I think damage to the eye or damage to the teeth is one of the most universally cringing things you can do in a movie and these are very fragile sounds.
Ghosts are a metaphor that can be interpreted so many different ways. There’s no ending to what you can do. You can make it a fun ghost story. You can make it a deeply disturbing, psychological ghost story.
People think you’re like The Godfather, waiting for scripts to come in. But, you’re hustling, you’re desperate, you’re panicked and you’re horrified. The movie you think you’re going to do next, you don’t do. The movie you think you’re never going to do, you make.
I had gotten to the point where I just didn’t want to perform anymore – I didn’t want to be on the chopping block anymore. I started to want to withdraw and retreat from it.
There’s nothing that defines who you are more than boundaries, whether you cross them or not, in every aspect of your life, and horror is a really great boundary.
When somebody says something I don’t agree with, I say I’d rather not. It comes to the point where that is the strongest form of resistance. As a Mexican, it took me a long while to learn one word in English, “no”. And that is the one word we have in common.
Somebody said to me, in a very well-meaning way, at a screening, “We love the movie but it’s too violent. If you tone down the violence you could reach a great audience of kids.”.
I think making small movies reminds you of the effort. When you make big movies, the effort is to fight for freedom. When you make small movies, the effort is making the day, making the budget, and it’s great, too.
The fairies in the ancient notion of fairies, they are not positive and cute and twinkly.They can be incredibly nasty or they can be incredibly benign. It’s a really interesting mythology when you dig into it.
There are times when you are in despair, because in order not to betray who you are, you don’t compromise, you don’t make movies that would be very lucrative or prestigious or easily understood. And yet I stay attached to the most uncanny premises. It’s never been easy.
Power revealed is power sacrificed. The truly powerful exert their influence in ways unseen, unfelt. Some would say that a thing visible is a thing vulnerable.
I think when the joke comes from the situation in a horror film, it’s really great. I don’t like jokey horror films like where people are cracking a joke or being post-modern about it.
I’m the freaky version of that superhero who says, wherever there is injustice, I shall be there. Whenever there is a difficult project, I’d like to be there.
