At the end of the day, audiences just want to laugh and be entertained. They want to escape from their reality, and that's why we make movies, to get people to escape from the realities.
For me, the movies I like are all independent. And getting an independent feature made, it's like you get down to the selling organs part, and it just loses some of its luster.
The folks who read my books are so passionate about each one of them that the people making my movies are more afraid of my readership than they are of me.
People say you never remember anybody who dies in movies, and it's true, you don't. You don't even remember people who disappear.
Certainly, 3rd acts of any movie are hard. It's always hard to have something that will give you the promises from the beginning of the movie. That's true for all movies.
I find 'Edward Scissorhands' a very inspiring movie - it's one of the first movies about bullying, in a way - about being treated unkindly for being different.
It was like in Samoa when they'd put up a movie screen on the beach and show movies and the locals would run behind the sheet to see where the people went. It was pretty grim.
The ultimate thing is creating your own stuff and making projects for yourself. That's what Seth Rogen does. He's writing and producing a lot of the movies that he's the lead in.
A lot of times in movies, especially in sequels, the characters become caricatures and just sort of improv machines and joke machines, rather than people you can actually connect to.
I started making movies in the early '90s, a few years after I discovered 'the cinema' during a three month stay in Paris during which I watched 100s of films.
If the American public is so into morality in movies, why don't they throw more of their disposable income at religious-themed entertainment? For every 'Passion of the Christ,' there's a 'Fireproof' that comes and goes with no notice.
My movies have always done pretty well in the UK - 'The Matrix' films did very well in this country and I do like the crews here and the people we're working with here.
I'm never interested in movies where you don't care about the people you're watching, and that's my biggest quibble about horror, that kids have gotten stupider and stupider.
I remember going to see those Adrian Lyne films when I was going to see movies in the nineties, and I was jealous he wasn't working at New Line.
Most of the movies I saw growing up were viewed as totally disposable, fine for quick consumption, but they have survived 50 years and are still growing.
I wanted to keep exploring... I'm not about to choose a series of movies in which I can use the same bag of tricks and style that I used in the first film.
I think you have a responsibility to the people you're making movies with, and I take that very seriously. I don't want to let up and I don't want to let down.
I never really got nightmares from movies. In fact, I recall my father saying when I was three years old that I would be scared, but I never was.
I look at my clarinet sometimes and I think, I wonder what's going to come out of there tonight? You never know.
Maybe I'm misjudging people, but I feel like a lot of people still have an image of me in a bonnet at nine years old.
Look, you come in here tomorrow, and anything you do with your right hand I'll do with my left.
