 Films have gotten leaner and leaner, cutting out all variations from the story line. |
| Initially with The Butcher Boy, there was this kid growing up in this strange, weird environment that I remember from when I was a kid. And Patrick's vision was so complete there. |
| Why should a horror film be just a horror film? To me, The Company of Wolves is a fairy tale; it's got all those elements plus a lot more. And we know that fairy tales aren't innocent any more. |
| I've also worked hard portraying an Ireland which is fast disappearing. Ireland was a very depressed and difficult place in the 1980s, and I've tried to include that in the script. I worked really hard to find the heart of the book. |
| In Dreams... well, I was slightly overcompensating with that. I was a bit like a director for hire, so maybe I was putting too much imagery that was familiar to me into it. |
| It's nice to work with Hollywood because there is never any question of resources put at your disposal to make a film as long as it is the right thing to do. |
| And I think I often choose to do something because it's quite different from what I've done before. |
| There's no point in making a film out of a great book. The book's already great. What's the point? |
| My conception of it was that in a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end. |
| It's the same thing in a way, although writing a book is a very solitary thing. |
| Well, Company of Wolves was about that literally, about fairy tales. |
| I do enjoy working with writers. |
| The Company of Wolves doesn't belong in any category, so it's difficult to prepare an audience for it. It's not a horror film, it's not a fantasy film, it's not a children's film - so what is it? |
| It's hard to know whether certain characters come to life or not, they either come to have their own life or they don't. I've written many things in which the characters just remain inert. |
| For me now, it's about what you would write and what you wouldn't write, and that's how I select what I am going to do. It can be quite nice being brought a concept by a studio for me to work on. |
| When you've written a movie, you then get together with a whole lot of people and make it. In many ways, I think it is far nicer to be with people rather than being completely solitary. |
| Never make a promise - you may have to keep it. |
| I took two years away from making films to write a novel. |
| But everyone gets burnt, don't they? Certain things are outside of your control. I suppose the only thing you can learn as a director is to not put yourself into situations where it can get outside of your control. And that's what happened. |
| The Company of Wolves is about how society teaches young women to look at themselves, and what to be afraid of. It's about a girl learning that the world of sensuality and the unknown is not to be feared, that it's worth getting your teeth into. |
