Joe Dante

When I was growing up in the '60s I would have thought that westerns would last forever.

Editing is kind of a solitary job.

What's the shelf life of a 1931 movie? If it still exists, there will always be film buffs and a niche audience who will want to see it. But in terms of people even understanding in common usage, some of the words we use to describe these movies, I don't know how long that's going to last.

Daffy, of course, wants to go on the journey with him but the studio decides they want Daffy back, so Bugs and a young studio executive heroine have to go out and try to bring him back.

Repetitiveness is one of the things that's most difficult to get away from in genre pictures, because people come specifically to see certain kinds of things but get disappointed if they're presented in the same way. So to try to find a new way to show old stuff is always the challenge.

So I've always been kind of an apocalyptic kind of kid, and looking back at the movies I've done, there's some kind of apocalypse in them. So that must be what scares me... besides Republicans.

It's very hard to have lived through the Sixties and not be political.

I grew up in New Jersey and my father was a golf pro, so I was groomed for sports, but I wasn't very good, so my interests lay elsewhere.

If you're doing a family movie, you don't want it to be stupid. Farting chihuahuas is not my idea of entertainment for kids or adults. So you try to make a movie that adults can see on one level, and kids can see on another.

I like working with kid actors because they surprise you constantly. I mean, all actors do - but kids particularly.

I've made a lot of movies with kids in them. I don't know why that is, but it's something I've noticed.

There's so little difference between television and features as far as you make the film. I mean, you have less money and it's a little quicker, but the concept is all on television.