James Gunn
James Gunn
James Gunn is an American screenwriter, director, producer, novelist, actor, and musician. He started his career as a screenwriter in the late 1990s, writing the scripts for Tromeo and Juliet, Scooby-Dooand its sequel Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, and the 2004 version of Dawn of the Dead. He then started working also as a director, starting with Slither. He subsequently wrote and directed the web series James Gunn's PG Porn, the superhero films Superand Guardians of the Galaxyand its sequel...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth5 August 1970
CitySt. Louis, MO
CountryUnited States of America
One should be willing to throw away a dozen ideas to come up with a good one, just as one should throw away a dozen words to come up with the right one.
I think whatever is going on with my brain, I'm very, very - and I'm not saying this as a positive thing, it's just a fact - I'm very creative. I have a very strong imagination, and have since I was a little kid. That is where a lot of my world comes from. It's like I'm off somewhere else. And I can have a problem in life because of that, because I'm always off in some other world thinking about something else. It's constant.
I hope I'm still alive to see an expedition set off for Mars.
I don't really like movies that are all one or the other. It's really about the play between both of them. Now that I've said that, there's actually lots of movies that I like that are one or the other but it's just not for me as a filmmaker.
It also is true that some ideas naturally work themselves out over a longer period of time than a single human life can encompass.
In science fiction a fantastic event or development is considered rationally.
The writer's genetic inheritance and her or his experiences shape the writer into a unique individual, and it is this uniqueness that is the writer's only stuff for sale.
Most of the complexity of the stories has developed as the stories came along (and may be a product of the principle that "nothing is what it seems"). I did start with some essential ambiguousness in the aliens' motivation and the questions this raises in human minds, which I consider to have been disregarded in Contact (novel and film). That, in part, may be what has delayed the writing of the fifth and sixth novelettes in the series.
I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.
I really like people who can do both drama and comedy and not some like middle of the road do both drama and comedy. I'm not talking about some guy who does these bland dramedies all the time. I'm talking about people that have done heavy drama and who have done heavy comedy.
Цhat is my intention being a filmmaker? To make as much money as possible, or get as much attention as possible? It's not really either of those things. Now I can tell the stories that I want to tell.
When people go to the theater, people say they want something different, but what they really want is something the same with slight permutations. To really not know what is going to happen next is a hard thing.
Every movie I've ever made has just kind of come together.
We live in a world where everybody's supposed to be cool and act tough and put up fronts, and everybody is so cynical.