I will say that I'm going to take full credit for this. I knew Josh [Hutcherson] was going to be a star. One of the things you do, as a music video director, is spot talent. Th at's one of my things. I don't just do random people.
Joseph M. KahnIf you really like a movie these days, you don't watch it once, especially if you're a kid, because you have a different relationship with media. You expect that to be on your hard drive, and it will look just as good, any time you watch it. It's not like VHS, where you watched it a certain amount of times and it started fading away.
Joseph M. KahnYou know that that thing is going to be as crisp and as clean, as many times as you want to watch it. So, I knew that the film was going to be watched multiple times, a lot like with music videos. Music videos aren't designed to be watched once. They're designed to be watched hundreds of times. On a certain level, the film was dream logic-ed, like a music video
Joseph M. KahnI don't turn Britney Spears into a star. I have to spot that these people are going to be stars, in the future, and say, "Okay, these guys have cultural validity and they're going to pop."
Joseph M. KahnI don't think the film is going to work for everybody, period. It wasn't meant to be done for everybody. I didn't four quadrant this movie, like Hollywood did. I knew it was a very specific audience that was there. We're also taking a shot in the dark.
Joseph M. KahnJohn Hughes made a certain type of high school movie, and then it stayed static for 30 years. The only thing that changed was that maybe it was found footage or maybe it's a little snarkier, but the actual language that kids live in today, like with texting, motion graphics, the internet and that whole hashtag culture doesn't exist in movies today. It's left on the floor.
Joseph M. Kahn