I don't really expect much from my life. So when I heard my films are premiering in film festival circuits I was glad of course but I thought it was lucky accident.
I was never a big fan of horror. I got into it making these films, but I don't ever see myself doing slasher movies. The kind of horror film I like is 'The Shining.' I don't really like slashers, but I love thrillers with tension.
I love films where you go into the cinema and loosen the edges of yourself and you hopefully enter into the world of the film. You're watching something unfold before you. I prefer the idea of wonder or intense wonder over shock or something.
I went to Lunenburg, when we were filming there, and I was like, 'We can't film anywhere else. This place is perfect. It is 'Haven.' It's absolutely beautiful. That town is eye candy.
Well that's the point: People don't normally take away things from films anymore. You go and see a $100 million film, half an hour later, your biggest concern is what are you going to be eating.
I can watch a film, even a film that I've been in, and think, 'I'm not sure, 100 percent, what I think about it.' I'm not sure what I think about what I've done in it.
My grandma was really sick when I was working on 'Sin Nombre' and eventually died that summer when we were finishing the film. But I was able to bring an unfinished version of the film for her to watch.
I like L.A., but I think what's changed is that the kinds of films I do, the mid-range dramatic film, has become an endangered species.
I made 'Batman' the way I made every other film, and I've done it to my own satisfaction - because the film, truly, is exactly the way I wanted it to be.
I didn't have a lot of independent film connections. It really took until the digital film revolution came along that I realized that I could do it myself.
As long as a film stays unmade, the book is entirely yours, it belongs to the writer. As soon as you make it into a film, suddenly more people see it than have ever read the book.
Once you have made the decision to do the film, once you have identified the desire and all the deep and personal, intimate, artistic reasons why you want to do the film, then it's more a matter of how to do things.
The things that I've done that have totally been remembered, they've always started with the same kind of engine, they've always started with someone saying 'I have to make this film - I'm going to make this film whatever the odds'.
I grew up with 'Cinderella.' So that was my go-to Disney film, definitely. It was princess-related, and coming from a smaller area in Illinois and wanting to do something greater than myself in Broadway, that was a film that I could really relate to.
When I make a film - I direct my own film, I write my own script - that's what I want to hear from the audience. 'Oh, thank you, Jackie!'
I think my films kind of walk this line that I'm proud of, that they feel sort of like films of my youth, which were far more commercial.
After film school, I embarked on trying to promote independent films. But after a while, I realized I was breaking my back doing six-day-a-week shoots, 14-hour days, and no guarantee of distribution.
Essentially, we wanted to be in one of Azazel's films, so the notion was we'd simply write an Azazel Jacobs movie ourselves, and then give it to him and be like, 'Right, here's you next film, now direct us. Go.'
Personally, I prefer contemporary films, but the market calls for more period choices, especially since China opened up a cinema market in Hong Kong. There's a lot of restriction for contemporary films simply because of subject matter.
I saw the original that Gela Babluani wrote and directed called '13 Tzameti,' and that was very interesting. I believe it was a French film, and I was just intrigued by the awkwardness; the off-beatness of the film really just grasped me.
Television is a lot of fun. It's faster-paced. The schedule is really desirable, I guess. But as far as films go, and I've only done a couple; film is like a definitive beginning, middle and end. You know your character's arch.
