Top 25 Panos Cosmatos Quotes

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

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.

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’ve been watching films my whole life and am completely obsessed with them.

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.

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.

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

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.

In the night there’s sometimes a sort of cursed quality to the Pacific Northwest.

I am not against it. But I am suspicious of all forms of New Age spirituality, and religion in general.

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

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

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.

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.

Being compared to ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ is a huge compliment.

Mythologies are violent things, and to be true to them, you have to go to primal territory.

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.

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.

Certain things just rub me the wrong way.

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.

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.

Motley Crue was actually my gateway to heavy metal.

I feel like I thrive in the red light.