I feel like I thrive in the red light.
Panos Cosmatos
Motley Crue was actually my gateway to heavy metal.
I might actually be allergic to testosterone. Whenever I've felt a testosterone rush I get, like, sick afterwards, and I feel exhausted and terrible.
You write a character, but in essence, it's just a concept of what it could be, and then actors come in and they have their own sort of interpretations and thoughts. If you respond to those and then go forward with them, then it's kind of like magic to see the idea you had become alive and in the flesh.
Well, I'm really interested in the idea of making genre films, but movies have a much more personal undercurrent to them and that look beautiful, and that's sort of the films I'm kind of interested in making.
I think the first music I ever heard was Abba. I took my mother's cassette recorder and went into the bushes to listen to Abba when I was four or five-years-old.
Me writing 'Black Rainbow' was me alone in a windowless room going insane.
I love to choose the right actors. It's kind of a pleasure to work with them and watch them imbue your concepts that you write.
Mandy' came from grief and depression. I wanted this to be an outward volcanic expulsion of the emotion of my first film.
I was, like, 'I really wanna see an Eric Rohmer movie take place in a Bert I. Gordon universe.' Where there's a story going on that's about, you know, loss and desire, but with a giganticized-animal element.
I'd been drifting and in a very self-destructive bent ever since my mother died and as soon as I dealt with the grief, for the first time in 10 years, I had clarity and I realized: 'I need to make a movie, now, cause if I don't make it now, I might never do it.' That's what pushed me forward, and I immediately moved to Vancouver.
Just making 'Black Rainbow' was like my minimum requirement before death, so that I could die with some honour and not in total shame.
A huge part of my writing process is listening to music as I write, almost creating an unofficial soundtrack to the film I'm working on, a sort of playlist. But the specific songs change rapidly as I write.
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with heavy metal, Van Halen, Motley Crue. The older I got, my tastes widened. I always felt an attraction to the attitudes of punk; also punk filmmakers, like Richard Kern.
I feel happy working in the low-budget realm, doing stuff that is a little bit more esoteric, and personal.
Mythologies are violent things, and to be true to them, you have to go to primal territory.
I think most religious belief structures are essentially like mind viruses.
I'm too neurotic to ever feel good. If I ever felt good, I think something horrible would happen.
I try to look at the films as I make them from a distance, in a way. I think of them as kind of pop culture artefacts. I'll often make posters and tag lines as I'm working on them, and not just conceive of them as a story I'm going to tell, but as a whole, a piece - a whole object that exists in the pop culture realm.
When I was a kid I wasn't allowed to watch horror movies at all. And actually, one of the genesis points for 'Mandy' and 'Black Rainbow' was this memory I have of being in video stores, reading the backs of videos and looking at the art, imagining some kind of non-existent imaginary film based on that.
We moved around a lot when I was younger. I never really felt at home until we moved to Canada, but even then, I always felt strangely out of place and alien.
My mother died in 1997 and I spiralled into this self-destructive vortex of trying to annihilate my consciousness. I was afraid to face the grief of losing her, because she was somebody I loved more than anybody else in the world.
1984 is such an iconic, loaded year in so many ways.
I've always liked the idea of merging esoteric art cinema with down-and-dirty exploitation films.
I don't know if I'm a sequels kind of person. I prefer each film to have its own unique identity.
In the '90s, I kind of put aside all those things I loved in the '80s and I got really into watching foreign films and art films and stuff like that, and sort of soaking those up.
I want my films to be very tactile, visually and sonically.
My goal from the very beginning was to make very visually lush, juicy films that you can really sink your teeth into. That's always been part of my modus operandi.
The thing I do miss about the way some sequels were in the past was that each film felt like its own unique, complete tone. Now, sequels are tonal facsimiles of the ones before them, like a television series, whereas back in the past sequels would often be radically different from the ones before.
In the night there's sometimes a sort of cursed quality to the Pacific Northwest.
There was a time in my life when I would literally go see every single film that came out in the theaters. No matter what. I just became obsessed with movies, and wound up getting drawn to the pulsating grain of film and the flickering of the light.
Well, when I was really young and we lived in Sweden, the only films that were around at that point were... We had this collection of these super-8 highlight reels that they used to sell; like, they sold these super-8 reels that only had the best parts from a movie. So early on that's what I was seeing.
The idea of creating a quote-unquote 'retro' world isn't all that appealing to me by itself.
I guess a little bit of delusion can go a long way.
Being compared to 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' is a huge compliment.
A lot of films mistake convolutedness for complexity. To me, a simple story can be a powerful spine to build around.
I don't know anybody who goes horseback riding at sunset, but everybody watches TV and eats.
The last thing on earth I wanted to do was make a movie that plays directly to a sort-of frat boy audience, you know?
When you're working with an actor who's prepared and brings it when you need it, it's just a very validating creative experience.
Black Rainbow' is about control and your emotions being repressed and controlled, and 'Mandy's' about all a volcanic eruption!
Well, I think if you're telling a story, a three act structure will just naturally emerge out of it. But I also love it when a film doesn't feel like it's anchored too rigidly to that structure and you feel like anything could happen.
Well, I think it's important to have some kind of a narrative engine that pushes the audience through the landscape. But I love films like 'Apocalypse Now,' which is a very mood driven film. It's a magnetic force that's pulling them through.
I just love sitting in a theater watching a film and the grain is like boiling and it feels completely alive like an organism almost; like an organism made out of light.
Well I don't think of myself as like a horror or science fiction filmmaker. I just think of myself as a filmmaker.
When I was growing up in the eighties, there was a real nostalgic streak for the fifties. Look at 'Back to the Future.'
The way I work is I'll basically become kind of fixated on a very stripped-down genre, like revenge or something like that, and just start layering on top of that and entering in thoughts and ideas, and then the story just kind of builds up that way.
The male ego is a terrifying, terrifying thing, you know? If it's shattered, it becomes even more dangerous.
I just find there's nothing funnier and more scary than a delusional man who thinks they're the center of the universe, and in fact they're not.
The way people express themselves online, that's also how they express themselves in the real world.
I've been watching films my whole life and am completely obsessed with them.
