If you're a horse in a race, if you don't have blinkers on, and you turn your head and look at the audience, you're just going to trip up and fall. So I tried to never get intimidated by McCarthy's legacy, and I tried to ignore.
For me, all drama is based on conflict.
One thing I love about Cormac McCarthy is the types of pressure he puts onto people. You see the best and the worst in people, you really see what humanity is made of, and I think that resonates in some way.
Fear shuts off possibilities. The first thing that kicks in when you're reacting with fear... This is what I love about Roosevelt's quote, "There's nothing to fear but fear itself."
I do love genres, but I love finding new ways into the genre, or making that world fresh again.
There's major changes happening with technology and economics. But unfortunately, the initial reaction on any new frontier, it gets bloody, and people are overreacting, and very defensive, and they're not taking risks. In fact, they're taking such safe measures that they're shooting themselves in the foot.
The problem with an economic meltdown is that the responsibility and the challenges to deal with the environment are squandered. That's an age-old battle in terms of the major conflicts in places like Afghanistan, etc. So there are age-old battles that'll keep going on. Unfortunately, man is a very slow learner, and we tend to repeat mistakes, as opposed to learning from mistakes.
