Jonathan Levine Quotes

I don't like the idea the viewer can kind of sit there and go, 'Make me like this person.' People aren't inherently sympathetic.

I think, ultimately, if you create characters that people like and can relate to, your characters are grounded on a human level even if your cars are not.

If someone asked, 'What are your films like?,' the best I can come up with is that they're, like, a fine balance between comedy and drama. And they deal mainly with the clumsiness of humanity.

Every great movie is about the people, even if it's a great popular success like 'Gone With the Wind.' It's really not about the Civil War. It's about Scarlett and Rhett. That's who you go to see. You're not going to root for the North or pull for the South, or, you know, it's the people you remember.

If the human story in 'STM' is relatable, it will work.

Even if the character is something that seems ridiculous on paper, there's a human element to everything. Otherwise, we don't connect with it.

A good movie humanizes people.

My favorite stories are human, so I'm always looking for...

I can't speak for readers in general, but personally I like to read stories behind which there is some truth, something real and above all, something emotional. I don't like to read essays on literature; I don't like to read critical or rational or impersonal or cold disquisitions on subjects.

That's the rub about 'Community' - for all the high-concept cleverness, it really comes down to vulgar humanism, the dumbest kind of sentimental identification. We watch it because we like these people and we miss them when they don't show up. They become part of the stories we tell ourselves.

Marvel does a fantastic job about bringing human stories - because you're telling big stories with a heart at the centre of it - and that's what connects all of the characters to our audience members.

You need the audience to become invested in the characters and in order to become invested, they need to identify with the characters... and that's why the characters need to be real.

I think anybody would be hard pressed not to relate to at least one of the characters, because there's so many different multifaceted people populating this crazy world.

I think that's what distinguishes Schmidt, really. In the movies now, so much of what is appealing to an audience is the dramatic or has to do with science fiction, and Schmidt is simply human. There's no melodrama; there's no device, It's just about a human being.

I love comedy, but it's dramas that stick with me.

I try to play real people who inspire me through something in their journey.

You like the style of the people you like because it reflects something inside them.

I love high concept movies, but they can only work if the source of inspiration is really human - if they're driven by pain and strong emotions. Once you connect the audience with that, then I swear you can take them on the craziest journey, and they'll come along.

The real trick to these movies and making the big action sequences work - and I've forgotten this sometimes and screwed it up - the characters really have to be humanized. Because you can have the greatest special effects in the world, but if you don't care about the people in those effects, there's no impact.

I would like my novels to be read the way I read the novels I love.

I just think that good stories are stories that reflect ourselves back at us and each other.

I was a kid when I read Jane Eyre and fell in love with that universe. I didn't have the acumen to say the prose is old or the prose is too complex. I just fell in love with Jane's very lonely soul, much the same way I fell in love with Frankenstein's creature for the same reason. Those old souls exist in every decade in every century.

I think sometimes people can get lost in the bigger special effects, science fiction, robot stuff, and those are cool and fun to watch, too, but I think it's so important to sometimes step back and watch something that's about life and human interaction.

I had a strong visceral reaction to the 'Moonlight' script, partly because I felt I knew all of these characters.

A lot of electronic music out there feels cold. I want to incorporate a human element.