If I'm 'the kid from 'Hereditary'' for the rest of my life, I'll be satisfied.
My favorite movies are movies from the '70s, like 'Midnight Cowboy' and 'Dog Day Afternoon' and 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' and to me, 'Hereditary' seemed like it fit in with those movies, and it was just horrifying. It seemed like it took the things that I love about movies and really fleshed out characters.
I repeat for the umpteenth time, without making apologies: My children have had more than their fair share of presidency under their father. There cannot be any hereditary transfer of power.
'Hereditary' is unabashedly a horror film. In a lot of ways, it's in dialogue with other horror films. But I do know that it was important for me that the film functioned first as a family drama. I know that I'm never affected by anything if I'm not invested in the people to whom the genre things are happening.
Every single moment in 'Hereditary' is linked to a moment in the end for the payoff. I think it has the ability of captivating people the same way that 'Manchester By the Sea' did. It has that audience because it's so wrapped in human drama.
I know that I put a lot into 'Hereditary', and I'm proud of what it is. Beyond the fact that the film takes its time and asks for a certain amount of patience from the audience - and I hope it rewards that patience by the end - I know that I'm something of an aesthete. I care about aesthetics, and I love filmmaking.
I got my MFA from AFI as a director in 2010. I've had time to make the shorts that I made previous to 'Hereditary' and to kind of build these movies in my head.
With 'Hereditary', I wanted to make a film about what bothers me about life.
I can say that I put a lot of personal feelings into 'Hereditary', though I can also say that none of the characters in the film are surrogates for anybody in my family or for myself.
I finally demonstrated that typhus infection is not hereditary in the louse.
