Jonathan Levine

I really like using genre to tell a story about characters but also use it as a Trojan horse to tell social or cultural commentary. That's where the best stuff, especially in the zombie genre, comes out of.

There are things that I can tell my friends that I just can't tell my family, just as far as how I'm feeling about things. My friends know me the best in a certain way. I just think old friends are really, really important.

I don't often watch something I've done on TV. Usually, I'll change the channel and watch something else.

I like to branch out as much as I can, but I feel like the movies that are closest to my heart are 'The Wackness' and '50/50' - the ones that are dramedies that have that human element to them.

For me, the best high school movie is, like, 'Fast Times' and what Cameron Crowe is like.

Any time I hear certain songs I put in a movie, I have to not listen to them anymore because I associate them with that movie. They take on that association rather than the association I had when I first heard them. So it's kinda bittersweet to put a song in a movie, honestly.

I've had a couple of family members deal with cancer, and I remember that moment where they're going into surgery, and you just have no idea what's going to happen, and it's really scary.

I was intimidated by Malkovich for, like, a couple of days, and then I wasn't. He's awesome. He's so cool. He was so wonderful to work with.

I was actually shooting 'Warm Bodies' on the day that '50/50' came out, which I don't recommend to other filmmakers because I was sort of a wreck. Actually, it was good for me, because I had work to do, so I couldn't obsess all day and be checking how '50/50' was doing!

I always look at myself as kind of a work in progress. I hope that's not always the case. But for me, every film is a learning experience.

As a director, there's no natural career progression. So after 'The Wackness,' which was very personal to me, I was very, very picky about what I was going to do next, to the point where I think that I was almost too picky.