Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I was finally allowed to watch horror in my early teens I think I overdid it, I actually ended up generating some kind of low grade PTSD, I was paranoid and scared of our house being broken into. It actually took me a long time to get over that.
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.
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.
I think what I was unconsciously expressing in 'Black Rainbow' was a very abstract and metaphorical grief, in the way I had suppressed my grief about my mother dying. In retrospect I realise I started writing 'Mandy' as a sort of antidote to that, to sort of express those emotions, to purge that grief.
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, 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.
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.
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.