Everything is a learning process: any time you fall over, it's just teaching you to stand up the next time.
One wrong move, and you destroy your career.
Having rain on your tuxedo is a pretty good reminder that you're not James Bond.
Sometimes, what's not said is just as important to the writing as what is said. As a writer, we have our voices heard. I think that, at oftentimes, the ability to allow the dialogue to recede properly into the world of the film is also a really valid sort of way to be a writer, I think.
I had a bit of a martial arts background from when I was a teenager: I did a bit of karate.
Everybody's a mix of good and bad choices that they make.
I often put any project I write in a different decade just to roll the thought around in my head. There's a thriller I've written that I think would be nice to set in the '70s or '80s, just to take cell phones away from the movie. There's nothing like the piercing ring of an old-school telephone to really scare an audience.
I operate under the theory that all publicity is good publicity, and then, if that theory doesn't work, you just say that any newspaper article ends up on the bottom of the parrot cage. But, of course, you can't line a parrot cage with Internet bloggers, can you?
I have always stuck to my guns about what I want from the work and what interests me. I've never been seduced down the evil path. The path of taking the money.
Pulled pork jokes never get old.
Gene Hackman was a superstar in the '70s - with that face!
I'm the great-great-grandson of a sheep stealer.
Even to this day, when I think about the fact that I'm in this 'Star Wars' world, that I'm a half-brother to Darth Vader and an uncle to Luke Skywalker, it's too hard to wrap my head around.
I wasted too much time in my twenties. I worked, but I would do theater in the evening, and during the day I would surf and do irascible things. And then, for some reason, as I got closer to my thirties, I thought, 'Okay Joel, you've wasted enough time.'
I worked for a big department store, and strangely, on my first day, they put me in charge of Christmas wrapping. I didn't know how to wrap a present and make it not look like it fell off a truck.
Particularly when you're making a movie of a book, people are always waiting with their knives - you know?
The little bit of buzz around 'Warrior' led to a lot of opportunities anyway, before the movie even came out.
The best jujitsu practitioners are really serene and grounded.
The biggest difference for me is momentum. On a smaller film you get to shoot sometimes four or five scenes a day and you've got to do the tight schedule. I think I really feel the luxuries of a big budget film.
It's tricky. I've never been standing at the top of the tree with tons of money thrown at me. I've never really had a profile. So in a way I have this 'nothing to lose' attitude.
