About Oren Peli: Oren Peli is an Israeli American film director, producer and screenwriter, known as the director of Paranormal Activity.
I think the traditional explanation is that demons just find someone, they pick on them and try to break down their spirit so they can... take control of their bodies. Why exactly? I don't know.
After I watched 'The Exorcist' I refused to watch any other movie that had anything to do with ghosts or demons. I didn't even watch 'Ghostbusters' until I was much older.
By trade, I am a software programmer, so I never really had any experience with movies before. I started out with 'Paranormal Activity.'
On 'Paranormal Activity,' it worked to my advantage not to have much of a crew, but on a bigger movie, where you have to work with a larger group of people who basically become your second family for a few months, it can be a great experience. Even t...
Our lives are pretty calm. Merging on the freeway in the closest you get to risking your life. So what's missing now is that primal emotion of being scared to death, and I think that's why people crave thrills like roller coasters or scary movies. Th...
I'm pretty content with what I have, but the one thing that I don't have is something like the iPod - but PC-based. I think that would be cool.
I don't know if I would say that I'm specifically a history buff. I do find a lot of things fascinating, especially anything that's bizarre or mysterious and unknown and we don't have all the answers for.
I think the tricky balance, the most important thing more than the horror is to have a compelling story, compelling drama, a show about great characters that you care about and you want to come back every week to see what they're up to.
I think that horror, in general, is fairly popular. It's definitely popular in film. There's just not a lot of good horror on TV, so whenever there is good horror on TV, people rush to it.
In many cases your imagination is much more effective than what can be shown. It primes you to know something is about to happen - the anticipation and anxiety is worse than what ends up happening.
Even if you look at the 'Paranormal Activity' movies, at the end of the movie things get really crazy and nutty, but they all start in a very mundane situation that people can relate to, and that's also to some degree what we tried to do in 'Chernoby...
Almost any movie, no matter how original, is borrowing from some other movies.
I do not buy CDs any more; I usually stream Internet radio. For movies, I hardly every buy any DVDS. I have a DVR, so just record things off HBO, Showtime and so on.