I deeply respect literature and expect to gain insight from a book and to identify emotionally with its characters. I therefore avoid reading suspense novels or science fiction.
What I like about the Carpenter take on 'The Thing' is the fact that it just has so much suspense. It seemed like a different story, with the horror elements.
Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.
As for suspense, I like to write books that draw you into the hero's plight from the opening pages, where people put their lives on the line for something - a belief, a family member, the truth.
I think that the romantic suspense that you used to get between people like Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant is much sexier than seeing people taking their clothes off and getting into bed, which is voyeurism.
Action fiction is driven more by what than by who. Put that ticking nuclear suitcase under Manhattan, and it's relatively easy to create suspense. Literary fiction is driven more by who than by what.
'Harry Potter' shouldn't be children's first experience with suspense and plot turns.
No, 'F/X 2' was a job. I enjoyed doing it but that was definitely a job. I wrote that, I didn't direct it but 'Candyman' and the earlier horror movies I made, I was completely into horror and suspense and always have been. It's informed everything I've done, even the way scenes are shot in 'Kinsey and 'Gods and Monsters.'
I prefer thrillers but when it's thriller/horror, I like it. The gore is not very important to me, I prefer suspense. But I like dark films.