It’s not hard to find James Gunn’s office on the Warner Bros. lot. A huge, glowing Superman “S” symbol beckons from an entrance wall, visible through a glass door from yards away. Gunn, 58, is in his third year as co-CEO of the company’s newly created DC Studios, sharing the title and office with Peter Safran, who handles the business side of the operation. Together, they’re creating a new superhero universe around some very old characters, aiming to finally make Superman and friends (and family, and flying pet) truly competitive with the currently shaky Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Gunn is a refugee from that universe, after writing and directing his final MCU movie, 2023’s Guardians of the Galaxy 3. Superman, due July 11, is the first feature film set in the new DCU, and arguably one of the highest-stakes movies ever made, though Gunn despises that framing. He’s an unlikely studio exec, to say the least. He spent his early years trying every conceivable creative outlet: fronting bands, drawing alt-weekly comic strips, acting, performing monologues in dive bars. He also got a Columbia MFA and published a raw, early-aughts debut novel, The Toy Collector, finding a path to his true calling when Lloyd Kaufman, co-founder of famed B-movie purveyor Troma Entertainment, paid him $150 to write a screenplay for something called Tromeo and Juliet.
He was soon writing big-budget movies, from Scooby-Doo to Dawn of the Dead, and directing quirky films of his own, one of which caught Marvel’s attention, landing him the first Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014. With that film, he made himself an instant A-plus-list director, forging a blockbuster from a deeply personal blend of left-field humor, visual dexterity, and aching empathy for the oddest of characters, all scored with the cosmos’ greatest mixtape. After the second movie in 2017, right-wing trolls unearthed some of his edgy early tweets, and Marvel fired him. They soon changed their minds, but the temporary separation opened the door to his first DC film, Suicide Squad, and his current gig.
In a glass case in the hallway of his shared office, which once belonged to Frank Sinatra, is a full Superman costume, worn by the late Christopher Reeve; a Gene Hackman-worn Lex Luthor bathrobe is in its own case in the spa-size bathroom. Gunn sits on a couch with Superman and Aquaman action figures looming above him on a mantel. On the coffee table are various DC comics, among them one eyebrow-raising anomaly: a copy of the first Marvel-DC crossover project, 1976’s Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man: The Battle of the Century.
Supergirl, which is out next year, is wrapping principal photography. How much were you on the set?
Zero. Very little. I mean at the very beginning, but I’ve been pretty busy, as you might imagine. I was really involved at the script stage, but then [director] Craig [Gillespie] has just been such a great partner. He’s just been doing his thing. You never know how something cuts together, but right now it looks amazing. It’s really cool stuff.
That’s no longer called Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, correct?
[Pauses.] I think it’s just called Supergirl.
Your Superman movie was first called Superman: Legacy, and now it’s just Superman.
Yeah. I’m always cutting. “Legacy” was really — we do something called a premortem. A premortem is you get together with your group that’s doing the project. It’s usually about a couple months before shooting, and you go, hypothetically, “If it’s an epic disaster, what are the things that we’re doing today that are going to cause it to be an epic disaster? Everyone here can speak freely.” The things you find on other productions are the things that people are whispering. “Oh, God, I don’t know why they cast that actor — he doesn’t fit the role.” Or, “The production designer’s never on time.” One of the things I brought up was, it was called Superman: Legacy. Even though I was the one that gave it that title, I just wasn’t sure. First of all, I’m sick of the superhero title, colon, other-name thing. And then also it seemed to be looking back when we’re looking forward, even though it does have to do with legacy in the movie itself. And everybody was like, “Oh, yeah, no, change it.”
It occurred to me that this particular version of Superman needed a certain version of you and a certain version of the audience. Could 2010 James Gunn have made this film?
I don’t think the 2020 James could. Everybody knows I was offered Superman in 2018. They also talked to me about Batman earlier than that, but I was in the middle of Guardians 3. If they had come to me in 2018 with Batman, I would’ve said yes. But, yeah, I just couldn’t quite wrap my head around it.
What had to change?
I needed the right way in. And that required time to think through a few thousand options before I got to the way that I thought worked. But I do also think that my life, and career, has been a gradual softening of the edges. I still like black comedy. I still have edges. But I used to like provoking a lot. And today, although I still seem to do it, I don’t really like doing that. In my heart, I’m pretty sentimental. I just believe in basic human values. I think Guardians of the Galaxy was a good starter kit for that.
They all had a lot of heart.
They have a lot of heart, but they do have their own weirdness and oddities and edginess, and Superman isn’t that, even though he does from the outside have a lot of oddness. A flying dog in a cape is odd. Giant walking robots, and kaijus — that’s all odd.
But the very-good nature of him, this really strong belief in what’s right, sometimes perhaps to a fault, is what makes Superman who he is. And that is not Star-Lord or Rocket. That’s not a guy who’s angry or covering up his emotions. He’s pretty pure. And so getting to the place where I could write that character was a journey. In the past I would’ve done it through making fun of the character, and I don’t think that’s what I do here. I’m less afraid now than I used to be. I allow myself to be purely creative more than I used to. And I thought I was being purely creative, but a lot of times it was just anger releasing itself in another way. I’m less afraid of being goofy or sentimental, or boring or straight.
“My life, and career, has been a gradual softening of the edges. I used to like provoking. But in my heart, I’m pretty sentimental.”
I’ve seen a bit of the movie, and there’s a very grounded interview scene between Lois and Clark that seems like new territory for you.
That’s a huge thing for me. I have long talking scenes in Guardians, but they are stuffed with jokes. And that’s not the case here. There’s funny stuff that happens in that scene, but it’s all situational. And so allowing myself to write that scene, which is truly about two characters and the different ways they see the world and morality …
So you would’ve had the impulse to make that more jokey?
Yeah. Horror movies and comedies are so comforting to a filmmaker, because if they’re working, the audience is reacting constantly. Even, like, people crying at the end of Guardians 3. But it’s also a rather selfish thing as a filmmaker. Because I’m not making something so that I can sit in an audience and be happy; I’m making something that really works on a fundamental level. So I have to be willing to sit there with an audience and not know if they’re liking it or not.
After you temporarily got fired from Marvel for some old tweets, you’ve said a ton of friends reached out to you — and that for the first time in your life, you had a transformative experience of feeling truly loved.
There’s no doubt that without that experience, I don’t think that I would’ve written the Superman that I wrote. I definitely wouldn’t be doing this job if I didn’t get fired, but I don’t know if I’d be doing this job even if it wasn’t for that. I just don’t think that a character that pure would’ve quite appealed to me.
How did that open the door?
I don’t think that opened the door to me writing the pure Superman. That opened the door for me to stop creating so that people would like me. That’s downplaying it — so people would love me. I think on some level, everything I had done came from a pleasing place.
A tap-dancing for the audience kind of thing?
That’s exactly right. Which came from that kid in a dysfunctional family trying to make everybody happy by dancing around. Literally that’s what my fucking career was; not in total, but it was a neediness on my part. A need to be loved.
And one of the most interesting things for me is my relationship with actors. How I got good at working with people like Chris Pratt is because he came in and I’m like, “Stop. You don’t need to juggle.” Same thing with John Cena. “You don’t need to juggle for the audience to like you. You’re a fucking movie star. You just be present and be yourself and show that natural vulnerability that’s a part of who you are as a human being.” And that speaks to people.
So you were giving that advice, but not to yourself at that point.
Really good at giving that advice. But not taking it to heart in a way that was transformative, which is what that moment gave to me. But again, I’m not perfect on the other side of it. It’s not like I’m not still doing things to validate myself in some way. That’s still a part of me being a fucking imperfect human being, but my basic life choices are not made according to that.
Even you were initially worried about the idea of Rocket in Guardians. You said it would be like having Bugs Bunny with the Avengers. So clearly audiences needed to evolve to accept a flying dog in a movie. You paved the way.
That’s right. Rocket made the world ready for Krypto. Although, in a way, Krypto is way more grounded than Rocket, because Krypto is simply a superpowered dog. He’s just a poorly behaved dog, which is what my dog is. So he’s really easy and fun to write.
One of your big innovations here is the sci-fi Silver Age Superman stuff — robots, etc. — that has never been in a live-action film.
Yeah, I think that’s the biggest tonally novel thing about this film. And it really is based on the tone of [2000s comic book series] All-Star Superman in a lot of ways. And taking that tone into a cinematic realm is not the usual thing for a superhero movie, or for any movie. So I really was thinking a lot when making the film about graphic novels more than movies.
Fantastic Four is coming around the same time as Superman and seems to share that Silver Age, optimistic feel. It’s interesting given weird times in the world right now that seems to be the right vibe.
Maybe. But do you really think they’re alike? I’m really embracing the Silver Age of it all, but I don’t think that it’s as stylized, or at least not stylized in the same way. And it’s not as retro. There are retro-futuristic aspects, because we’ve got Daily Planet with a big fucking [globe]. And the robots, the machinery. So I can see where there’s certain similarities.
On a story level, what cracked Superman for you?
It was Krypto. The beginning of the movie is the first thing I wrote, with Krypto coming to Superman in the snow and Krypto taking him home. That really was about the tone of the whole movie. It’s a flying dog who wears a cape, but that led immediately to the robots, to the fortress rising from the ground, to the device that isn’t in the comics — the giant magnifying glass, which powers him up more quickly than just the regular sun would. Bringing all those elements into a Superman movie in a way that hasn’t happened — not to mention that he exists in a world where superheroes, or some form of metahumans, have existed for 300 years. It’s just a different thing.
“I’m less afraid now than I used to be. I thought I was being creative, but often it was just anger releasing itself another way.”
Eddie Murphy once told me that nearly every bad movie happens because of Hollywood’s habit of setting a production date before they have a finished screenplay.
Yeah, totally. Listen, you can do everything right and make a bad movie. I’m really compassionate towards people that put their all into a movie. I know some people that were my former workers at Marvel — people who made some of the worst movies. There were people that were lazy and didn’t put their time in. And then there were other directors that worked really hard and maybe didn’t have the best movie come out, but they did everything they could. But I do believe that the reason why the movie industry is dying is not because of people not wanting to see movies. It’s not because of home screens getting so good. The number-one reason is because people are making movies without a finished screenplay.
And that’s one of the biggest rules you’ve made for DC — that they have to have finished scripts.
Yeah. We just killed a project. Everybody wanted to make the movie. It was greenlit, ready to go. The screenplay wasn’t ready. And I couldn’t do a movie where the screenplay’s not good. And we’ve been really lucky so far, because Supergirl’s script was so fucking good off the bat. And then Lanterns came in, and the script was so fucking good. Clayface, same thing. So fucking good. So we have these scripts that we’ve been really lucky with or wise in our choices or whatever the combination is.
You’ve written hundreds of pages of material recently between the Creature Commandos animated show, Peacemaker Season Two, and Superman. Do you ever worry about exhausting the well?
If I do, then I’ll go raise goats. I really am fine. There’s a lot of directors who get worse as they get older, and I don’t wanna do that. Or maybe I do — I don’t know. It’s like, if it runs out — it hasn’t so far. But who knows?
You said you feel like you were able to be creative without fear now, but at the same time, you gave yourself permission to be pretty creative from early on. You were working in all of these different mediums.
I had comic strips published everywhere. That was really what I thought I was gonna do when I was younger. I wanted to be like Berkeley Breathed from Bloom County. Although I was also really playing music at the same time, so who knows? I wanted to be a rock star, but at the same time I liked the idea of having my characters on bedsheets and stuff. I just was searching for a way to be noticed and make money. I really wanted to make a living as an artist, and then of course I wanted to be famous and all of those things. So I really was just trying whatever. And for me the whole [secret] was finishing whatever I started. It did feel like I had a bunch of half-projects out there until I was in my mid-twenties.
Was that linked to getting sober — you finishing projects?
No, that was a sort of faith thing. When I was in school for writing, I had 51 first chapters of novels. And then at a certain point I just had the realization, which was in the form of a spiritual awakening, which was just to finish what you start.
You had that revelation while you were ghostwriting a book with Troma studios co-founder Lloyd Kaufman, right?
That’s exactly what it was. I was writing the book for Lloyd. And I wanted to quit because it was fucking killing me — I didn’t have a small ego, and I felt like I was doing a lot of things for Troma and I didn’t feel like I was getting any respect for it. And now I’m ghostwriting something that I thought was hilarious. And the more I was writing it, and the funnier I thought it was, the more resentful I was becoming.
So I talked to Lloyd about “I think I gotta stop.” Which was crazy, because I got paid money to do it. A lot of this is really ungrateful of me. I’m not saying this in any good way, but I’m fucking driven. And that’s when I had that awakening, which was to finish what you start. And so then I went back and I finished the book. I still hated doing it. But the minute that happened, my life changed within weeks, literally within weeks, because that’s when I wrote [the 2000 indie film] The Specials and finished that. And instantly everything happened.
You’ve talked about moments of almost spiritual visions — not quite like the ones in your film Super, but pretty similar.
Pretty intense. Pretty overall encompassing.
And “finish what you started” was in that category?
A thousand percent. That one was what kept me awake for — that one was long. That was the most intense ever.
What did you experience? What did you see?
I mean it’s really — it’s long, but my whole life is based on that fucking whatever that was. I have no clue how long it was. Maybe it was an hour, maybe it was seven hours. But, yeah, it was really just aligning a lot of the things I believed about myself, about finishing what you start, about it’s not my business whether people think of my shit — my business is doing what I do, and that’s it. It was my faith in God, which is a big part of who I am. And yet at the same time, I don’t think God really cares whether you believe in him or not. But I heard “Finish what you start.” That was like hearing the voice of God as if it was completely outside of me.
It’s weird that you had a lot of artistic outlets and it wasn’t clear which one was going to pop off.
That’s totally true. And at the end of the day, I think what I like the best is directing, because I like the right-brain part of it a lot. I like the puzzle part of it. I like shooting action. That’s, like, my favorite thing to do. But yes, I never really saw myself as one thing. I just saw myself as an entertainer, for sure.
When you took on Spy vs. Spy and then Scooby-Doo, was that in any way a sellout move in your mind?
No. I don’t even think like that. If I didn’t want to write those things, then yeah, it would’ve been a sellout move. But I wanted to write them. I was excited by the ideas, really excited. I loved Scooby-Doo as a little kid. I loved him. I still love Scooby, so that was exciting to me.
It’s interesting that the guy who wrote The Toy Collector, about someone’s messed up attachment to the icons of their childhood, then takes on Scooby-Doo and then eventually Superman.
Oh, yeah. I guess so. I love bringing reality to things that I loved as a kid, and saying, “OK, if this was real — if Scooby-Doo was real, if Superman was real, if Rocket Raccoon was real — how would that be? How would they be real?
“I relate to Lex more than I wish I did. He’s just meaner than me.”
In the Superman trailer we see that Lois already knows Clark is Superman. So you bypassed one of the stickiest issues — how does Lois not see past the glasses?
It comes up again later in the movie and it’s explained. She says it. We mention it. And it’s a one-off and people chuckle, but there’s stuff later in the movie about the glasses that are canon. That’s canon in the comics.
There’s a controversial Seventies issue of the comic book where it shows that Superman basically uses super-hypnotism to change people’s perception of him in the glasses — it was an idea sent in by a fan that has been mostly ignored since.
Something like that! I only know it from [DC Comics writer] Tom King. The first time we met was at Peter [Safran’s] house. We had this sort of writers group come in. One of those people was Tom King, and he was the most helpful. I’m like, “I just don’t know how to fucking deal with the glasses thing, because it bothers the fuck out of me.” All that little stuff that people are like, “It’s a fantasy, just let it go.” I’m like, “No, I have to explain everything.” Everything for me has to come from a place where I believe it, as outlandish as it is. With Rocket, I could not just make it a talking raccoon. It had to have a real foundation for where he came from and how he came to be. And I needed to believe that.
What were some of the other things you felt you needed to explain to make this Superman work?
There are things that I know I don’t explain that I don’t even want to say out loud! But I wanted Superman to be vulnerable. I see the online things “Who would beat whom?” — Homelander or Superman or fucking whatever, Adam Warlock or Brightburn, and I’m like, “This is the fucking stupidest fucking conversation.” Like, so then whoever would win this fight means that they’re the best? Because I’ll just go out and write God Man, who can destroy you with a wink. And I win. I win all the fights forever. But I didn’t want a Superman who could punch planets. And also we’re creating a whole universe now, so what’s a girl with wings gonna do in the face of that? So he’s a little less powerful. [Green Lantern] Guy Gardner’s pretty fucking powerful. They’re all pretty powerful.
Honestly, in talking to people, a lot of people are like, “I like Batman better because he can actually be beat,” and I get that. So we have a Superman that can be beat.
There are people who’ve been saying the whole future of the studio might be riding on this movie. How do you work in the face of that kind of pressure?
Really, I just go, “That’s their business.” Because that’s not the truth for me. My truth is this is the first movie out of DC Studios. Other people may say, “It’s gotta be a home run, nothing else.” I’m like, “No, I’d be very happy with a double.” Fucking Iron Man wasn’t the be-all and end-all. It wasn’t Avatar. We are doing something that’s a piece of the puzzle. It’s not the puzzle itself. We have Peacemaker, we have Supergirl, and what we want to do is make a movie that people love, they feel connected to the characters. It’s just this one movie. It’s not everything.
I hate it when there’s a fucking article and it’s going on about all the problems and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and “that means even more pressure on James Gunn and Superman.” I’m like, “Guys, I’m not responsible for all that. I’m responsible for my piece of the pie. I’ve gotta make my budget back. I’ll be very happy with that.”
You also cannot split planets, is what you’re saying.
I cannot split planets. Not that I know of.
Over at Marvel, they’ve been pretty open about the fact that they realized what’s gone wrong over the past few years. They put out too much stuff.
And [longtime Marvel executive producer] Louis [D’Esposito] said that privately to me. I don’t even know if it’s really their fault.
They were under a corporate mandate, yeah.
That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. And it killed them.
Watching that, especially after being involved, are there lessons to be taken on your end?
There’s no doubt. We have to treat every project as if we’re lucky. We don’t have the mandate to have a certain amount of movies and TV shows every year. So we’re going to put out everything that we think is of the highest quality. We’re obviously going to do some good things and some not-so-good things, but hopefully on average everything will be as high-quality as possible. Nothing goes before there’s a screenplay that I personally am happy with.
Sitting on the table here is a Superman/Spider-Man crossover comic book from the Seventies. At some point, it feels like it’s gonna happen in the movies, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s 10 years from now.
We’ve talked about it a billion times. That could easily happen, but simultaneous to that, I think it would be interesting. But I also think people are a little over it. I think people wanna see good stories with their superheroes and that’s what matters. And they wanna see different types of stories with their superheroes. And people love superheroes. That’s obvious, but they need more variety, and they need just more quality storytelling. And just having Spider-Man and Superman team up isn’t gonna do it if it’s shit. So it’s gotta come from a real place, and it’s really hard to make that work.
I did Superman because I loved the character. And I was excited about writing that movie. If I were to write a Superman-versus-Spider-Man movie, is it a concept I’m gonna be like, “Oh, yeah, this could be a great film”? Or am I doing it because “Oh, yeah, people want to see Superman and Spider-Man team up”? For me, it would have to be — if we ever did that, it would have to be under someone who thought it was gonna be awesome and wasn’t just a cash grab, because I’m just not into that.
With this movie, you have people actively rooting against you because they’re fans of a previous incarnation of Superman and DC — Zack Snyder’s.
[Fake surprise.] What? [Laughs.]
As you may have heard.
I’m trying to think of how to say this best. I don’t mind it. I think it’s good. I think you don’t wanna have everybody root for you. And I have an actor who reads everything online. I won’t say who it is, but he’ll read this article, and he’ll know who it is. It’s one of the top five in Superman. And this actor gets so upset over things that people say. I said, “First of all, you realize that the trailer came out and [reaction] was 97, 98 percent positive. These people help us, because you don’t want everything to seem 100 percent positive.”
It’s all right to have an opposing force every once in a while. Some of the things get ridiculous — I just know that every time something comes out, it doesn’t matter how positively received, there’s gonna be something that is of great controversy. It was great controversy that the sun caused Superman pain.
But that’s not what was happening. That was his bones snapping back together, right?
It’s like when a doctor resets your bone, you scream, but it doesn’t fucking matter. Because is that really a controversy? Is that really something that you’re upset about? Or did you have a hard time finding something to be upset about? There’s always going to be that. There’s going to be something that people are upset about, and it’s OK. This actor reads everything. He reads every fucking Reddit thread. He watches all of the videos, including by the people who make their livings by hating us. That’s how they make all their money. But you don’t have to watch their videos where they’re talking about how you’re awful. You can’t be reading it all the time. It’ll fucking murder you. It’s a terrible thing to do to your soul.
Is this actor your lead, David Corenswet?
It’s a hundred percent not David. David is Superman. He’s not a normal person.
What was your way into Lex Luthor?
I really understand Lex. I feel like I relate to Lex way more than I wish I did. But for me, Lex looks at Superman like artists look at AI. He is the world’s greatest man in so many ways. He’s done these unparalleled things. And then you got a guy who comes in who’s done nothing to deserve the ability to fly and to smash down buildings. And he’s also extraordinarily handsome, too. And all of a sudden that’s all the world is talking about. And that sort of obsession with being replaced, with being — with your gifts not being seen or passed over — I think is what drives Lex. I relate to everything he does. He’s just meaner than I am.
“I had to stop creating so that people would like me. That’s downplaying it — love me.”
Do you know what you’re writing and directing next? As far as film?
Yeah, probably. I know what I’m writing right now.
And it’s a DC film.
Yeah. Nothing yet. I’m just getting into it. I really have a hard time writing when I’m in the late stages of postproduction, which is — we’re almost done, but I really have a hard time. I traditionally start heavily writing the day whatever my last movie comes out. I write treatments first, so I’m a couple treatments in.
You once said that the fact that Robert Pattinson’s Batman is not in this universe was Matt Reeves’ choice. Does that mean if it were up to you, you would’ve just pulled that into your universe?
It would be a consideration. We’d have to think about it. We’d have to think about it. It is not like we’ve never discussed it.
It’s interesting, your answer is much more present tense than I expected. As if it’s an ongoing possibility.
No, I don’t — Batman’s my biggest issue in all of DC right now, personally. And it’s not — I’m not writing Batman, but I am working with the writer of Batman and trying to get it right, because he’s incredibly important to DC, as is Wonder Woman. So outside of the stuff that I’m doing in the projects that are actively going, our two priorities are finishing our Wonder Woman and our Batman scripts.
The Batman script — is that still called The Brave and the Bold?
Right now, yeah. Right now.
In the broadest sense, what needs to be figured out to make those two properties work — Batman in this universe?
Batman has to have a reason for existing, right? So Batman can’t just be “Oh, we’re making a Batman movie because Batman’s the biggest character in all of Warner Bros.,” which he is. But because there’s a need for him in the DCU and a need that he’s not exactly the same as Matt’s Batman. But yet he’s not a campy Batman. I’m not interested in that. I’m not interested in a funny, campy Batman, really. So we’re dealing with that. I think I have a way in, by the way. I think I really know what it’s — I just am dealing with the writer to make sure that we can make it a reality.
And how about for Wonder Woman?
Similar. Wonder Woman I think is actually easier for me, because there haven’t been so many infinite portrayals of Wonder Woman — definitely not in movies, but really anywhere — that there have been of Batman. Every single Batman story has been told. It seems like half the comics that have come out of DC over the past 30 years have Batman in them. He’s the most famous superhero in the world and the most popular superhero in the world. And people love him because he’s interesting, but also having so much of him out there can also make him boring. So how do you create that property that’s fun to watch?
I really should clear this up. Is there still a non-zero chance that Matt Reeves’ Batman will get sucked into your universe?
[Long pause.] I would never say zero, because you just never know. But it’s not likely. It’s not likely at all. I’ll also say Batman Part II is not canceled. That’s the other thing I hear all the time — that Batman Part II is canceled. It’s not canceled. We don’t have a script. Matt’s slow. Let him take his time. Let him do what he’s doing. God, people are mean. Let him do his thing, man.
How do you want to be remembered? Have you thought about this?
I don’t give a shit. I want to be remembered that I was nice to my family, that my family and friends love me, but I don’t believe in any of that shit. First of all, everything’s a sand castle. Somebody wrote me that the other day. “We have these problems, but that doesn’t last. What will be remembered forever is the movies.” I’m like, “No, it won’t. It’s just fucking disintegrating with everything else.” What I really do care [about is] that I’m good to my wife, and I really do care that I’m good to my friends and my brothers and my sister and my mom. I went to the funeral of one friend a few years ago, and he was split up from his wife, but he hadn’t treated her well, hadn’t treated his friends well. He had stood me up three times, supposed to meet me for lunch or something, and didn’t show up. Funerals are always sad, but I think there’s a kind of fulfilling sad where people are crying because they love somebody so much. And then there’s this sort of depressing sad, where it’s like he just disappointed everybody, and it’s really hard for people to say nice things. We loved him, but it was hard, and that really affected me. I’m like, “I don’t want my funeral to be that.” So I guess I really do think about it sometimes, but in terms of that: I want people to cry because I was good to them.
From Rolling Stone US.