The movies that made me want to make movies were action movies, and thrillers, and Kurosawa films, you know, where you have an opportunity every day to shoot it in an unusual way. I was looking for something like that.
Lawrence KasdanThat was certainly true the first time, when I did Body Heat, the first movie that I directed. I was looking for a vessel to tell a certain kind of story, and I was a huge fan of Film Noir, and what I liked about it was that it was so extreme in style.
Lawrence KasdanWith Westerns you have the landscape is important, and it's empty, and only you populate it. When you populate it, you can tell any kind story that Shakespeare told, you can tell in a Western.
Lawrence KasdanThe kind of pace that you want to use in a Western - just to acknowledge the land in the distance that everyone has to travel, and the way things develop sort of slowly - it's almost the antithetical of what's currently going on in the movies, you know.
Lawrence KasdanI loved Alien, and I loved Carrie, and I loved The Exorcist - those were big movies for me. They were just brilliantly done, and unusual, and they all took horror to some new place.
Lawrence KasdanI haven't seen Clones, which has been during this period when I haven't seen much of anything, but I did see Phantom Menace, and see my feelings about it - see, first of all, I think that when you make a lot of movies, your attitude about the movies changes.
Lawrence KasdanI mean, the trouble with some of the kind of relationship movies I've done, is there's only so many ways you can shoot a conversation. I was really tired of talking heads.
Lawrence KasdanI didn't really want to do another sequel. I go to those movies, and I just sort of enjoy them like a viewer.
Lawrence KasdanIt's hard enough to get any movie made, and when you take on these tough genres - and I've done it a couple times - it just makes the whole struggle more.
Lawrence KasdanAnd you know, when you take on something like this, you read a book like this, you know that it's going to be an adventure. That's part of what draws you to it.
Lawrence KasdanI want everything I do to have humor in it, because it seems to me that all of life has that.
Lawrence KasdanBut, George and Steven asked me to write the Indiana Jones sequels, and I didn't want to.
Lawrence Kasdan