Somebody said to me, in a very well-meaning way, at a screening, "We love the movie but it's too violent. If you tone down the violence you could reach a great audience of kids.".

I was part of a group that had a cinema club so every week we would project two or three movies on 16 or 35mm.

You can always go back to not making any money, and then you get the freedom. And I'm going to continue doing it, because it really is a fantastic sense of liberation.

I was an altar boy, a spokesperson for the Virgin Mary, I was a choir boy but then at the age of 14 I discovered masturbation and all that went out the window.

If film making is magic, there's a difference between close up magic and David Copperfield. If you're doing close up magic, which independent filmmakers do, it is a very delicate craft, interpersonal relationship, and being able to enrapture a very small audience.

I believe that pain can be a rite of passage into learning. I believe that the worse thing that can happen is the sin of banality and comfort. Those things are in my movies, but also my movies are quite the fruit of somebody who defines himself as an agnostic.

When I stage a violent scene, I try for it to serve a purpose. I do love those things, the makeup effects. But I love them more with the monsters. I never was much of a gore guy. I've always enjoyed just creating monsters.