The more work you put in on your outline and getting the skeleton of your story right, the easier the process is later.
Drew Goddard
I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, which is my hometown. In Los Alamos is, for people who don't know, a nuclear lab that built the atomic bomb. The only reason the town exists is to make nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction, and that's still happening there.
Here's the thing about 'Cabin in the Woods.' I did virtually no research on this movie.
This is what I do for fun - brainstorm about monsters!
Filmmaking is incredible introspective. It forces you to sort of examine yourself in new ways.
There's just something wonderful about getting a small group of people together in an isolated location, and there's something about cabins themselves that imply both horror and fun. When you go to a cabin, you're usually going to have a good time.
When Carpenter was shooting 'Vampires' in New Mexico when I was living there, I desperately tried to get a job working on that film, and I couldn't. So my first job as a PA was on a CBS movie of the week that was shooting next door, and whenever I could, I would sneak over so I could watch.
If you worry too much about anything, you end up making bad movies.
When Steven Spielberg comes to you and says, 'Hey do you want to write a movie about robots?' You just say yes.
Clearly, the works of John Carpenter and Sam Raimi are front and center here. Argento is definitely there. But even stuff like the 'Friday the 13th' movies had quite an influence on me growing up.
One of the things that's been nice about my career is that I've been able to do so many different things, and variety keeps your creative soul fulfilled. I'm constantly looking to find new things to do. It's just project to project for me. You never know where the next thing's going to come from.
It was a lot of 'Dungeons and Dragons' all through my teens.
Like everyone else, I love 'Born Again:' that was a seminal work for me. Everything Frank Miller did on 'Daredevil' is like the Bible.
The greatest villain of all time is The Joker - he always has been, and I don't know anyone who's not going to have Heath Ledger's performance burnt into their brains for the rest of their lives.
You start to fall in love with characters as you work with them, and anytime that you care about your characters and you realize that you're gonna have to kill them, that fear creeps in. It's sad. It's scary, and it's also sad. Because you like these people.
I understand why offices need to have office parties. I understand why offices need to have betting pools. No matter what the job, you need things to foster camaraderie and let off steam.
Directing is a unique endeavor where you are in charge of so many people. As a writer, it is sort of the opposite.
There will be a Skype movie soon... someone will crack the code, and it will be great. Then, there'll be 30 Skype movies, and we'll be like, 'Oh, that's boring.'
That's the thing about Lionsgate. They are fearless. No other studio would have made 'Hunger Games' the way they did. They're being fearless in the way they make decisions, and it's paying off for them.
I guess I'm just the kind of person who likes to do it all. It's fun to put on the writer's hat and go hide by myself with my computer for six months. Then it's fun to come out and put the director hat on and deal with all the things that a director deals with. Then it's fun to just be the producer and, um, not do anything.
I've always said I'm less interested in twists as I am about escalation.
When you're talking about who is doing the most exciting and interesting horror films of the last 20 years, it's Japan. I mean, they are making amazing films.
I love going to horror movies - especially when they are fun. I think that they get you in touch with sort of these primal instincts that we all have in the relative safety of the theater.
I just don't want to make the same old movies. I'm not interested in it. Directing's hard. It takes up a lot of your life, and I'm not that interested in making the same old film.
My favorite movies are the ones that are different the second time, or where you're constantly discovering new things. It's not just genre movies, either, and it's not just about twists. I saw 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' four times in the theater before I realized it's a love story. I love that.
Like anything, I think there are some wonderful found footage movies, and there are some less good. Certainly when it's done well, I really love it. I really love it as a genre.
The movies I respond to are by guys like the Coen brothers and Edgar Wright, where it's hard to fit them into any one box.
That's the fun part about being a director. You get to say, 'Oh, now that I'm in charge, I can try and cast whoever I want.' They can always say no, but that's okay.
The logistics of blood is something that I didn't even understood as a first-time director. Not just actors and make-up, but once a set gets bloody, you don't un-blood it. Once something gets bloody, you either rebuild the set, or you just don't get the shot.
I've found that if you just try to make the film you want, you'll find the right audience. If you try to please everyone, you're going to make really boring films.
As a viewer, I never want any movie ruined for me, no matter what the genre is.
I think 'The Thing' is so good because it's not just a scary movie. It's also social commentary, which works on multiple levels, which is something I really respond to.
I had one of those families that let me watch things they should not have let me watch. When I was a kid, I remember I watched 'Alien' at, like, 6. It was traumatizing.
Every project is different. Adapting 'Robopocalypse' would be totally different than adapting, say, 'Hunger Games.' Each project has its own life and its own identity. You get into trouble when you think there's one single way to approach everything. Each project, there's a different way to attack it.
Truth is, I don't like movies that are only good once; I tend to dismiss them. I like movies that get better the more you watch them.
When you are dealing with something that's crazy, you still want actors to play characters and find the reality of the situation, no matter how absurd the situation is.
I can always tell when a filmmaker doesn't care about his or her characters; they just care about setting them up to kill them off.
I've been lucky between 'Buffy,' 'Angel,' 'Alias,' and then 'Lost.' The thing they all have in common is that they were all fearless. They were not afraid to be different and try something different. Even if you didn't know that it was going to work, just try to do something new and fresh.
If I had to pick one scary movie, I'd go with John Carpenter's 'The Thing.' That's probably number one.
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.
We've always idealized youth and then destroyed youth. That has happened since the beginning of time, and I'm fascinated by why we do that.
As a filmmaker, I wish we didn't have to do trailers at all, quite honestly. I wish we didn't have to do posters. I wish didn't have to give anything away. I wish people could just come in the movie blind. But as an audience member, I respect that you have to tell an audience that this is worth your time.
I love cult movies. I probably have watched 'Big Trouble In Little China' more than anyone on the planet.
The horror genre gets you in touch with our primal instincts as a people more than any other genre I can think of. It gives you this chance to sort of reflect on who we are and look at the sort of uglier side that we don't always look at, and have fun with that very thing.
In the 'Buffy' room, it was never about a plot twist, ever. It was always about, 'Tell the story, tell the characters, complicate their lives, make things get worse,' but we never worked backwards from the plot, and it was always a great lesson.
I think the thing I took most from game playing was just getting in the characters head. I took it really seriously. There's something about creating your character.
If you can relate to what the character's going through, the story can be as ridiculous as possible, and people will relate to it. You can be fearless in your storytelling if you're vigilant about protecting your characters.
A movie that's about other horror movies isn't interesting. A movie about who we are, is.
You can always trust that an audience is smarter than a studio thinks it is.
I love a good harsh horror movie, when it's done well. But there are times when it feels cynical. You can tell when a filmmaker loves the genre, and you can tell when someone's just cashing in a paycheck. Then it becomes a dumbing down - a fetishisation of violence that I react very strongly against.
