I was way into 'Voltron,' Ray Harryhausen: anything with giant monsters, I was really into. Even dinosaurs - for a while, I wanted to be a paleontologist. So it's almost like primal, ancestral mythology to me, this fascination with monsters.
I really fixated on any time there was any kind of monster in 'Star Wars,' even to the briefest second. As a kid, it really captivated my imagination.
If you squint at 'Deadwood,' you can see 'Game of Thrones' coming. That's the show that first got me thinking 'Carnival Row' could be a series.
I think, television and comics, what's appealing to me as a writer about both of those mediums is that they allow you to sort of let the story unfold in its own time as opposed to trying to compress it into a two-hour discreet unit of narrative.
If you look, like, in 1960, there was no such thing as an astronaut. It was a totally fanciful concept, but nine years later or whatever, we were landing on the moon, which is just astonishing.
One of my earliest memories is seeing a 'Godzilla' movie - not just my earliest movie memory, but any kind of memory.
I love movies, but I would love to write as many graphic novels as people would read from me.
There's a lot of possibility in the 'Pacific Rim' universe for additional stories to be told, whether that's additional graphic novels or animated series or video games or movie sequels.
I grew up in the '80s, and you had these original, big-budget sci-fi adventure things all the time, not based on any source material - you'd have 'Gremlins,' 'Back to the Future,' 'E.T.' 'Ghostbusters,' the list goes on and on. I would love it so much if 'Pacific Rim' was but the first in a new wave of that sort of thing.
For screenwriting, when you're writing, you're talking to hundreds - hundreds of people who might be interpreting what you're saying. When you're writing a comic book, you're really only talking to the artist.
I think my earliest 'Star Wars' memory that I have was from 'Return of the Jedi.' I distinctly remember the scene with the rancor under Jabba's Palace.
When I saw 'Jurassic Park' as a kid, that was the first time I thought about making movies for a living.
When you have a movie that has big stars in it... like, Will Smith does a great job in 'I Am Legend,' and it's a magnetic performance, but he's always Will Smith. That's not his fault. That's not anyone's fault. He's the center of it, and he's a movie star. But when you see something like 'Jurassic Park,' Sam Neill is Alan Grant.
I feel like, as an industry, we've gotten too dependent on source material originated in other mediums.
