I like to address the fears of my culture. I believe it`s good to face the enemy, for the enemy is fear.

But I made him the Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security because that added an element of political espionage.

I realized that I really, almost by accident, had fallen into a labyrinthine, very powerful paradigm for dealing with these things through genre films. And once I realized that and realized the power of it, and the fact that because horror films aren't, in general, studio products - studios back them sometimes, but they don't try to meddle too much, because they kind of don't want to sully their skirts - you have a lot of freedom.

I wrote, I think, half a dozen films that were completely out of genre. Comedies, love stories, even one serious film about Vietnam, and we couldn't get backing for any of it. And we both sort of drifted from making, at that time, serious money on Last House to going through it all in the course of almost three years and only getting offers to do something scary again.

I think that there has been a slow recognition that there's a mind at work here, and there's a skill and some bit of artistry, and that I could probably do other things. Otherwise, I don't know that I would've been given the opportunity to do Paris, Je T'Aime.

People who are kind of at the cutting edge of life and survival, and being near the nitty-gritty, like my films, and I like that.

Something like Nightmare On Elm Street, to me, was kind of an examination of levels of consciousness and the pain of facing the truth, and how easy it is to fall asleep, or want to fall asleep.