PANOS COSMATOS

I don't know if I'm a sequels kind of person. I prefer each film to have its own unique identity.

Well, when I was really young and we lived in Sweden, the only films that were around at that point were... We had this collection of these super-8 highlight reels that they used to sell; like, they sold these super-8 reels that only had the best parts from a movie. So early on that's what I was seeing.

Well I don't think of myself as like a horror or science fiction filmmaker. I just think of myself as a filmmaker.

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.

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 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.

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 think most religious belief structures are essentially like mind viruses.

I don't know anybody who goes horseback riding at sunset, but everybody watches TV and eats.

I'm too neurotic to ever feel good. If I ever felt good, I think something horrible would happen.

I taught myself filmmaking on my own.

I feel happy working in the low-budget realm, doing stuff that is a little bit more esoteric, and personal.

The thing I do miss about the way some sequels were in the past was that each film felt like its own unique, complete tone. Now, sequels are tonal facsimiles of the ones before them, like a television series, whereas back in the past sequels would often be radically different from the ones before.

I realized the modern equivalent of a broadsword duel would be a chainsaw battle.

I've always liked the idea of merging esoteric art cinema with down-and-dirty exploitation films.

There was a time in my life when I would literally go see every single film that came out in the theaters. No matter what. I just became obsessed with movies, and wound up getting drawn to the pulsating grain of film and the flickering of the light.

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.

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 think you have to be wise and know your limitations and know how to work within them.

Mandy' came from grief and depression. I wanted this to be an outward volcanic expulsion of the emotion of my first film.

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 feel like I thrive in the red light.

I've had a VHS collection for many, many years. But I would prefer to watch a movie in the best format possible.

I'd been drifting and in a very self-destructive bent ever since my mother died and as soon as I dealt with the grief, for the first time in 10 years, I had clarity and I realized: 'I need to make a movie, now, cause if I don't make it now, I might never do it.' That's what pushed me forward, and I immediately moved to Vancouver.

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.