Jonathan Levine

“For me, the best high school movie is, like, 'Fast Times' and what Cameron Crowe is like.”

“I love Jamaica so much. I've been there so much, and I think it would be great if we could shoot a movie there.”

“I have a lot of friends with bad taste in music - some might say that I have bad taste in music.”

“I used to obsess on critical reactions to my films, and it's really not a healthy way to live your life, so my new take on it is simply, 'I hope people like it!' I'm not going to be looking at the tomato meter for at least a year! I was very lucky on '50/50' that most critics really liked it.”

“I was Paul Schrader's assistant for six months before I went to film school, and he's very much about knowing what's going to happen on every page before you even start writing dialogue - the entire plot and character arcs are mapped out.”

“I don't often watch something I've done on TV. Usually, I'll change the channel and watch something else.”

“As a director, there's no natural career progression. So after 'The Wackness,' which was very personal to me, I was very, very picky about what I was going to do next, to the point where I think that I was almost too picky.”

“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.”

“'Warm Bodies' was a more long-term thing; I had to write the script, who knew if it was every really going to happen, if I'd find the right actors, and so on, so I grabbed '50/50' because I just fell in love with it.”

“I kind of viewed '50/ 50' and 'Warm Bodies' both as my next films after 'The Wackness.' In my head, I was just like, 'I'll try the big, fun, adventure-weird movie, and I'll do the small, heartfelt comedy-drama, and one of them will probably work out, and I'll get to work more.'”

“Usually, the kills are almost Wile E. Coyote kind of things in horror movies.”

“I think it's cyclical. Zombies have been around for ages, and vampires have run their course; we've had so many vampire movies.”

“I really like it when movies take a song and use it to counterpoint a scene.”

“Any time I hear certain songs I put in a movie, I have to not listen to them anymore because I associate them with that movie. They take on that association rather than the association I had when I first heard them. So it's kinda bittersweet to put a song in a movie, honestly.”

“I was intimidated by Malkovich for, like, a couple of days, and then I wasn't. He's awesome. He's so cool. He was so wonderful to work with.”

“'Purple Rain' is probably the best soundtrack.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I just think a lot of movies are too long. I want to know how to make my movie as tight as possible.”

“I feel like comedy is where I'm most at ease, but I also have an allergy to silly jokes.”