Jonathan Levine Quotes
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There are things that I can tell my friends that I just can't tell my family, just as far as how I'm feeling about things. My friends know me the best in a certain way. I just think old friends are really, really important.
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I really don't like when you see improv scenes go on too long. It really bothers me, even if the jokes are good.
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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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On '50/50,' even though it was 8 million dollars, it was all acting-intensive.
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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 really like it when movies take a song and use it to counterpoint a scene.
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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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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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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'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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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Zombies have always had a lot of built-in social commentary.
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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 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.
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Usually, the kills are almost Wile E. Coyote kind of things in horror movies.
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I have about 100 gigs of music, and I'm always going through thinking about what song I can match to a scene and all that.
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To me, using music is creating a shorthand with an audience. And I love music so much.