Colin Trevorrow's Five Favorite Films

You get 12 years of childhood, give or take. These days, maybe less. The movies I loved during that time have been well documented in other conversations, and they’re all the same as yours. Back To The Future remains the best movie I ever saw. Star Wars, ET, Indiana Jones, Die Hard, like everyone else. But Pete’s Dragon, though it may not

entirely hold up to scrutiny now, was the movie that taught me how to be. I saw Elliott as a model for how to treat other people. He was generous and warm, but mostly seemed driven by the needs of whoever required him most. I’ve always been someone with a small circle of friends. Each stretch of my life has been defined by one person who was just my person. We became inseparable for a certain number of years, and that time was our season, just the two of us making our way through life. This was before my wife took the mantle, never to be relinquished. I had a similar dynamic with all of them — I wanted us to have so much fun, they’d consider their lives a little better for having been friends. Like Elliott.

In high school, I worked at The Video Room in Oakland, California. It had the largest selection of laser discs in the Bay Area. One guy owned all of them. I was smugly aware that most people were watching movies entirely wrong, and would tell them so. I’d explain aspect ratios and assure my friends they’ve never even really seen Jaws until they’d seen it at my house on the Pioneer, hooked up to my dad’s concert amplifier and massive stadium speakers, my own rig. I watched more movies during that time than I did in film school. The Manchurian Candidate was one of them, and it was just [on a] different level. I went in thinking it would be a masterfully directed political conspiracy thriller, which it was, but was also completely bananas. I couldn’t believe some of the choices made. That film gave me permission to get a little bit weird in my storytelling. Once you’ve seen an old lady execute a Korean POW while Frank Sinatra looks on in complacency, you know you can go to crazytown and the audience will stay with you. It’s not easy, but it’s possible.

Woody Allen movies are like Beatles songs. I can’t name my favorite without you

immediately naming a better one. But this one tops the list for me. It invented the modern romantic comedy while simultaneously deconstructing it. It’s skeptically romantic, like most of us. Like a child’s imagining of what adult life is probably like, it’s filled with the kind of hilarious nonsense that defined Woody Allen’s standup and early writing, which I also loved. I recognize the mastery of Crimes and Misdemeanors. And Manhattan. Hannah and Her Sisters. I was floored by Blue Jasmine, which I’d put up there with his best. But this one, man it just nailed a tone I’ve never seen again. I immediately applied to NYU with every intention of meeting a woman who wears a tie.

When I was first living in Los Angeles. I was in love with a French girl, now my wife, and I became immersed in the way her culture viewed life. There was a different set of priorities at work, a value of simplicity and pure ingredients, both in the food and the filmmaking. This film blew my mind. The cast is all children. It contains one of the great suspense sequences of all time: a toddler climbing out an apartment window trying to reach a kitten while his mother talks on the phone, ignorant to the tragedy at hand. Another vignette follows an older boy teaching a younger boy how to pick up girls. Very French, but so honest and pure. I remember watching the extras on the DVD of A Man and a Woman, another great film. The crew consisted of a handheld Bolex and a sound recordist, mostly natural light. Everything was in the eyes, the body language — just two people learning each other. It informed the way I made Safety Not Guaranteed. Stripped down, but not messy or ugly. Clear and audible sound, like what your ears would capture if you were there. Intimate. Real. The best.

I’m going to be honest, since it’s just you and me here. I’d considered this my favorite film for many years. I hadn’t seen it in maybe five. When I came back to Los Angeles after our short hiatus on Jurassic World, I woke up early the first day of pre-production, still on Atlantic time. This movie was on Netflix, so I sat up in bed in a very nice hotel suite and watched it. The movie starts with a filmmaker in bed in a very nice hotel suite, who proceeds to remember his childhood and relationship with a great mentor and friend. I cried for two hours. Straight. It all unpacked right there and then. I got to our production office and my eyes were still red, my voice was gone. My producer, Pat Crowley, sat me down and asked if I’d been on a weekend bender. I hung my head and gave him the least embarrassing of the two available answers. “Yes.”