I've always believed in populating my films with characters who we like, who we have some warmth for, who have warmth for each other, who we would like to hang out with, who we emulate in one way or another. It's not that they all get along, or that there aren't bad people or people we make fun of. But at the core, there's a kind of sweetness.
Science is a collection of stories, linking characters worthy of notice.
Phonogram is the memory of a long period in my life through a surprisingly small filter. Those characters are basically the golem who accompanied me on that decade and a half.
I always try to make my characters people, and yet I always want to entertain.
I never act my characters - I am them.
Unlike other books or TV shows or sometimes life, my narrative worlds are stripped of implicit moral centers. There is only what you bring. That makes the characters risky in every way and the narrative, a journey of change for the reader. But I make the journey as fun as I can.
It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself.
Whether it's a guy living in an airport like Viktor Navorski in The Terminal, or Anvil in Toronto, or Alfred Hitchcock who's imprisoned by his success; there is a common thread to all these characters. I don't know why I'm particularly drawn to it. It's been pointed out to me, and I don't understand it myself.
In the old-fashioned sitcoms, to be gay was, in itself, funny, and you laughed at the characters rather than with them.
Every issue, the characters and I duke it out. They usually win.
Characters who experience great trauma will sometimes create an escape.
Put your characters where they are the most interesting.
Somehow I find it easier to inhabit characters if they are a little bit pathetic. I do seem to have an affinity with pathetic people.
I try not so much to create new characters and worlds but to create new game-play experiences.
When you have a show that's called Jessica Jones, if Jessica Jones isn't in a scene the rest of it become almost irrelevant until you earn other character storylines. You've got to flesh out those characters enough that you can travel.
I like playing really super-intense, live-in-the-moment characters. It asks me to not phone it in. It's impossible to phone it in. Every American boy has spent his childhood pretending to get shot.
When I went to college, I lived on campus, and the guys I hung out with made the characters in Revenge of the Nerds look like the Rat Pack in 1962. I, myself made that kid Booger look like Remington Steele.
I enjoy pushing my characters to the limit. No matter how far out there I go, I look for things that make the characters human.
Most TV shows are about strong characters and strong actors, and we certainly have those.
Bad guys are complicated characters. It's always fun to play them. You get away with a lot more. You don't have a heroic code you have to live by.