In general, I don't even have the luxury of rehearsal time on most films that I make. It is just a scene-by-scene full cast read through. It's very much just doing the rehearsal sometimes the day before, at the end of the day, but just on the spot as the scene unfolds.
There was a period around Columbine when horror films were being kind of assailed by the government. The studios got very afraid that they were going to be sued, and studios at about that time were all being taken over by corporations.
Everybody is afraid of the unknown. Everybody is afraid of the people that they've done terrible things to!
When you have a name that means scares, you have to live with that.
My whole background was in voracious book-reading.
I had a musician friend once tell me that it's not in the orchestra that you get the true test of the musicians but in the little trios and quintets where you really get to see if they've got the stuff. And the composer.
I was anathema in polite society after I made 'Last House.' People literally would grab their children and run from the room.
When you do a film like 'My Soul to Take,' and people think it sucks, that hurts. We put a lot of work into it, and it's a good film, but you go on.
I don't know, I always had an active dream life, and there's something so profound and wonderful about a movie. It's so alive. It's so shared. The thing of sitting in an audience and going into a dream-like state with several hundred other people that are sharing exactly what you're feeling is a profound event.
If something comes along that is totally outside of horror, fine, but I find there's an immense amount of freedom within the genre.
A friend, Sean Cunningham, who went on to do 'Friday the 13th,' was given a small budget to produce a scary movie, and he told me to write something. I'd never seen a horror film in my life; I'd fallen in love with Fellini.
All I'm doing is rearranging the curtains in the insane asylum.
I can see that I give my audience something. I can see it in their eyes, and they say 'Thank you' a lot. You realize you are doing something that means something to people.
In high school, we would give away rulers to our friends that said, 'Jesus loves you.' I couldn't put together the concept that Jesus loves you, but if you don't love him back, you'll burn in hell forever. I worried, 'I'm rejecting the Holy Spirit, so I'm definitely going to burn in hell.'
My mother wouldn't even let me read DC Comics. I came from a very strict background.
My brother and I both used to worry about dying at 40 because our father died at 40. That probably wasn't terribly rational, since my father led a rather unhealthy lifestyle, shall we say.
That's what's great about the horror genre is that you're getting a load of people together in the cinema at the same place and the same time, having them all experience extreme fear and come out alive at the end. It's an uplifting experience, and there's a sense of elation.
I didn't see many films until I was in college teaching.
Hawks is great, 'The Treasure of Sierra Madre,' 'The Big Sleep'... He could do the Salt-of-the-Earth very well. He was a very smooth director; a very good film architect in terms of his storytelling.
I have a lot of fans who are people of color. I think, if nothing else, I kind of understand that sense of being on the outside looking in, culturally.
