Quotes from Jon Watts

You get really scrappy when you're making things for zero dollars, and you just have to keep thinking like that. It's not like, 'Oh, we now have a little bit more money, let's do things differently.' If you just keep boiling it down to the simplest possible way to make it, I think that always ends up being the best.

I think every kid is a 'Spider-Man' fan at some point.

I loved the idea of Spider-Man as a kid, and I loved the Todd MacFarlane run in the 1990s, and the first Raimi movies were released when I was in film school. Those were big.

I liked writing with my friends and making our own little stories. Making a movie like 'Spider-Man' never even crossed my mind.

By having Spider-Man exist in the same universe as the Guardians of the Galaxy... C'mon, that opens up so many possibilities!

What I love about movies is, no matter how many people are involved or how complicated the process is, at the end of the day, it's just what's inside of that frame. It's going to be people sitting in a movie theater watching one shot at a time. And that's my focus.

On an independent film where you're working with just a handful of people, you don't have to explain anything because no one cares. You can do whatever you want. There's no one there to tell you not to do it.

There's so many great coming-of-age movies to steal from, and I feel like I just tried to steal from them all equally.

My attitude is one movie at a time. I don't want to get ahead of myself.

The movie I made with my friends in my hometown based on a dream becomes a stepping stone to 'Spider-Man.' I wish I could say this was an amazing, calculated path but... It's so weird.

When you're getting to do what you want to do, you just assume you're going to hit a point where someone is like, 'No, you can't do that.' Strangely, that never happened.

'The Onion' is an amazing place to work because it's a bunch of really smart, collaborative writers who aren't afraid to try crazy things.

I was going to be a chemical engineer - I was a science nerd - that was the plan. I secretly applied to USC and NYU and got a scholarship to go to NYU based on a dumb animated short I made. It was a huge shock to me and my family.

I had a recurring stress dream since I was a kid 10 years old. My friend Travis is driving, and I'm afraid we're going to get in trouble. We keep passing people I recognize, and no one is doing anything. Travis keeps driving faster. I've had that dream a long time.

People know the broad strokes of what it's like to be Spider-Man, but I wanted to really get into the details.

If Spider-Man is your ground level superhero, I wanted to come up with a ground-level villain. I wanted to figure out if I could turn a regular guy into a super-villain.

I think it helps if you have a clear vision of what you want.