I generally follow my own compass and make films about what's scaring me.

Horror audiences don't need to see some TV actor they're familiar with.

I like movies that work on two levels - like The Simpsons, kids can watch it and adults can watch it. Teenagers can watch Hostel and if they want to see a blood and guts violent movie they're going to have a great time. They're going to scream and yell, it's a great date movie because they're going to squeeze their date and their date is probably going to be too scared to go home... so you take them home and put on Dirty Dancing and everybody wins.

I felt people responded to two things. One, obviously, is the gore and the scenes like the eye gauging.

Creative writing and shooting are muscles that atrophy. But when you work them, you become a self-generator who can branch out.

Once I got over the fear of writing female characters, it actually came quite easily and I was really happy with it. I just thought about girls I knew really, really well and I'd just have conversations with them and tried to relay how they talk about certain things.

In musical theater, if you have a song, it has to advance the plot. If you have a song in a musical and it does not advance the plot, it gets dropped.