Even the European critics... They said Hostel is the smartest film they'd seen on capitalism and how it's gone too far.

So when I was beating the guy, I started thinking, 'What if I was Hannah Montana?' . . . And little do they know that that's why I look so insane . . . I'm torturing myself with thoughts of, 'How could I actually pull off being a high school student and a pop star at night?'

I feel like in the '90s, horror just lost its way and everything became so safe and watered-down.

I think in a post-9/11 world, with the images coming back from Iraq, everybody knows more and more people who are going over there... the images on the YouTube phenomenon where the violence is so immediate. Direct people need something stronger to respond to. I think that there's definitely a wave of directors - who are labelled the splat pack - who really, really care about making great scary movies.

'Eraserhead' is a weird, horrible nightmare, and it doesn't narratively make sense. Stuff's happening, but you honestly feel like you're in a nightmare, and it has such disturbing imagery that it stays with you forever once you've seen it.

Anytime you're the first to speak out against something, there's going to be a backlash.

I have so many different projects, I hear voices in my head - the characters talking all at once - and I have to write to make them stop.