[11.29.07] On their best advice for aspiring filmmakers:
Evans says: Work at a studio. I wouldn’t be where I am today had I not had my experience at Disney. At some point in your career, you have to deal with them, and if you know how they think and operate, it allows you to have a different conversation with them.

Macy says: Funny, we often tell people who want to get into the film business, “If you can think of anything else that you’re also dying to do, go do that.” This is a brutal business. You’re only as good as your last film. It’s very high stakes, and if you can’t take the bruises, don’t play.

[11.27.07] On their favorite films of all time:
Macy says: Raiders of the Lost Ark. That film is hands down the reason I’m in the movie business

Evans says: Yes, Raiders and Star Wars. It’s funny. People always ask me, “What are your top ten?” It really depends on when you ask me. A couple of others jump to mind now: The Breakfast Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Aliens, Poltergeist. My film taste varies quite a bit. These are all movies that I came out of the theater going, “Wow.”

[11.25.07] On what they’d be doing if not making films:
Macy says: There are times when I think I would have made a good venture capitalist. There are also times when I think I’d make a really good chef because I love to cook. Or a sommelier—food and wine figure prominently in my life.

Evans says: It’s hard for me to think about doing something else that challenges the business and creative sides of my brain in a way that I want to get up every morning and do. I might consider going out on the PGA because I love playing golf, but, unfortunately, my skills are not quite as large as my desire.

[11.23.07] On balancing business and creative goals:
Macy says: The core of entrepreneurship as we see it as having one foot in the business side and one in the creative side. We find that our investors respond well to an entrepreneurial or business approach, but we take a creative approach with the great talent we work with.

[11.21.07] On navigating Hollywood politics:
Evans says: I worked in Washington, D.C. for three years after college, and when I came to Hollywood, it was barely like changing towns. In L.A., business interaction has a political bent to it, figuring out how to get what you want while also potentially getting somebody else what they want. Among certain people out here there is a sort of outright deception that you have to deal with—Hollywood certainly has a reputation for that. We've found that it’s pretty easy to see who the duplicitous and fraudulent people are and remove them from our path. We try not to play politics just for the sake of playing politics, but you have to be a political animal out here to a degree.

Macy says: We try not to operate that way if we can avoid it. Politics can be a distraction to achieving our objectives. We’re just trying to be who we are and put that out there.

[11.19.07] On being friends AND business partners:
Evans says: We trust each other to the degree that we basically share a brain. We are confident that, when one of us doing one thing and one of us is doing another, those things are in lockstep with how we both perceive the strategy for the company.

Macy says: At the risk of sounding strange, it's a bit like a marriage. You have to hash things out in a constructive way. We take the view that if we can’t convince the other one that something’s a good idea, then we probably can’t convince anyone else.

[11.17.07] On marketing challenges:
Evans says: From a marketing perspective, our core audience is harder to reach than it was ten years ago. You can’t just advertise on a few television and cable networks and get the reach that you want with a young audience. You have to be more nimble in terms of how you get the message out to them that they need to go see your movie. It’s a little tricky.

[11.15.07] On critical reviews:
Macy says: It’s really more about box office. If you look at why the 12 to 29-year-old audience goes to the movies, reviews matter to less than 5 percent of them.

Evans says: Peer review is more important. The buzz generated by teenagers walking out of a screening and texting their friends or blogging about the movie is much more critical to the success of these movies than the newspaper-based critics. And typically, ours aren’t the kind of movies that appeal to most critics anyway.

[11.13.07] On making blockbusters:
Macy says: We stick to $30 million and under budgets, and we plan to stay that way for the foreseeable future. And the reason we do that is because we like the risk-reward profile of those movies — big idea in a small package, marketed and distributed with the most avid moviegoers in mind, and kind of youth-oriented generally.

Evans says: Someday as a producer, would I like to do one of those? Of course. But under this iteration, probably not for the next several years.