If we're not compelled to gain a deeper understanding of good and evil, how can we make the world a better place? How can we find ourselves at the end of our lives and know that our lives were significant? Those things would be impossibilities.
I can't imagine making something that is made only to be scary. For me, the darkness and scary material has to have meaning attached to it, or I can't invest the time and energy it takes to write and script or make a movie. It has to mean something.
The world is a more mysterious place than we admit sometimes - there is more to the world than just human evil.
I'm not interested in gothic storytelling or the horrific for its own sake. I'm always interested in it as a way of getting at larger ideas or important meaning. And you don't see that as much as you'd think in the history of horror cinema. A lot of times, it's scariness for scariness' own sake.
You know, 'Top Gun' was the movie I saw in high school that made me want to be a filmmaker. I remember very specifically coming out of the Century 21 Theater in Colorado from seeing it, and my friend saying, 'What did you think of the movie?' And I said, 'I think I know what I want to do for a living.' That's a true story.
I'm not going to work outside of genre. It's going to be horror, action, or sci-fi. I don't ever really see myself being interested in movies outside of that.
I think a lot of my appreciation for the Doors' music, which I love, originates with my discovery of them through seeing 'Apocalypse Now.' It's my second favorite film of all time.
In my films, I either want the music to be very subtle and very buried or just put it right out in front and be super blunt with it.
I think the single most important, fascinating, and complex aspect of human nature is that we all know, deep down, that we are not what we ought to be - or as John Doe says in 'Seven,' 'We are not what was intended.'
What I desire most in my life is to become a better person. I genuinely want to be good.
I think religion is as flawed an enterprise as any other human endeavor, but the interests and ambitions of religion are the right interests and ambitions.
Catholicism is so steeped in imagery. It's one of the many reasons Catholicism has given birth to so many great filmmakers compared to the Protestant tradition - even in America, where we're primarily Protestant.
I always liked 'The Outer Limits' as a kid. More than 'The Twilight Zone.'
The marketing of my movies is something I have no control over! I usually am shown things to give input beforehand. Some directors get really involved with that, but it's not what I do. I don't know anything about marketing; it's not my skill set!
Corporate America limits the world to consumerism. Science can limit it to the material world. Even religion limits it to a lot of theories that can explain everything. I think we need cinema to break that apart and remind us that we're not in control, and we don't understand as much as we think do.
I think after 'The Day The Earth Stood Still,' I really stopped thinking strategically about my career. I just did. At that point, it became crystal clear to me that you can strategise your career all you want, but it's so difficult to get a movie made, and creativity shouldn't be subjected to that kind of strategic thinking.
Fundamentalism is such a pejorative word and immediately evokes images of angry extremism. In my experience, that's not usually what it looks like. I was a fundamentalist in high school.
I went to a fundamentalist Christian high school and went to a fundamentalist church, and they were the greatest people; there was an amazing sense of community. The problem is when the messiness of real life enters, and the inflexibility of a moral code cannot cope with the realities of moral relativism.
I can't help but view the world mystically. It's how I see it. I'm not a strict materialist. I think there's much more to the world than what we see with our five senses.
We're all capable of being more than we presently are, and the effort that it takes and the will that it takes and sometimes the trauma and tragedy that it takes to force us into that kind of growth is the story of our lives.
