Jon Favreau
Jon Favreau
Jonathan Kolia "Jon" Favreauis an American actor, filmmaker and comedian. As an actor, he is known for roles in films such as Rudy, Swingers, Very Bad Things, The Break-Up, and Chef. He has also directed the films Elf, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Cowboys & Aliens, and The Jungle Book, and served as an executive producer on The Avengers, Iron Man 3, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. Favreau appeared as Pete Becker, Monica Geller's boyfriend during season three of the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActor
Date of Birth19 October 1966
CountryUnited States of America
I remember the first script I wrote after 'Swingers' was a Western, and I just couldn't get it made.
I love 'Star Wars,' you know, and I can't remember the last story meeting I've been in where 'Star Wars' wasn't referenced. It's so perfect in so many ways.
I looked at the top 10 films every year, and half of them were made for families. That's a safety zone. There is more opportunity for pure storytelling when you're dealing with the family audience and more creative freedom to explore different genres without being held to the same standard as movies geared toward an adult audience.
Christopher Nolan's 'Batman Begins' set the bar very high for the superhero movie, as it showed that you could get a great cast for these movies and take a real filmmaker's perspective.
I'm a very lazy person by nature. I have to be really engaged, and then I go straight from lazy to obsessive. I couldn't study chemistry, but I could memorize all the books for Dungeons and Dragons. It was ridiculous. The trick is to find what I like to do.
If you're going to be an R already, you may as well be 'The Hangover,' and you may as well be as shocking as possible, because that's what delivers the most return.
If you look at the mythology of aliens, there's a lot about gold. It's about them coming for gold; whether that's a simplification or not. If you think of 'Chariot of the Gods,' there's this reoccurring theme of gold.
Hopefully we'll figure out how to get 'Iron Man 2' going, and I'll be involved with that. You have got to outdo what you did before. So, if the last one took two years, we would need at least that to do what we are talking about or, at least, thinking about.
I don't think I'm egotistical as much as I'm taking responsibility for what I'm putting out there.
We're trying to find a seat on the bus.
When Ron Howard does 'Rush,' he has to learn and steep himself in F1 culture and European racing culture, and that's part of the fun of the gig. You learn to learn. Your real skill as a director is being a learner and an observer. You're constantly learning another thing in context.
Unfortunately, we are not painters and authors, where we can do something in isolation. We require a lot of money to create what we create. It's almost like being an architect: You can't be an architect and build whatever buildings you want to.
Movies like 'Chef' are not really box-office monsters in the summertime and don't really fit into Hollywood's business model any longer. Even if 'Chef' is successful, it will be successful in the context of what it is. There's a limited upside to a film that's so small, but there's also limited exposure for the people who backed me.
When I'm working with improv people, I give them the green light to just bring it and try things.