It's really cool to do, like, a 'Harry Potter' evolution because you can really take your time with the character development: really, like, don't rush past the implications of great power and great responsibility.
I think it helps if you have a clear vision of what you want.
For me, there's a deeper genre appreciation for what a coming of age story can be about. To apply that to a superhero world, for me, that was very exciting.
When we were kids, we would just go walking: just walk in a direction and hope that you were gonna find a crashed alien spaceship or buried pirate's treasure or something like that. You never did. You'd find, like, a coyote skeleton, something like that. That was the most exciting thing you'd ever find.
I was definitely the kid who was the chicken, who didn't want to say the cuss words.
My friends and I have always been trying to make movies, at every moment. We've tried so many different angles and approaches. But when it happens, it happens, and you just run with it.
Peter Parker is sort of our ground-level view of this Marvel universe. You know what it's like to be in the penthouse with Tony Stark or have this god-like view like Thor, and I want to show what it's like for regular people in this world.
On an independent film where you're working with just a handful of people, you don't have to explain anything because no one cares. You can do whatever you want. There's no one there to tell you not to do it.
'Clown' started as a fake trailer for a nonexistent movie.
You get really scrappy when you're making things for zero dollars, and you just have to keep thinking like that. It's not like, 'Oh, we now have a little bit more money, let's do things differently.' If you just keep boiling it down to the simplest possible way to make it, I think that always ends up being the best.
When you make a movie for a really low budget, it makes you really strict. You have to plan things down to the tiniest detail.
