Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A lot of the reasons why people are annoyed at found footage movies is because people look at it like it's easy and that they could do it, too.
People look down on it, but I love the community of horror. Writers and directors are a tight group of people, and we help and support each other.
'The Purge' is really about America's crazy relationship to guns and guns gone wild, essentially, and it kind of laid the groundwork for 'Get Out.'
I try to work with people who you're not used to seeing in scary movies. I think it makes for a more interesting mix, when you're watching the movie.
What I loved about 'War Dogs' was the fact that the tone - turning that story into a spectacular two hour ride is just such a complicated thing to do.
All of our movies are lower budget, and that makes them more interesting, too: we have to come up with solutions other than throwing money at problems.
When DVD disappeared but before digital distribution came on strong, there were a few years where a movie that didn't get theatrical would just be gone.
One thing I am very strict about is that I don't like spending a lot of money on movies because the more money you spend I think the worse that they get.
I really love 'Poltergeist.' I think that's a great, terrific movie. I did really love the first 'Friday the 13th.' I thought that was such a crazy movie.
I think good suspense and horror is really about creating situations that are relatable, and throwing a wrench in it and watching how people respond to it.
The one thing I am very strict about is that I don't like spending a lot of money on movies because the more money you spend, I think the worse that they get.
Hollywood looks backwards and tries to repeat. And we really try not to do that. We don't always succeed, but I really think that what we try and do is different.
We don't decide how a movie will be distributed until it's finished. It might be on iTunes, it might be on 3,000 theaters, but we make that decision after the fact.
I'm a believer in screening movies early, and using the movie itself to help sell the movie. If you can't do that, I feel like you shouldn't be releasing the movie.
You've got to think of fun stories, and if the fun story happened to have a lesson, that's a great thing. If you build a movie around a lesson, you're in real trouble.
It's harder and harder to scare people, and filmmakers are aware of that, and they're making the movies better, and I think they feel more original, which I always like.
One of the benefits of doing low-budget movies is you don't have to release them wide to recoup. You can release it in a smaller way, make your money back, and keep going.
I love scary movies and respect the filmmakers of scary movies, and it's just as hard to make a great scary movie as it is to make a great comedy or drama or anything else.
Horror is great storytelling with scary elements on top of it, but if you don't have great storytelling, you can have all the scares in the world, but the movie won't work.
Success stems from the producer creating the optimal conditions for the filmmaker's own creative process. Not from steering the filmmaker through a one-size-fits-all approach.
Anyone who has any kind of success in Hollywood wants to make more expensive movies and spend more money, be bigger. I think it's unusual to have success and want to stay small.
Halloween was definitely the biggest holiday when I was a kid. We started making our Halloween costumes in August. Me and my mom. My mom was a single mom; it was just her and I.
The one thing I try and do, when people say, 'What kind of movies do you guys look for,' the one thing I look for is 'different.' And I think that's very antithetical to Hollywood.
My favorite thing about horror is that it attracts this great group of nuts, of which I include myself in. I was always kind of an oddball. I collected my fingernails, for instance.
I think being snobby about the kind of storytelling people do, it just irks me. It irks me. And in fact, it's one of the things that drives me to make as many horror movies as I do.
We were producing 'La La Land'... and then we weren't. So it was a very painful topic, but I'm happy the movie was as successful as it was. And, of course, I wish we had produced it.
Most people who've had a big hit movie like 'Paranormal Activity,' the next thing they say is, 'I want to make a $100 million movie.' I have no interest in making more expensive movies.
People complain about Hollywood movies being similar. That goes right down to the fundamental green light process, because the process involves having to compare it to three other movies.
I love South By because people are more relaxed here, and people are a little more off guard. They say things and react more freely than Sundance or Cannes. I love the feel of this festival.
The business of horror movies goes up and down, and people are always like, 'It's working,' 'It's not working,' but generally, I think if you make a good movie that's scary, people will come.
I think scary movies work best when they're relatable, and I think one of the scariest things to young people now is bullying. Either doing it, being on the other end of it, being caught doing it.
Great stories and acting always win the day. If the story behind the scares is dramatic and the filmmaking is great, it works. If those things aren't great and the scares are secondary, it doesn't.
What I love about low-budget movies is my interests and the director's interests and the actors' interests are aligned. No one makes money unless the movie works, and that informs every creative decision.
I'm a big believer in creating parameters for creativity. I think parameters make people more creative. So that starts with my budgets. I only do low budget movies, and I think that makes the movies better.
I think it's frightening for all of us to contemplate that there's more to the universe than just us, in whatever form it takes, that there are higher forces at work, and to me, that's always a scary notion.
There are a lot of parallels between doing a sequel and doing low budget movies, which is they give creative parameters. As a creative person myself, I work better with parameters as opposed to anything goes.
I tell directors, 'I can't promise you a hit, but I can promise you the movie is going to be yours.' When you work for a studio, they pay you a lot of money, but in exchange for that, they tell you what to do.
I think because Skype is becoming so much more prevalent, and you're looking at someone else on a screen, it's going to work its way into movies and TV shows in all different ways, which I think is really cool.
Working with kids is always hard because you have to have very limited hours. They have to have breaks, and they have to have a tutor, and they have to have a lot of - good things! But it makes it hard to shoot.
I think horror movies are still - this can be said of all movies - but being with a group of people scared together is more and more something unusual and fun. Especially for kids who are going out less generally.
I wasn't a fanboy of horror. I didn't grow up on horror movies. I grew up loving all movies. I still love all movies, but I particularly love scary movies - as much for the culture around them as the movies themselves.
I think movies are overdeveloped in Hollywood. There's a big benefit to not overdeveloping and not being so precious about what you're doing. I think you lose a kind of vitality if you develop something into the ground.
If you are still thinking about a script after five or ten years, that's a sign that it's good - not that it's stale. And the opposite is true - if everyone wants to make your movie, that's a sign that it probably sucks.
Sundance is such an acquisition-frenzied, industry-centric experience, and at SXSW, many of the movies have distribution. And the focus is more on positioning the movie as opposed to selling them. People are more relaxed.
I'm proud of 'Sinister' because Scott and Cargill did a great job on the movie, and I set up a framework for them to make what they wanted to make. They gave me the idea, and I figured out how to get it out into the world.
The way we structure our backend, we key the payments to the box office - so that cuts the negotiating way down, and it's very transparent. One of the things I'm most proud of is that we're really transparent with our process.
I liked stuff like 'Halloween,' but I wasn't a horror fanatic until I was in my 30s and then made 'Paranormal Activity.' Now, having a company, I can't imagine doing anything else. But it took me a while to find my love for it.
People don't call them horror movies, but Hitchcock, for me, is my favorite storyteller. He was really exploring dark themes, and I don't know what category you put his movies in. Thriller? Horror? Some of them go in either one.
There are movies that we have done that haven't come out very well. That doesn't feel very good. But 'Jem' is in a different category. I'm proud of the movie. I stand by the movie, but I'm obviously sorry it didn't do any better.
I'm always trying to make movies that are better than the ones that we've made before. We don't always succeed at doing that by any means, but we're always trying to raise the stakes, raise the bar, make the movies better, and that's hard.