I think what I love about science fiction and what sci-fi can be really good at is obviously you're working with outlandish concepts that have very little to do with the real world, like time travel for instance.

Unlike some of the time-travel movies I love, like 'Primer' or '12 Monkeys,' 'Looper' is not about time travel. It's about this situation that time travel creates and the people dealing with that situation. So narratively, the big challenge was to have time travel get out of the way.

You go from these high hopes when you're writing to just a desperate want of not making a complete fool of yourself by the end of it.

I really spend as long as I can sketching everything out and working on the structure before I sit down to type out scenes.

When you're writing is when the "god should I just drop this" feeling can hit. When you're editing is when the "god this is awful and I've wasted everyone's time and money and will be revealed as a fraud" feeling can hit.

Teen movies often have an unspoken underlying premise in which high school is seen as less serious than the adult world. But when your head is encased in that microcosm it's the most serious time of your life.

Well, you know, we all grew up as 'Star Wars' fans.