JAMES GUNN

I'm a huge Howard the Duck fan. For people who don't know, I'm a huge Marvel Comics fan, but Howard the Duck was maybe my favorite character as a kid. I went back, and I collected all of those comics. I had every comic he was ever in.

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.

When I write a screenplay - and I think it's one of the reasons why it was frustrating for me just to be a screenwriter - I'm not thinking of it in terms of words on a page; I'm thinking in terms of visual images - basically, a comic book. I'm thinking of it in a series of shots.

My girlfriend says I have frontal-lobe epilepsy. I have visions. They have slowed down as I've gotten older, but I still have them.

I've come to trust that what I like is what works.

I am not into this old-school way of doing things, where you kill characters, and you bring them back, and then you kill them again, and then you bring them back, and their deaths mean nothing.

Scooby's the greatest cartoon character ever. He isn't cute like Mickey or smart like Bugs or fearless like Woody and Buzz - he's a talking dog who's more human than I am. It's his humanity and imperfections that make him special.

I think that one of the things that drives me in telling stories, and art in general, is finding the beautiful in a big mass of ugly.

Getting so much attention all at once, with so many people who want something from you or want to talk to you... for someone who is overly sensitive to other people's needs, that can be difficult.

I feel like I've kinda danced around telling the truest story I can for many years of my life. I've been a little distracted by trying to be shocking or edgy or cool or whatever, and by letting go of that and telling the truest story I can - even if it's about aliens and talking raccoons - it works.

Let me tell you one thing: there is no more cutthroat place to be than an independent film. Disney is a cakewalk after that - that is no lie.

The movies I like watching the most are these sort of cinema verite, handheld films where you really get gritty with people. But I also have this strange affinity for old Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies and things that sort of pop out where you see the frames, where you have these 2D animation moments and split-screens and things like that.

'Belko Experiment' was the harshest, most extreme movie I ever made. But I still think there's a very cohesive center to it that wasn't always in my early films. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I think it's a commercial thing.

When I was a small child, I partially learned to read with comics, in particular with 'Scamp,' about the Lady and the Tramp's male child. That was the prime comic that made me fall in love with comics as a kid.

If I get a gig or I don't get a gig, I really have never, ever, ever cared.

I don't see a big difference between the job of directing a low-budget movie and the job of directing a big-budget movie.

I always felt restrained by lower-budget films. I enjoyed making them, and I felt fulfilled, but I really did always want to make bigger movies.

Comics were not something that as a young kid you could say you were into in Manchester, Missouri. Kids did not read comic books back then.

That is who my people are - the oddballs, the rebels, and the geeks. That's what I am, so it's what I naturally feel connected to.

I'm a little bit twisted, so what makes me laugh the hardest doesn't necessarily make other people laugh.

I don't think through anything I do. I just do it, and it's oftentimes landed me in huge amounts of trouble.

I love shooting movies. I love the shots. That's the thing that I love doing, and I've just never been able to do it.

It's great being a producer! Why am I wasting my career writing and directing? Those are actual jobs in which you work. Being a producer, it's kind of like you just go to the set, yell at a couple of people, and then stay up all night dancing in nightclubs.

I know, people have had different things to say about Marvel, about how creatively free they are or not free they are, but for me, the rule has always just been stay as good as I can possibly be, and stay one step ahead of the curve, and stay unique, and stay myself. And they seem to like that.

I have to say, I feel a weird sort of calling in filmmaking that I didn't feel with other things. I feel like there are things in life you want to do, and then things you are called to do, and hopefully you can allow yourself to want to do whatever you're called to do.