Rian Johnson famous quotes

When I see a news story on a site, about a movie that I'm interested in, it's like the mouse going for the pleasure button and I click it. But then, when I see the movie, it's like, "Oh, I would have enjoyed the movie that much more, if I hadn't known that."
-- Rian Johnson

#News #Stories #Buttons

There's something about the sci-fi genre that gets an audience interested in it, so maybe you can take some risks that you couldn't, if you were just doing a drama. It lets you maybe reach a little further and surprise people a little bit more because there's still that little safety base of working on that genre that everybody loves.
-- Rian Johnson

#Drama #People #Safety

Storytelling wise, you've gotta take it as far as you can possibly take it with each individual movie. If you're holding out something for a sequel or some cliff-hanger, that's not how I think of a satisfying story.
-- Rian Johnson

#Wise #Thinking #Stories

I really spend as long as I can sketching everything out and working on the structure before I sit down to type out scenes.
-- Rian Johnson

#Long #Sketching #Scene

If I spend a year and a half writing a script, the first year will be outlining in notebooks. It's just the way I work, definitely not necessarily the best way.
-- Rian Johnson

#Notebook #Writing #Years

The momentum of production keeps you from giving up, so it's really the editing and writing phases where things can look bleakest.
-- Rian Johnson

#Giving Up #Writing #Editing

When you're writing is when the "god should I just drop this" feeling can hit. When you're editing is when the "god this is awful and I've wasted everyone's time and money and will be revealed as a fraud" feeling can hit.
-- Rian Johnson

#Writing #Editing #Feelings

The only advice I can really give to the young filmmakers is to be persistent, don't give up, and keep watching and making as many movies as you possibly can.
-- Rian Johnson

#Giving Up #Advice

I saw a mom who would die for her son, a man who would kill for his wife, and a boy angry and alone, the bad path laid out in front of him. I saw it, and the path was a circle, round and round. So I changed it.
-- Rian Johnson

#Mom #Son #Men

With 'Brick,' I wrote the script when I was 23 and didn't make the movie until I was 30.
-- Rian Johnson

#Scripts #Bricks

Well, you know, we all grew up as 'Star Wars' fans.
-- Rian Johnson

#Stars #War #Fans

The critical reaction to 'Bloom' has been similar to 'Brick.' There are people on board with it and people who are not.
-- Rian Johnson

#People #Bricks #Boards

Showing your movie to an audience... it's like your kid doing a piano recital. 'Just let it not fail. Please.
-- Rian Johnson

#Kids #Piano #Like You

My favorite sci-fi always uses its hook to amplify some bigger theme or idea - some emotional thrust.
-- Rian Johnson

#Emotional #Ideas #Use

I just don't think CGI is up to manipulating the human face yet. I feel like you can get away with it with aliens or monsters or something that's intentionally foreign, but I have yet to see anything digital to do with the human face that doesn't just look ridiculous.
-- Rian Johnson

#Thinking #Looks #Faces

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.
-- Rian Johnson

#Mean #Thinking #Perfect

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.
-- Rian Johnson

#School #World #Serious

Unlike some of the time-travel movies I love, like 'Primer' or '12 Monkeys,' 'Looper' is not about time travel. It's about this situation that time travel creates and the people dealing with that situation. So narratively, the big challenge was to have time travel get out of the way.
-- Rian Johnson

#People #Challenges #Monkeys

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.
-- Rian Johnson

#Summer #Art #Fun

I do think that I'm a big believer in having an idea or having ideas and just tucking them away in the back of your brain. Even if you aren't consciously thinking of them, I think they simmer. You're working on them, even if you don't know you're working on them, and I think having something in your head for a while is a valuable thing.
-- Rian Johnson

#Thinking #Ideas #Brain

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.
-- Rian Johnson

#Ordinary #Fiction #Use

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.
-- Rian Johnson

#Real #Thinking #Growing

Even if I had $200 million, I'm very wary of overusing CGI. I think it's a great tool and it can be used really effectively, but I feel like it does tend to be overused and especially in sci-fi stuff.
-- Rian Johnson

#Thinking #Doe #Tools

Back before 'Brick,' I wrote a short film that I never ended up shooting: hit men in the present who work for a mob in the future who send their victims back in time. A guy is sent his future self, he lets him run, and the whole short was them chasing each other across the city. That sat in a drawer for 10 years until after I made 'Brothers Bloom.
-- Rian Johnson

#Running #Brother #Men

You never want to make a 'message movie', but you always want to be talking about something that you care about.
-- Rian Johnson

#Talking #Want #Messages

You go from these high hopes when you're writing to just a desperate want of not making a complete fool of yourself by the end of it.
-- Rian Johnson

#Writing #Want #Fool

In almost the same way you know what your grandmother looks and sounds like, you know what Bruce Willis looks and sounds like.
-- Rian Johnson

#Grandmother #Way #Sound

Game of Thrones' is just incredible, what they pull off every week.
-- Rian Johnson

#Games #Thrones #Incredibles

Belgrade has kind of a Dublinesque, dear-dirty charm.
-- Rian Johnson

#Dirty #Kind #Belgrade

All my favorite movies are somebody else's least favorite movie.
-- Rian Johnson

#My Favorite

I bristle a little when the argument for film gets put into the nostalgia ghetto. Film is still the highest quality and best-looking image capture medium available. I don't think it always will be. The digital image will get better, and it will eventually surpass the quality of the film image, but it isn't there yet.
-- Rian Johnson

#Ghetto #Thinking #Quality