to create a connection with an audience, it brings so much of their knowledge of what genre really is to the table. You have a shortcut to connect with them. I really like that.
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That's the great thing about being a director. You have your list of things you have to worry about and things you don't have to worry about. If you can hire someone or cast someone who equates to not having to worry about, it's great!
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I think people will always want to go see a movie, whether it's a comedy and you want to see it and laugh with people, or whatever.
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For whatever reason, the films I gravitate towards do have these strange sort of tonal balances to them... I kind of realized on '50/ 50' why I liked these blending of tones, because I think it's kind of what life is like: funny one minute, sad the next, scary the next.
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I kind of viewed '50/ 50' and 'Warm Bodies' both as my next films after 'The Wackness.' In my head, I was just like, 'I'll try the big, fun, adventure-weird movie, and I'll do the small, heartfelt comedy-drama, and one of them will probably work out, and I'll get to work more.'
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For me, it's always more interesting to look at things when you don't really have a horse in the race, so to speak.
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I think I'm always conscious of not letting things fit into a specific box. Being a filmmaker and trying to chart a career, you never want anyone to be able to pigeonhole you into one specific thing.
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I love subverting expectations or playing with the sort of unspoken kind of connections that the audience has.
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Zombies have always had a lot of built-in social commentary.
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The way 'Coming Home' uses music in general is incredible, but the final song that really kind of crescendos all of the emotion that the whole movie has kind of been building to is this song called 'Once I Was' by Tim Buckley.
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I always look at myself as kind of a work in progress. I hope that's not always the case. But for me, every film is a learning experience.