I am a lifelong career artist, which itself is a bit of a miracle. It's really challenging to be a career artist. I would say that the argument for grant funding is not only did my movie do some social good - hopefully it opened people's eyes - but you created a working artist. I'm hiring cinematographers, I'm hiring production designers, I'm hiring producers.

Art changed my life. I mean, I would say art saved me. I believe that it made me better at handling my life.

A good horror film is something that taps into something absolutely truthful about us - about what we want, about what we're terrified of - and brings that to life on screen in such a way that we can get close enough to that character to let our defenses down and want them to be safe.

I like violence because I like looking at it and I like understanding emotional and physical violence and how they work with one another... It's operating in all these levels of hopefully - Oedipus is one of my favorite stories, that's like falling down a well when you read that - so that would be the hope, that each thing causes the next.

I am a lifelong career artist, which itself is a bit of a miracle. It's really challenging to be a career artist. I would say that the argument for grant funding is not only did my movie do some social good - hopefully it opened people's eyes - but you created a working artist. I'm hiring cinematographers, I'm hiring production designers, I'm hiring producers.

There are a number of times when we have found, there's a number of old-school special effects in here that are fantastic, but there are definitely some times that we went digital and you're not going to tell the difference, I don't think. I think it just serves the storytelling because that's just the era that we live in.

If we educate ourselves, then the desire and need to have art as a part of our lives will happen organically. I would invite anyone to look at cultures where art is squashed. Do you want to live in North Korea? We have a president who doesn't read at all. There's a lot to worry about. I just wish, as a collective, we were much smarter.