NYT Interview part -my sequels are not as good as my originals

Q. At this point, do you feel like there are any new and interesting hurdles for you?

“The BFG” was a huge hurdle for me — I’d never done a fairy tale before. Every movie I make, there’s a hurdle to it. I look for things that will scare me. Fear is my fuel. I get to the brink of not really knowing what to do and that’s when I get my best ideas. Confidence is my enemy and it always has been.

My sequels aren’t as good as my originals because I go onto every sequel I’ve made and I’m too confident. This movie made a ka-zillion dollars, which justifies the sequel, so I come in like it’s going to be a slam dunk and I wind up making an inferior movie to the one before. I’m talking about “The Lost World” and “Jurassic Park.”

Q. Is it fear of failing, fear of disappointing yourself, your critics, your admirers? What is the fear?

It’s a fear of getting lost. And then staying lost in a quagmire of having made a bad choice and now I’m stuck with it for the next 60 days of shooting. I felt that way on “Jaws” only because it was so hard to make, not because I didn’t know how to make it. I was lost.

For a movie that became awesomely successful and gave me complete personal creative freedom, I still look back at it and even now say it was my most unhappy time in my life as a filmmaker because whole days would go by and we wouldn’t get a shot.