Interestingly enough, there is a really different dynamic when you're directing something that somebody else has written compared to when you're directing something that you've written. And there's a good and a bad side to it. I think the bad side is that you never feel the same level of connection to the material - you just don't.
Priests and pastors are probably the most stereotyped characters in film and television, and the reason why, I think, is that most people don't know one. Most writers who work in Hollywood don't know any.
Some of the most intelligent people I've met in my life are priests and pastors; now, a lot of them aren't that, though. Some of the most sanctimonious and hypocritical people I've met are priests and pastors, also.
The role that blood plays in Christian iconography is huge - the washing of the blood, the shedding of blood, the blood of the cross, the crucifixion, the violence of that imagery. These are horrific, and yet they are at the center of the Christian faith. There is a place where beauty and terror merge, and it's at the cross.
There's a clean simplicity to the plotting of 'Sinister,' whether you like it or not. And the scares are deliberate and even heavy-handed in a way. There's not a lot of sophistication or nuance in the plotting and not much restraint in the scares - and that's a part of what makes the movie accessible.
To me, the horror genre is the genre of non-denial. It's about admitting that there is evil in the world and recognizing that there is evil within us and that we're not in control and that the things that we are afraid of must be confronted in order for us to relinquish that fear.
When I went to Europe a few years ago, I felt very at home there, and I loved standing in Notre Dame and looking at all the gargoyles on the outside of that building and realizing that, as scary and frightening as they were, what I was looking at was something that was built to the glory of God.
You know, 'Top Gun' was the movie I saw in high school that made me want to be a filmmaker. I remember very specifically coming out of the Century 21 Theater in Colorado from seeing it, and my friend saying, 'What did you think of the movie?' And I said, 'I think I know what I want to do for a living.' That's a true story.
The more frightening and sort of dark and oppressive a movie is, the more free you are to explore the supernatural and explore faith. The two just somehow go hand-in-hand really nicely.
Kurosawa is my hero, and I've taught courses on his films, and I love what he does, and 'Rashomon' is, I think, his second greatest film after 'Ikiru.'
My faith sometimes burdens me with the responsibility to think very deeply and long and hard about the choices I make creatively. There are projects I turn down because the material is too much a violation of what I believe. But that's true of anybody.
In my personal life, dark material is kind of an emptying out - it leaves more room for light. If I'm writing a particularly awful scene, something is released in the process.
If you look at life with any honesty and intelligence, it's clear that human nature is dark, vile, selfish, and despondent. But I also see a force in human nature, namely grace, that sometimes works against our natural moral entropy.
If we're not compelled to gain a deeper understanding of good and evil, how can we make the world a better place? How can we find ourselves at the end of our lives and know that our lives were significant? Those things would be impossibilities.
I've never been a materialist; I've never been somebody who believes in only what we can see and measure. I continue to be a student of religious philosophy, and I continue to take those ideas very seriously.
I'm not standing above the audience trying to manipulate them as a puppet master or a trickster; I'm inside the story I'm writing and making and thinking about things very seriously and feeling very deeply at times, and trying to translate that into a narrative.
I'm not interested in gothic storytelling or the horrific for its own sake. I'm always interested in it as a way of getting at larger ideas or important meaning. And you don't see that as much as you'd think in the history of horror cinema. A lot of times, it's scariness for scariness' own sake.
I'm not going to work outside of genre. It's going to be horror, action, or sci-fi. I don't ever really see myself being interested in movies outside of that.
I'm an orthodox Christian. When people ask me if I'm a Christian, I always want to qualify and know what they mean by that. I'm not a Republican, and I'm not right wing. I'm not a dispensationalist. I don't think the world's about to end.
I would be concerned if one of my children were constantly watching nothing but horror films or indulging in gothic literature without the balance of other types of art and entertainment. I do think that's a danger.
