I Think Of Horror Films As Art,

You Have To Believe In God Before You Can Say There Are Things That Man Was Not Meant To Know. I Don't Think There's Anything Man Wasn't Meant To Know. There Are Just Some Stupid Things That People Shouldn't Do.

For Me, It's Just A Normal Artistic Endeavour To Explore The Dark Side. Certainly, I'm Not Alone In It. Artists Generally Don't Like To Accept The Version Of Reality That Society And Culture Hand Them. They Want To Know What's Really Going On. So You're Always Looking In The Ceilings, Under The Floorboards And Behind The Walls, Trying To Find The Mechanisms, The Structures, And The Truth. I Find That Often Leads You Into Some Dark Places.

It Was Apparent To Me That Religion Was An Invented Thing, A Wish-fulfillment Thing, A Fantasy Thing. It Was Much More Real, Dangerous, To Accept That Mortality Was The End For You As An Individual. As An Atheist, I Don't Believe In An Afterlife, So If You're Thinking Of Murder, If Your Subject Is Murder, Then That's A Physical Act Of Absolute Destruction Because You're Ending Something, A Body, That Is Unique. That Person Never Existed Before, Will Never Exist Again, Will Not Be Karmically Recycled, Will Not Go To Heaven, Therefore I Take It Seriously.

The Artist's Duty To Himself Is A Combination Of Immense Responsibility And Immense Irresponsibility. I Think Those Two Interlock.

Casting Is Really A Black Art. It's A Huge Part Of Directing And It's The Most Invisible. It's One That People Don't Really Think About Or Talk About. But You Can Really Destroy Your Movie By Casting It Badly Before You've Shot A Foot Of Film. And Yet There Are No Guidebooks For It, There's No Rule Book To Tell You How To Do It. It's All Your Own Experience And Your Own Sensibility And Your Own Intuition.