Quote collection
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"Quentin Tarantino assistant called me and said: "I have good news and bad news. The good news is you got the part, the bad news is you have to do it." I was like: "Oh Jesus, when am I supposed to do this?" I was prepping Hostel."
"'Cabin Fever' was very much inspired by 'The Thing.' It's really a perfect guy's horror movie: There's no love story, it's just straight-up horror. And it's so well-done. It moves at a slow pace, but it's really terrific."
"I like movies that work on two levels - like The Simpsons, kids can watch it and adults can watch it. Teenagers can watch Hostel and if they want to see a blood and guts violent movie they're going to have a great time. They're going to scream and yell, it's a great date movie because they're going to squeeze their date and their date is probably going to be too scared to go home... so you take them home and put on Dirty Dancing and everybody wins."
"One of the great joys of life, now that you can afford a nice suit, is getting one for free. That's why I like to do press tours - I always say making movies is just an excuse to get free clothing."
"Natural disasters are terrifying - that loss of control, this feeling that something is just going to randomly end your life for absolutely no reason is terrifying. But, what scares me is the human reaction to it and how people behave when the rules of civility and society are obliterated."
"I think you should make movies as long as the story dictates."
"I want a movie that 30 years from now, people can look back and see it as a reflection of where the culture was at - as a barometer of the culture."
"It's just assumed that a horror sequel is going to be bad. It's never going to be as good as the first one."
"The best movies now are called 'thrillers.' Because if you use the word 'horror,' people's associations are straight-to-video crap."
"When you're making a television show, it's about the story and arc of the show rather than any particular episode or director."
"I need to eliminate 'like' from my vocabulary. I begin sentences with, 'That's seriously like ' I hear myself talking in this Los Angeles high-school student kind of way, and I hate it."
"'Eraserhead' is a weird, horrible nightmare, and it doesn't narratively make sense. Stuff's happening, but you honestly feel like you're in a nightmare, and it has such disturbing imagery that it stays with you forever once you've seen it."
"A comedy can actually get funnier and funnier. Even though you know the joke, you enjoy it so much, it's the facial expression, you laugh. The laugh doesn't wear off. It could be with you for thirty years."
"Hopefully we'll get to a point where people realize movies don't cause violence. It just reflects the violence going on in the culture."
"I started the film [Hostel Part II]with the girls in an art class and there's a nude male model. People think that women are objectified, well here you go! Here's a man being objectivized but now it's under the guise of art."
"Borat shows American stereotypes of Eastern Europe but it's an accurate depiction of what a certain type of American is. They think they can buy and sell these girls and then they get bought and sold."
"The point of the first one was that it was about guys being lured by sex and the stereotypes... I always say it's like a horror version of Borat. Borat's not an accurate depiction of Khazakstan, it's an accurate depiction of America. That's what Hostel is."
"Women became almost our bigger audience. Teenage girls went crazy for my movie. I saw it. I went to theatres all over and there were gangs of girls going and screaming. There were kids that were 10 or 11 years old when September 11 happened. They've been told for years they're going to get killed, they're going to get blown up. Every time you go on an airplane, X-ray your shoes because you're going to get blown up. Terror alert orange, don't travel. So, people have a reaction and they want to scream. Horror movies have become the new date movie."
"It's the difference between hunting a lion and hunting a deer. If someone hunts a lion, it's like: "Wow, they're brave!" But if they're hunting a deer it's like: "That poor deer!" I know that. I know that guys getting killed is horrible but people have seen it before. You've seen The Evil Dead. With girls, it's like: "I don't want to see that happening..." I know that."
"You'd be lucky to get tortured to death in one of my films. It's the best thing that could happen to your career. But I'm very aware that as soon as you put women in this situation, all of a sudden people are like: "Wow, well wait a second!" Immediately, people become very sensitive to it."