I'm never aiming to make a movie like someone else's movie, but in order to describe a movie to someone else who hasn't seen it, you usually have to reference things they have seen.
Growing up, I had the weird fantasy list: I wanted to be Alice Cooper, Steven Spielberg, and Stan Lee. You have to have almost psychotic drive, because you're going to have years of failure.
Without really analyzing it, I grew up in Massachusetts, so the Salem witch trials were always something that I was around. The average kindergartner probably doesn't know about it, except that in Massachusetts, you do, because they'll take you on field trips to see reenactments and stuff.
There are so many projects that don't happen, just sometimes they don't get announced, so no one ever knows about them and you don't have to talk about them.
White Zombie was a bunch of kids with the worst equipment playing in a basement. But that is what is so great about it. There is no reason to think that you can't do it.
As far as directors, I'm a big fan of any kind of Billy Wilder stuff. Anything he does.
Things like that become a blur - shot at some soundstage, somewhere - that's as much as I can remember.
The pirating thing is bad. The people it hurts the most are the ones you least think it hurts. It's not the big Britney Spears albums that are being pirated; it's the indie bands that don't have two cents to their name.
I like 1977 because it is more primitive. If it were modern day, like one Universal guy was like wouldn't they just use their cell phone? I guess he did not read that it was 1977 in the script.
I like movies where you can come back and re-watch them and admire the cinematography 25 years later.
Those days if you drove cross country and you broke down on the side of the road, and the sign says 200 miles to the next gas station, you knew you were so screwed.
I'd always want to decorate my bedroom. I needed visuals and to be stimulated by things. I'm still like that. It's the way I see the world.
Once you feel like you're being dictated by other people's expectations, it usually backfires.
I understand why some kid in his bedroom in Wisconsin thinks downloading songs couldn't hurt anyone. True fans will buy the CD or go see the movie after downloading, but to say it doesn't affect anyone - come on.
I wanted it to be like a high quality, drive-in movie.
Just getting movies made is difficult because it takes a lot of money; I mean, it costs more money to make one movie than most bands will spend on every single record of their entire career; it's a huge undertaking.
I think it is good escapist entertainment even though it's bad.
I don't know that I have a fascination with witches per se - well, maybe I just have a fascination with everything that's weird.
I think probably the scariest thing, as weird as it sounds, was 'The Wizard of Oz' and the flying monkeys with the witch. I remember seeing that - it still seems freaky.
I really just do what I like. I don't understand what the general public likes sometimes.
