Brad Anderson

“Part of my reason for 'Session 9' was to break out, to destroy the illusion of me as 'Mr. Romantic Comedy Guy.'”

“I find psychological thrillers interesting both dramatically and visually.”

“Things have a tendency in the film business to fall apart more often than they come together.”

“Persistence is half the battle. That's what I love about independent movies. They don't have to be made. There's no studio with an agenda to set up a franchise like 'Batman' or to make a vehicle for a celebrity actor. My films are made because I love the process.”

“'Session 9' used light and darkness to create atmosphere.”

“What drew me into making movies is trying to make characters that step off the screen.”

“My favorite filmmakers are in the Kubrick, Polanski kind of mold. I just like that world. I think it's more cinematic and gets under your skin more.”

“I've never been in the studio world; TV is as close as I get to the more corporate approach to making entertainment.”

“True horror, I think, deals with dread and menace and gets under your skin.”

“If you're making a film, you've got to have one eye to the audience and one eye to what excites you about it, and sometimes it's not the same thing.”

“I don't know, maybe I just like to mix it up and have a more of an eclectic need to just try out new things and road test ideas and try out a genre that I haven't done before.”

“I think it is harder to scare young people because there is an ironic hipster stance that you have to take in relation to pop culture. You know you're being manipulated. People are so aware of the manipulation. We're all aware that movies toy with us and pull our strings. There was a time when people just didn't acknowledge that as much.”

“'Session 9' can be interpreted in different ways. You can get the sense that Gordon breathes in an evil spirit but can also be read as a much more clinical movie that shows a man who becomes unhinged or may be going mad. An inspiration was Nicolas Roeg's 'Don't Look Now.'”

“As a filmmaker, you just make the movie you want to make, and you sort of put your faith in the distributor to make sure the right people see it.”

“There's a difference between telling a story and not providing an explanation because you just don't do it well or pull it off.”

“You don't fall in love with someone because they're perfect and meet your requirements - you fall for the things that are different about them or even problematic.”

“When I went to Sundance back in 1998, indie film was all the rage, and Miramax was throwing down five or six million dollars for several films each year. Those were the salad days of indie film, and those days are over. I'm not out there worrying too much about it.”

“In terms of my career, it began in earnest when I was living in Boston. I started doing my own films, working initially as an editor and editing assistant - briefly - at WGBH, as an editor on other people's movies, trying to get some experience under my belt, but eventually just doing my own short films, doing them my way.”

“I don't think anyone can call a movie like 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' a horror movie. It's a jolt. It's a series of jolts followed by a quick one-liner that's wallpapered with an MTV rock & roll soundtrack. That's not horror to me.”

“I don't see myself doing any comedies. I like comedies as much as anyone else; I just don't really have a desire to do them.”