If You Think It, The

A Lot Of Life Is Dealing With Your Curse, Dealing With The Cards You Were Given That Aren't So Nice. Does It Make You Into A Monster, Or Can You Temper It In Some Way, Or Accept It And Go In Some Other Direction?

I Think The Important Thing About Staying Creative And Staying Sharp And Original Is Not To Look Back Too Much, And To Kind Of Look To Where Your Vision Is Going Now. But I Have Felt Over The Years A Definite Progression Or Arc From Feeling Guilty About What I Had Done With The First One, Because Certainly There Was All That Fundamentalist Guilt That Came Pouring Back In. Feeling Like I'd Done Something Horrible, "i'm A Despicable Person And I'm Perverse," And All These Things, To A Sense Of The Power And The Necessity, In A Sense, Of Horror Films And Dealing With Dark Material.

I Wrote, I Think, Half A Dozen Films That Were Completely Out Of Genre. Comedies, Love Stories, Even One Serious Film About Vietnam, And We Couldn't Get Backing For Any Of It. And We Both Sort Of Drifted From Making, At That Time, Serious Money On Last House To Going Through It All In The Course Of Almost Three Years And Only Getting Offers To Do Something Scary Again.

I Don't Want To Rescind American Directors But I Think That European Directors In General, Because Of The Size Of The Nations In Europe Are Exposed To All Different Cultures, They Can Easily Travel From One Distinct Culture To Another In A Matter Of Hours - You Can Drive For Two Weeks Across The United States And You're In The Same Basic Culture - So There Is A Certain Breadth Of Understanding And Sophistication That They Bring To It And Frankly, In Some Cases They Are Less Expensive Than American Directors.

The First Monster You Have To Scare The Audience With Is Yourself.