Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm sick of remakes, how about something different. That's the thing - people always come to me and are like 'what do you want to remake, we know we can get that greenlight, what do you want to make?' I don't want to remake a g-d damn focking think.
When you get older, you kind of learn when something is done, you just walk away. Sometimes people just want to keep fixing things. But you know it's kind of just like your gut that tells you, "You're done, walk away" because you can always keep fixing it.
I don't do anything for the money. I don't need to. I could have retired after White Zombie and been just fine. Money doesn't matter. But there is still a good living to be made, even in the niche. The funny thing is, as time goes on, the niche stuff gets bigger and bigger.
When I came off the Halloween movies, they were very stressful movies to make. That had been four very stressful years. I'm happy with how they turned out, but getting the end results took so much fighting with people and so much craziness, that at the end of it I was so burnt out.
You just have to do the thing that you feel is true to your vision, and then the audience will make the decision. But as soon as you feel like you're creating a product to just cater to what you think they want, it never works. It always feels phony. And the audience can tell immediately.
Without really analyzing it, I grew up in Massachusetts, so the Salem witch trials were always something that I was around. The average kindergartner probably doesn't know about it, except that in Massachusetts, you do, because they'll take you on field trips to see reenactments and stuff.
I'm not a big fan of the thought that you can become a star by winning a contest. I'm sort of old-fashioned. I think people need to get out there and they need to work and they need to do their music because they love it. If they become successful, then great, and if they are not, whatever.
I always liked doing all sorts of different things. As a kid growing up, I was always drawing and painting - always doing art. But I also loved movies and music, so as I started doing everything, I liked every aspect. It's not really that I am a control freak; it's just that is what I love.
Sometimes things just aren't of their time, and they take a minute to catch on, or they find an audience later. Sometimes bizarre little films are the ones that everyone remembers later. With most big major blockbusters, people will have already forgotten about it two weeks after it came out.
If there is one thing that, as a director, you don't want to be a part of, it's a group. It's the same thing with music. I don't want to be a part of a scene. Just leave me alone. It's just my nature, and it's nothing against the people that are in that group, but I just like to be left alone.
I always wonder: the images that hit your brain when you're young are so significant, because there's not that much information in your brain. As you get older, things just bounce off. I can remember these minute details of stupid TV shows from the '70s, and I can't remember a book I read yesterday.
I never want to go back and remix old records, either. If a record sounds shitty, that's just the sound it has. I just take it as part of the music. Some of my favorite bands - their old records sound terrible. But that's just part of the sound. If they were perfect, I'd probably hate them. Same thing with movies.
For some reason, Horror movies, they seem like good date movies. When you go to them it's all high school kids, all over each other, running up and down the isles, no one is even looking at the screen anyways, they figure they don't have to pay attention to the story anyways. We scream and yell... it's like mayhem.
I don't really have a fear of doctors, in the sense that they're going to do something bad to me. I don't have a fear of them eating me, or a fear of needles, or anything like that. I have a fear that I'm feeling completely fine, everything's good, and then when I go there, he's going to tell me something horrible.
I know when something is done and when it isn't. There's been times working on movies when they [moviemakers] lock in a release date and so you're stuck to that schedule. But sometimes you're still editing and you feel like you're not really done, but they're sort of releasing the movie anyway - that's kind of depressing.
I didn't grow up in a creative environment. It was very boring town, boring everything. You go to school and you basically hate all the other kids because you don't understand them or what it's all about. At the same time I'm happy for that because I became very withdrawn and when you become withdrawn you develop your own bizarre-o personality.
What bother me, not "bother me," exactly; that's not the right way to put it. But especially in the horror genre, once a movie like Paranormal Activity comes out and becomes popular - and that's a totally fine and valid movie - everyone starts copying it. Everything becomes a found-footage movie that looks like somebody shot it with their phone.
There's nothing weirder than when your band finally gets big and you're playing sold-out arenas and you're selling millions of records, and you dread being a part of it all. It wasn't some master plan to go solo. I was just like, I would rather do my own thing, be happy, and have it be ten times less popular. That was really it. It just wasn't fun, the stress.
I was never really that aware of commercial things. The stuff that was really influential to me were bands like the Misfits or the Birthday Party, or things like that. If someone said, "Do you love Judas Priest?" - I never really even had a Judas Priest record. That's not what I grew up with. That wasn't really my scene, you know? That's why White Zombie never really fit. I still don't fit.
People would always say horror movies always thrive during times of war; that's just what people would say. And I don't know if they thrived during World War II or Vietnam, but I thought that's kind of strange, why would that happen. I don't know if people rearrange their priorities; in good times, they freak out and start pointing the fingers at video games and TV, but when horrible things are happening in the world, a horror movie just seems a little ridiculous.
I never wanted there to be any moment in my movies when something would happen and the audience would cheer, like sometimes that happens in certain types of horror movies. I was never a fan of that, I wasn't looking for 'inventive' kills and I even hate that word because it's like, if you have these characters screaming or crying in pain I don't think anyone should be jumping out of their seat cheering. It should be horrible and you should feel sick watching it because that's what it is, sick.
Reviews are all bullshit, because they always change. When House of 1000 Corpses came out, all the reviews were awful. It was impossible to find a review better than "The worst movie ever made." And now I'll see more-modern magazines, and sometimes they'll re-review things, and I'll read this great review for it. It's the same thing with White Zombie! People talk about "Oh, White Zombie, these classic records. Why don't you do them now?" Everyone hated those records when they came out! The reviews were terrible.
People just like the thrill of anything. Dangerous things and dark things are exciting. Like as a kid, I knew I wasn't going to get killed if I went into the Haunted House but you kind of feel like you are. And when it comes out the track the other side, it's like, "we're still alive"! And I find it really funny when adults get really scared because I've not been really scared since I saw Jaws when I was a little kid. I just think people like the thrill of it, they like to feel like they accomplished something, that they survived the movie.
I don't think there is anything wrong with watching violence but I just think you have to present it in the appropriate light. I was like just watch how many accidents and deaths horror causes. Whereas I don't think anybody is going to go: "Oh, I just saw The Shining and I think I'm going to go axe somebody!" These movies aren't for everybody. The dark side of anything isn't for everybody. I think that you have to have some sort of responsibility in how you portray it because I always want the violence to seem real and if it seems disgusting then good, because it should.