I build my stories character-first, and so whether it's a monster or a ghost or a serial killer, the fear of something dark interrupting life has just always been something that matters to me as a storyteller, or what I keep finding myself drawn back to.
Part of why I wanted to produce was because I wanted the opportunity to work on projects I want to see. As a writer and as a director, I'm very specific about the kinds of things that I want to do. The opportunity that producing has given me is that by working with different writers and trying to get their movies made, or developing their script, or making their movies, every time I'm doing it, I'm learning and then bringing something to my own work. I like to think that there's a little bit of back and forth that goes on.
I certainly think that - especially with the challenges of making movies now, where you're making them in 20 or 30 days - the more experiences that you can get on those kinds of movies, where you have to use a lot of your problem-solving skills that maybe you wouldn't get on a film that takes three months, that, to me, has just been amazing.
Even though it took forever to release a movie, and even though it's a small indie release, the fact that in five years someone will be skipping through Netflix, or Amazon, or whatever and say, "Wow, that was a really cool movie. That was a really great story. Or I was really creeped out, or intrigued by that." You almost kind of forget what it took to get there, or was it in the theaters or not. So that's kind of exciting as a filmmaker. That it doesn't really matter as much the release platform, as much as how can I see it?
When you wake up in the middle of the night and you hear a scary sound, you're not picturing yourself getting the girl, you're not picturing yourself winning the prize and becoming a hero. What makes you scared is the fear that you're gonna die, or that something horrific is gonna happen. So while I'm not opposed to happy ending, or wherever the story is naturally supposed to go-I do end up finding that I like movies where you almost end up feel, at best, that the character survived it more than championed over it.
I've always said if I came up with a story that wasn't fear based that I was passionate about, that I would explore it. It's just that for as long as I can remember when I sit down in front of a piece of paper it's usually something scary in my head that I end up spilling out. So until that changes, yeah I love the genre and really believe in it.
We live in an age now where people go to the movies and, even the biggest movies are in the theaters six, eight weeks and then gone. And then for the rest of time now people are watching them on their phones, or computers, or TVs. And that's how the films gonna live.
