John Krasinski Quotes

From beginning to end it's about keeping the energy and the intensity of the story and not doing too much and not doing too little, but just enough so people stay interested and stay involved in the characters.

In the case of 'Jack Ryan,' it was a huge collaboration, and I enjoyed it very much, and most of all, I want the audience to enjoy it, too. I want them to feel immersed in this world.

If I watch something, I want to be wondering what is going to happen next; I want to be engaged in a way that makes me ask questions and think about how I can relate myself to the characters and the issues that are there. But if it's just fluff, and everything is spelt out, I find it difficult to concentrate.

If a movie has more characters than an audience can keep track of, the audience will get confused and lose interest in the story.

To be completely honest, I just like whatever tells a good story. Put me in whatever setting, scenario, genre. If you're telling a good story, it's great and it's fun to get caught up in.

So the characters that I choose, I like to make sure that they have depth and that they have some sort of bite. It's more fun.

We don't want to watch boring characters.

You want to be challenged, so you feel like you want to get up and wrestle with the character or enjoy the character - especially with a TV show, because you know you could be doing it for a long time, so you want to make sure it's something you really enjoy.

I've never been interested in watching or reading anything because it's the hero's story. I don't feel the need to be inspired by the character or learn a lesson. I feel the need to be engaged by them.

There are all these great TV series; you can watch all these hours and hours of shows and ideas, but there's still something great about a movie that unfolds in a couple of hours, and you have the complete experience.

I'm writing for entertainment. I like people to reach the end and feel they got their money's worth.

I always tell people this - when you start wrestling, don't forget that part you liked as a child. If you can keep a bit of that in your act, you can keep a bigger audience.

When people are telling stories on screen, you can show the reactions of people, play it off those reactions, and it can be fun. But when it's someone just giving an opinion on things, even if the opinion is kind of interesting, that is potentially deadly. It has to be really quick.

I look for good scripts, not anything. It should inspire me, and the audience should like it.

There's nothing interesting about seeing our characters for an hour and a half do some flashy flying in the sky and beating up on some buildings. It's boring, and people don't want that anymore. They want character, and they want story.

Audiences are always open to an interesting story.

The more films and TV shows I spoil for myself, the more I am convinced that truly interesting stories can't be ruined - the plot thickens with the viewing like a rich sauce.

If the script is boring when I read it, I am sure it would be boring onscreen, too.

Whatever films I make, the mandate is that it should touch the audiences and engage them from the first scene.

Forget narrative, backstory, characterisation, exposition, all of that. Just make the audience want to know what happens next.

An idea has no worth at all without believable characters to implement it; a plot without characters is like a tennis court without players. Daffy Duck is to a Buck Rogers story what John McEnroe was to tennis. Personality. That is the key, the drum, the fife. Forget the plot.

In my opinion, visual effects are great when it compliments a good story, and action is great when it compliments a good story, but just to have them for the sake of having them, it gets a little boring, especially if you're talking a TV series. At least with a movie that's an hour and a half to two hours, you see it and you're impressed, and then you're out. With a series, if it's only that, week after week after week, there's nothing there to bring you back. You have to get invested in the characters and care about them and want to follow them.

Action movies live and die by the story that you're trying to tell. It's hard. It's very difficult to do an action movie that stays engaging.

A performance can have amazing visuals and special effects, but it has to tell a good story, even if that story isn't original.

You can watch an episode of Friends or an episode of Law & Order and just drop in, but you're not going to in the middle of Season 4, Episode 5 of Lost. It's like picking up a Harry Potter book and flipping to a chapter. You have to read it from beginning to end.