I mean, the first “Back to the Future” is kind of a perfect script, I think. In terms of handling time travel the best, it depends on your definition. To me, that means it effectively uses it in the story.

Much of directing [a movie] is not directing but just listening and being present in the moment and just keeping your eyes open.

The fanboy community can smell in an instant, like smelling fear, when something was tailor-made in order to reach them as a demographic.

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

Writing in a lot of ways feels more like excavation than construction. It feels like you're uncovering this thing bit by bit, discovering what it is, instead of constructing it upwards.

I mean, the first “Back to the Future” is kind of a perfect script, I think. In terms of handling time travel the best, it depends on your definition. To me, that means it effectively uses it in the story.

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.