Jon Favreau
Jon Favreau
Jonathan Kolia "Jon" Favreauis an American actor, filmmaker and comedian. As an actor, he is known for roles in films such as Rudy, Swingers, Very Bad Things, The Break-Up, and Chef. He has also directed the films Elf, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Cowboys & Aliens, and The Jungle Book, and served as an executive producer on The Avengers, Iron Man 3, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. Favreau appeared as Pete Becker, Monica Geller's boyfriend during season three of the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActor
Date of Birth19 October 1966
CountryUnited States of America
Now it seems all so familiar, but at the time it was cutting edge and we were grouped with all that independent film stuff, Vince and I and (director) Doug Liman too, and Ron, we've hit the mainstream as we're closing in on 40 years old and now we're the system.
Acting is the most fun. I like to do it and it's great that I can still do that, but you know, you don't really have a lot of control over things, so it's real hit or miss.
I've hit a point where my big luxury is getting to work on the things I want to work on. That's my hobby. It's being able to do a movie like 'Chef,' where you don't get paid, where you get paid scale, but you get to do exactly the movie you want to do. To me, that's worth more to me than whatever money I would have gotten paid.
I like a naturalism to my dialogue and my comedy. I would rather have a few jokes sail by that might be more subtle than have every single joke hit hard. I would rather the comedy come out of character as opposed to feeling forced. Even if you're giving some laughs up for it.
For a movie - any movie - to work, all the bread has to fall jelly side up; everything has to go right. You have to hit the zeitgeist.
Get the shading right, the lighting right, and there are things you can do to make the CGI look more real. People end up going crazy and give themselves a little too much freedom in how they use CGI, and if you overuse it, it draws attention to itself.
You can't make a movie about making movies - it's boring.
I just adored 'Shaun Of The Dead.' That's a true mashup. That's a real Romero-era zombie movie and a real Gen X indie comedy. That was before zombie movies were cool, before 'Zombieland' and 'I Am Legend,' and now it has become a whole sub-genre.
I don't have a lot of patience for movies that aren't cleanly told.
I remember the first script I wrote after 'Swingers' was a Western, and I just couldn't get it made.
There's a lot of real estate in our brain dedicated to facial recognition and to physics. That takes a lot of processing power out of our brain.
I'm a very lazy person by nature. I have to be really engaged, and then I go straight from lazy to obsessive. I couldn't study chemistry, but I could memorize all the books for Dungeons and Dragons. It was ridiculous. The trick is to find what I like to do.
The irony is that the more unapologetically sexist men are in movies, the more women tend to be attracted to them in person.
Thankfully, I have a background as an actor, and you learn how to live in that world of not knowing what's going to happen next.