The first monster that an audience has to be scared of is the filmmaker. They have to feel in the presence of someone not confined by the normal rules of propriety and decency.

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.

The first monster you have to scare the audience with is yourself.

I've done a few interviews where I realized that 9/11 was the ultimate home invasion, not to be glib about it. You know, where the place that you think is safe and the people that you think are safe and far from evil are suddenly just slaughtered by it, and you have no control over it.

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

I think if anybody had a roll of dice with a lot of money at stake, they would not want Wes Craven and a romantic comedy.

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.