I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. 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.

But with my last film, Spider it was agony. The money was always disappearing, nobody got paid, it was very difficult - and it's very distracting from the process of making the movie, of course. So I think things have been getting harder and harder.

Even Hitchcock liked to think of himself as a puppeteer who was manipulating the strings of his audience and making them jump. He liked to think he had that kind of control.

Well I don't think sex and violence have ever stopped a movie from being mainstream.

I also think the relationship I have with my audience is a lot more complex than what Hitchcock seemed to want his to be - although I think he had more going on under the surface as well.

You know, there's a saying in art that in order to be universal you must be specific. So I think every artist feels that he is dealing with specific things but that it also has significance universally.

Casting is really a black art. It's a huge part of directing and it's the most invisible. It's one that people don't really think about or talk about. But you can really destroy your movie by casting it badly before you've shot a foot of film. And yet there are no guidebooks for it, there's no rule book to tell you how to do it. It's all your own experience and your own sensibility and your own intuition.

I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation.

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.