I'm always looking for the idea in a scene or the philosophy that makes a scene worth existing beyond exposition.

I love the supernatural in storytelling. The Twilight Zone was a huge influence on me, in terms of writing and storytelling, where you're not restricted to the parameters of reality to tell your tale.

I'm not always successful, but I take my job as a storyteller very seriously and want to make sure the audience has as much fun watching it as I am creating it.

The definition of horror is pretty broad. What causes us "horror" is actually a many splendored thing (laughs). It can be hard to make horror accessible, and that's what I think Silence of the Lambs did so brilliantly - it was an accessible horror story, the villain was a monster, and the protagonist was pure of heart and upstanding so it had all of these great iconographic elements of classic storytelling. It was perceived less as a horror movie than an effective thriller, but make no mistake, it was a horror movie and was sort of sneaky that way.

I love that India has declared dolphins non-human people with all laws that apply to human. I'm fascinated with the alien-ness of that.

Looking back, it's funny how the lighter family-friendly version of these classic Universal movie monsters that were satirized in The Munsters seduced me like a gateway drug into the genre.

If I were to remake a movie, I'd love to remake Halloween 3 Season of the Witch because even though it's a very flawed film, at its core is a brilliant idea: An evil toymaker is set to kill all the children of the world on Halloween night - and I think that's absolutely fantastic. So whoever has the rights can give me a call.