Quote collection
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"I always feel that there's no violence in a movie - it's not real, it's a magic trick. Nobody is really dying. In fact, the people that die in my movies have gone on to become extremely successful!"
"The difference is in Hostel it's in the theatre - it's in public but it's in a private place. You have to actively make a choice to want to go see it. It's not being forced on anyone. Whereas 24 you can be flipping channels and it's right there in your living room. Anyone has access to that. But that just shows how mainstream it is and how people are seeing this stuff on YouTube. People are scared of it. This is a subject matter that everyone's talking about and everyone's thinking about, particularly in American culture."
"Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or and people said: "Wait a minute, he's actually smart and he knows what he's doing!" I feel that with Hostel, any time you make a film like that it's going to illicit a strong reaction and you can't worry about that."
"Quentin Tarantino faced the same backlash when his films came out until eventually people felt they were actually much smarter."
"All the copycat movies were always PG-13 and people said: "Nobody wants violence.""
"I think in the late '80s and early '90s horror was dead."
"I want to have an ending where people say: "That's the most shocking ending I've ever seen in a mainstream horror film.""
"I felt people responded to two things. One, obviously, is the gore and the scenes like the eye gauging."
"Even the European critics... They said Hostel is the smartest film they'd seen on capitalism and how it's gone too far."
"I think in life we get very caught up in the minutia and, unfortunately, it generally takes some sort of tragedy in your life to put things in perspective."
"When people direct insults at me, I can take it."
"Horror movies are the best date movies. There's no wondering , 'When do I put my arm around her?'"
"Sometimes you have this tragedy which turns into an incredible opportunity."
"I think that horror films have a very direct relationship to the time in which they're made. The films that really strike a film with the public are very often reflecting something that everyone, consciously or unconsciously feeling - atomic age, post 9-11, post Iraq war; it's hard to predict what people are going to be afraid of."
"Hopefully we'll get to a point where there are absolutely no restrictions on any kind of violence in movies. I'd love to see us get to a point where you can go to theaters and see movies unrated and that people know its not real violence. It's all pretend. It's all fake. It's just acting. It's just magic tricks."
"When I go see an R-rated horror movie, I want lots of violence. I want nudity. I want sex and violence mixed together. What's wrong with that? Am I the only one? I don't think so."
"Everybody has to know where they're coming from, what they're doing, why they're doing it, who they are. These are essentials."
"You can pretend everything's fine, but if there's an unhappiness or you're not having sex or you're not communicating or you're made to feel third best in the house and you don't address it and you just try to put on a nice face and a smile, that kind of aggression and anger is going to come out in some sinister way."
"You do need an outlet to release all of those fears. You build it up and then, when you go to a movie theater, it's the last place that it's socially acceptable to be terrified. It's saying that, for the next 90 minutes, you're allowed to be afraid and you're not a coward for feeling that way."
"If you don’t want to be scared in a horror film, don’t close your eyes. Close your ears."