I think I had the most fun making a movie with 'Dedication,' just because you knew that it was a passion project for everyone involved. We had X amount of days to shoot New York in the cold. No trailers. Just sort of kind of doing it guerilla style in a way.
I like having the space of my own project.
To be honest with you, my physical state is usually dictated by the project I'm working on at a given time.
Let me tell you, if I could pick the project of all projects, it would probably be Kate Gosselin because if I can help Kate find a man? I can help anybody!
In any given project, there are a few moments where there is the usual disappointment, as it were, when you look in the mirror, and you realize you're not 23 and looking like Brad Pitt.
When I was a playwright earlier in my career - my senior project in high school was my first produced play - I used to put on the title page: 'A tragedy with laughs.'
The biggest challenge for me has been in coping with my perfectionism. I have a stiflingly hard time moving forward in a project if it's not 'just right' all along the way. The trap I so easily fall into is rewriting and rewriting the same scenes over and over to make them perfect, instead of continuing on into the wild unknown of the story.
With a project like 'The 5th Wave,' you do something you would never do in your normal life; I would never have had S.W.A.T. training or boot camp, and there's something really cool about learning stuff like that that's really fun about our job.
Since I did the SK Project and I partner with the United Nations World Food Program, I got a lot of different feedback from people online. Through social networks and through the Twitter. I read the comments and see 'em saying, 'People hungry here, Fif.'
Fantasy is sort of a blank slate that everybody can project their own culture onto. Everybody can read it in their own way.
The main thing that's important to me is getting to do whatever project it is the way that I do what I do, and that's different. To go to an entity - whether it's a traditional film studio or some newer company, or HBO, Amazon or Netflix - they would have to know that I need to work the way I work.
'The Storms We Share' has been a project that I've been working on for so long.
I don't know if I have good habits, but I'm very devoted to writing. I'm very compulsive about having a project, at least one, and trying to follow the business as much as I can. I keep on top of all the entertainment business news.
I think that 'Station to Station' is a nomadic project not only in a literal sense, as it's traveling by train from place to place. Some of these places are New York City or Los Angeles, but some of these places are rather off-the-grid places.
We did a student-initiated project of 'A Little Night Music', which was the first time that all of the divisions - music, dance, drama, opera - came together and put on a piece. It was a black box kind of feel. We had to get costumes that were pieced together. We had our own lighting that we finagled.
'Fences' is under the headline of the project of my lifetime. It is the most perfect and undeniably developed narrative that I've ever worked on.
I believe it is called 'Area 51' because of a project, the very first project that went on out there, in 1951.
'Instructions Not Included' is proving that there is a huge Latin market that needs a special project. They love seeing their own people; they want to see themselves onscreen. In my case, I know them pretty well. I know what they laugh at. I think it's going to open a lot of doors, this movie.
When starting a project, your influences are the things around you. It doesn't mean you have to sound like it or look like it or anything. It's just something new, and your curiosity becomes enthralled by it.
