I wanted to make a horror film about beauty.

I am a child of cinema, and I am a cineaste, so everything I do is a reference to something I've heard or experienced or seen. And we all do it, we all steal. The ones who claim they don't, are obviously lying, because you do. You just have to make it your own.

My movie [The Neon Demon] is a hyper-version of the obsession with beauty. As this crazy obsession grows, longevity does not. Everything seems to become younger and younger. The girls and people around them cannibalize themselves.

And to be fair, most documentaries are half an hour too long, anyway. Let's not kid ourselves. Most movies are an hour too long. I will say that the internet has changed everything in terms of distribution and because of iTunes and other outlets like that, length is no longer something you really think about, in my opinion. It's irrelevant.

Good and bad, what's good and bad? I don't know.

I think that television has become really, really interesting, in terms of character development. You can have 13 hours to develop a character, as opposed to 25 minutes in a movie. That excites me.

I always think once you have the lead protagonist, you cast around that character.