I like to work around identification for the audience, and when there's a grown-up or a moral figure or something like that, people tend to go there.

I think I like about coming-of-age stories is that there's everything in them. It's a genre that kind of contains everything: you have the chronicle, you can go into naturalism, but it's also about transforming physically, so it's kind of a fantastical genre.

I like to work around identification for the audience, and when there's a grown-up or a moral figure or something like that, people tend to go there.

The movie not only about what story you're telling and who you're looking at. It's mostly about how you're telling it and how you're looking at it. And people who don't like it, who say, "Oh, it's not 'true' because you're looking at it in a stylized way" - it's a movie and it's fiction, so it's also a lot in the artistic direction that it is political.

I like the idea of a trilogy. It's cool. I like the word. When you do four, the word isn't cool - not as cool.

I think all movies are political. The ones that are not political intentionally are the worst, and have the worst politics, I think.

I intentionally leave adults out in my stories, not to say that they're not in charge or that they don't care, or that they're failing at what they do. Not at all. It's two things: It's a way to be true to what adolescence feels like, because, okay, your parents may be around, but you still don't want them to be around. What you go through, you go through alone, I think.