It's my conceit that perhaps some diseases perceived as diseases which destroy a well-functioning machine, actually turn it into a new but still well-functioning machine with a different purpose. The AIDS virus: look at it from its point of view. Very vital, very excited, really having a good time. It's really a triumph if you're a virus. See the movies from the disease's point of view. You can see why they would resist all attempts to destroy them. These are all cerebral games but they have emotional correlatives as well.
Since I see technology as being an extension of the human body, it's inevitable that it should come home to roost.
You have to believe in God before you can say there are things that man was not meant to know. I don't think there's anything man wasn't meant to know. There are just some stupid things that people shouldn't do.
Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.
When you're in the muck you can only see muck. If you somehow manage to float above it, you still see the muck but you see it from a different perspective. And you see other things, too. That's the consolation of philosophy.
All stereotypes turn out to be true. This is a horrifying thing about life. All those things you fought against as a youth: you begin to realize they're stereotypes because they're true.
Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion.
I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontations. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you're making a horror film doesn't mean you can't make an artful film.
As an artist, your responsibility is to be irresponsible. As soon as you talk about social or political responsibility, you've amputated the best limbs you've got as an artist. You are plugging into a very restrictive system that is going to push and mold you, and is going to make your art totally useless and ineffective.
Civilization is repression. You don't get civilization without repression of the unconscious, of the id. And the basic appeal of art is to the unconscious. Therefore, art is somewhat subversive of civilization. And yet at the same time it seems necessary for civilization. You don't get civilization without art.
You need language for thought. And you need language to anticipate death. There is no abstract thought without language. And no anticipation. I think the anticipation of death without language would be impossible.
If religion is used to allow you to come to terms with death, and also to guide you in how you live your life, then I think art can do the same thing. But in a schematic way, in a much less rigid and absolute way, which is why it appeals to me and religion doesn't.
We've all got the disease - the disease of being finite. Death is the basis of all horror.
The first fact of human existence is the human body. If you get away from physical reality, you're fudging, in fantasy-land-not coming to grips with what violence does.
We question a country's self-mythology. Perfect town and perfect family are - like Westerns - part of America's mythology, involving notions of past innocence and naïveté. But is it possible for innocence to exist while something heinous transpires elsewhere? What does it take for a country to be rich and prosperous? What does that country do to the world?
To me, the life that we live is heaven. My idea of paradise is life on Earth. But we often don't know it, and can't see it that way, until, I'm sure, we start to leave it. I guess that's the way I feel about film.
I identify with the parasites.
- gleaned from IMDB
