Rian Johnson

With 'Brick' there was the Dashiell Hammett influence, and with 'Brothers Bloom' there was a really strong Fellini influence - both those movies wore that on their sleeve.

In almost the same way you know what your grandmother looks and sounds like, you know what Bruce Willis looks and sounds like.

Well, you know, we all grew up as 'Star Wars' fans.

I do think that I'm a big believer in having an idea or having ideas and just tucking them away in the back of your brain. Even if you aren't consciously thinking of them, I think they simmer. You're working on them, even if you don't know you're working on them, and I think having something in your head for a while is a valuable thing.

For me, I was entirely focused on 'Episode VIII' and having this experience, and now I'm just thinking of putting the movie out there and seeing how audiences respond to it.

It was so emotional to step onto the Millennium Falcon set because that was the play set we all had when we were kids. Suddenly, you were standing in the real thing. There's this rush of unreality about it.

My favorite sci-fi always uses its hook to amplify some bigger theme or idea - some emotional thrust.

Ray Bradbury was the first author that I was really exposed to back in grade school. I'm a big Philip K. Dick fan, but the emotion and humanity that Bradbury brings to his stories and the way he uses sci-fi to get at the human heart is something that's unique and for me incredibly influential.

I just don't think CGI is up to manipulating the human face yet. I feel like you can get away with it with aliens or monsters or something that's intentionally foreign, but I have yet to see anything digital to do with the human face that doesn't just look ridiculous.

Unlike some of the time-travel movies I love, like 'Primer' or '12 Monkeys,' 'Looper' is not about time travel. It's about this situation that time travel creates and the people dealing with that situation. So narratively, the big challenge was to have time travel get out of the way.

I bristle a little when the argument for film gets put into the nostalgia ghetto. Film is still the highest quality and best-looking image capture medium available. I don't think it always will be. The digital image will get better, and it will eventually surpass the quality of the film image, but it isn't there yet.

It's so much work to make a movie, and for me it has to get me off my butt. To get me actually writing you have to strike something inside, you have to hit a power main to get the energy. You have to strike something you care about.