I think the first music I ever heard was Abba. I took my mother's cassette recorder and went into the bushes to listen to Abba when I was four or five-years-old.
— Panos Cosmatos
Motley Crue was actually my gateway to heavy metal.
I love to choose the right actors. It's kind of a pleasure to work with them and watch them imbue your concepts that you write.
I am not against it. But I am suspicious of all forms of New Age spirituality, and religion in general.
I think you have to be wise and know your limitations and know how to work within them.
I think making a film is as much knowing what you don't like as what you do like, and avoiding the things that you don't like like the plague and making sure that they never appear onscreen in any shape or form.
When I was a kid I wasn't allowed to watch horror movies at all. And actually, one of the genesis points for 'Mandy' and 'Black Rainbow' was this memory I have of being in video stores, reading the backs of videos and looking at the art, imagining some kind of non-existent imaginary film based on that.
We moved around a lot when I was younger. I never really felt at home until we moved to Canada, but even then, I always felt strangely out of place and alien.
The way people express themselves online, that's also how they express themselves in the real world.
The male ego is a terrifying, terrifying thing, you know? If it's shattered, it becomes even more dangerous.
Well I don't think of myself as like a horror or science fiction filmmaker. I just think of myself as a filmmaker.
Well, I think if you're telling a story, a three act structure will just naturally emerge out of it. But I also love it when a film doesn't feel like it's anchored too rigidly to that structure and you feel like anything could happen.
In the '90s, I kind of put aside all those things I loved in the '80s and I got really into watching foreign films and art films and stuff like that, and sort of soaking those up.
I don't know if I'm a sequels kind of person. I prefer each film to have its own unique identity.
Mythologies are violent things, and to be true to them, you have to go to primal territory.
Being compared to 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' is a huge compliment.
The idea of creating a quote-unquote 'retro' world isn't all that appealing to me by itself.
I still love Abba.
If I'm going to sell out, I'm going to sell out all the way, so a bid by the studio would be if you're going to go through the pain of trying to make a film, it's gotta be worth it.
I realized the modern equivalent of a broadsword duel would be a chainsaw battle.
1984 is such an iconic, loaded year in so many ways.
Certain things just rub me the wrong way.
I have a long, complicated history with horror.
I think what I was unconsciously expressing in 'Black Rainbow' was a very abstract and metaphorical grief, in the way I had suppressed my grief about my mother dying. In retrospect I realise I started writing 'Mandy' as a sort of antidote to that, to sort of express those emotions, to purge that grief.
I taught myself filmmaking on my own.
I might actually be allergic to testosterone. Whenever I've felt a testosterone rush I get, like, sick afterwards, and I feel exhausted and terrible.
The way I work is I'll basically become kind of fixated on a very stripped-down genre, like revenge or something like that, and just start layering on top of that and entering in thoughts and ideas, and then the story just kind of builds up that way.
I just love sitting in a theater watching a film and the grain is like boiling and it feels completely alive like an organism almost; like an organism made out of light.
Black Rainbow' is about control and your emotions being repressed and controlled, and 'Mandy's' about all a volcanic eruption!
I feel happy working in the low-budget realm, doing stuff that is a little bit more esoteric, and personal.
Me writing 'Black Rainbow' was me alone in a windowless room going insane.
My mother died in 1997 and I spiralled into this self-destructive vortex of trying to annihilate my consciousness. I was afraid to face the grief of losing her, because she was somebody I loved more than anybody else in the world.
Mandy' came from grief and depression. I wanted this to be an outward volcanic expulsion of the emotion of my first film.
A huge part of my writing process is listening to music as I write, almost creating an unofficial soundtrack to the film I'm working on, a sort of playlist. But the specific songs change rapidly as I write.
I think most religious belief structures are essentially like mind viruses.
You write a character, but in essence, it's just a concept of what it could be, and then actors come in and they have their own sort of interpretations and thoughts. If you respond to those and then go forward with them, then it's kind of like magic to see the idea you had become alive and in the flesh.
Well, I'm really interested in the idea of making genre films, but movies have a much more personal undercurrent to them and that look beautiful, and that's sort of the films I'm kind of interested in making.
I've had a VHS collection for many, many years. But I would prefer to watch a movie in the best format possible.
I try to look at the films as I make them from a distance, in a way. I think of them as kind of pop culture artefacts. I'll often make posters and tag lines as I'm working on them, and not just conceive of them as a story I'm going to tell, but as a whole, a piece - a whole object that exists in the pop culture realm.
When I was finally allowed to watch horror in my early teens I think I overdid it, I actually ended up generating some kind of low grade PTSD, I was paranoid and scared of our house being broken into. It actually took me a long time to get over that.
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with heavy metal, Van Halen, Motley Crue. The older I got, my tastes widened. I always felt an attraction to the attitudes of punk; also punk filmmakers, like Richard Kern.
I've been watching films my whole life and am completely obsessed with them.
I just find there's nothing funnier and more scary than a delusional man who thinks they're the center of the universe, and in fact they're not.
When I was growing up in the eighties, there was a real nostalgic streak for the fifties. Look at 'Back to the Future.'
Well, I think it's important to have some kind of a narrative engine that pushes the audience through the landscape. But I love films like 'Apocalypse Now,' which is a very mood driven film. It's a magnetic force that's pulling them through.
When you're working with an actor who's prepared and brings it when you need it, it's just a very validating creative experience.
The last thing on earth I wanted to do was make a movie that plays directly to a sort-of frat boy audience, you know?
I don't know anybody who goes horseback riding at sunset, but everybody watches TV and eats.
A lot of films mistake convolutedness for complexity. To me, a simple story can be a powerful spine to build around.
I guess a little bit of delusion can go a long way.
