Actor, writer and film director Jon Favreau made a mark for himself with the 1996 cult classic movie, "Swingers." Now the 55-year-old director is giving viewers a fresh take on an age-old subject: Dinosaurs.
Favreau, best known for directing movies like "Elf" and "Iron Man" and creating "The Mandalorian" for Disney+, sat down with Sunday TODAY's Willie Geist to discuss how he turned his early years in Hollywood into an iconic film career.
Favreau, a native of Queens, New York, didn't always know he wanted to make movies, but they provided him a sense of solace after losing his mother to leukemia when he was just 12 years old.
"I remember spending a lot of time with my dad, and he loved movies. He really introduced me to them. This is pre-VCR days," he said. "He’d bring me to them, and we’d watch movies a lot. And I think I always loved storytelling."
When college didn't work out, Favreau tried working on Wall Street before the lure of improv comedy called.
"I had gone cross-country, so I had stopped in Chicago and saw people performing onstage," Favreau said of his first time experiencing the wonder of Second City. "The first night I went to watch a live show Chris Farley was onstage. And I was, like, 'These people are good here.' I didn’t realize I was looking at a generational talent."
On the set of Favreau's first film, "Rudy," a 1993 football drama, he met fellow budding actor Vince Vaughn. Their real-life experiences trying to make it Hollywood served as the inspiration for Favreau's script for "Swingers." The film didn't do well at the box office, but became a cult classic and served as the "cultural splash" Favreau needed to get his start.
"That was ultimately the thing that really opened the door for me more than my acting was my writing," he said.
Favreau turned his focus to directing and had his first big hit with "Elf," a comedy starring Will Ferrell that went on to become a Christmas classic. With "Iron Man," he made his mark on the Marvel universe.
"I have big hits, but I also have big flops," Favreau told Geist. "And I think it it’s been a good balance because you need to trip over your feet sometimes to learn. You don’t learn on the hits."
Favreau did hit it big with his Disney series "The Mandalorian" which gave him the chance to work with his filmmaking idol, George Lucas. He said the creation of Baby Yoda came out of asking the question, "What's the most fun choice to make here?" when it came to the script.
Since Favreau managed to gain the trust and respect of the "Star Wars" community, he's now looking to impress what might be an even more vocal crowd — the "paleontology community" as he calls it, with his new series about dinosaurs for Apple TV+.
The new docuseries, "Prehistoric Planet," transports audiences to the late cretaceous period, just before dinosaurs became extinct. Narrated by Sir David Attenborough and scored by Hans Zimmer, the show marries traditional nature photography with cutting edge CGI technology Favreau has been developing since directing modern versions of "The Jungle Book" and "The Lion King" for Disney.
He told Geist that working on the show has raised some big questions about humanity for him.
"I mean, us as a species, we’ve been around for hundreds of thousands of years. They were around for hundreds of millions of years," he said of the dinosaurs.
"You have to see yourself as the center of the universe, but also as an insignificant speck at the same time," he said. "If you can balance those two things, it prepares you for life’s challenges and puts a proper perspective on things."
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