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" I've never been a materialist; I've never been somebody who believes in only what we can see and measure. I continue to be a student of religious philosophy, and I continue to take those ideas very seriously. "

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" If you look at life with any honesty and intelligence, it's clear that human nature is dark, vile, selfish, and despondent. But I also see a force in human nature, namely grace, that sometimes works against our natural moral entropy. "

Scott Derrickson

Life

Nature

Honesty

" Fundamentalism is such a pejorative word and immediately evokes images of angry extremism. In my experience, that's not usually what it looks like. I was a fundamentalist in high school. "

" Priests and pastors are probably the most stereotyped characters in film and television, and the reason why, I think, is that most people don't know one. Most writers who work in Hollywood don't know any. "

" In my horror movies, I was always trying to deal with real characters and real character drama played by good actors... Laura Linney, Ethan Hawke, Eric Bana, and Tom Wilkinson, people who don't do horror normally. "

" There's a clean simplicity to the plotting of 'Sinister,' whether you like it or not. And the scares are deliberate and even heavy-handed in a way. There's not a lot of sophistication or nuance in the plotting and not much restraint in the scares - and that's a part of what makes the movie accessible. "

Scott Derrickson

Much

Simplicity

" The world is a more mysterious place than we admit sometimes - there is more to the world than just human evil. "

" I think after 'The Day The Earth Stood Still,' I really stopped thinking strategically about my career. I just did. At that point, it became crystal clear to me that you can strategise your career all you want, but it's so difficult to get a movie made, and creativity shouldn't be subjected to that kind of strategic thinking. "

Scott Derrickson

Think

Day

" My interest in the comic goes back a long time, because I grew up reading comics, mostly Marvel Comics, and I always loved 'Doctor Strange' uniquely. It was the presence of the fantastical, the presence of the supernatural that was in it. The idea of magic. "

" I came in with a very specific idea about what a Doctor Strange movie should be, which was rooted in the comics, and I thought it should be as weird and as visually ambitious compared to modern comic book movies as the comic was when it showed up in the '60s compared to other comic books at the time. "

" When I was hired to write and direct a movie, my Christian duty suddenly became quite clear: My primary duty as a Christian in Hollywood is to do my job well. "

" I'm not standing above the audience trying to manipulate them as a puppet master or a trickster; I'm inside the story I'm writing and making and thinking about things very seriously and feeling very deeply at times, and trying to translate that into a narrative. "

" Fundamentalism is rooted in fear, and it's another reason I'm interested in the horror genre, because I know the fear that fundamentalism is built upon. "

" Kurosawa is my hero, and I've taught courses on his films, and I love what he does, and 'Rashomon' is, I think, his second greatest film after 'Ikiru.' "

Scott Derrickson

Greatest

Hero

" I certainly hope they let me make another 'Doctor Strange.' I would do it in a second. I love this character. It's been the best filmmaking experience of my career; I work really well with these guys. It was a rewarding, collaborative process that I would do again in a second. "

Scott Derrickson

Work

Best

" I always liked 'The Outer Limits' as a kid. More than 'The Twilight Zone.' "

Scott Derrickson

Always

Limits

" I'm an orthodox Christian. When people ask me if I'm a Christian, I always want to qualify and know what they mean by that. I'm not a Republican, and I'm not right wing. I'm not a dispensationalist. I don't think the world's about to end. "

Scott Derrickson

End

Know

" Trauma and pain and suffering can be the very thing that dislodges a person from themselves both in awful ways and larger ways that force one to reckon with one's own life. "

" Interestingly enough, there is a really different dynamic when you're directing something that somebody else has written compared to when you're directing something that you've written. And there's a good and a bad side to it. I think the bad side is that you never feel the same level of connection to the material - you just don't. "

" I'm not interested in gothic storytelling or the horrific for its own sake. I'm always interested in it as a way of getting at larger ideas or important meaning. And you don't see that as much as you'd think in the history of horror cinema. A lot of times, it's scariness for scariness' own sake. "

" I can't imagine making something that is made only to be scary. For me, the darkness and scary material has to have meaning attached to it, or I can't invest the time and energy it takes to write and script or make a movie. It has to mean something. "

Scott Derrickson

Meaning

Darkness

" The more frightening and sort of dark and oppressive a movie is, the more free you are to explore the supernatural and explore faith. The two just somehow go hand-in-hand really nicely. "

" Catholicism is so steeped in imagery. It's one of the many reasons Catholicism has given birth to so many great filmmakers compared to the Protestant tradition - even in America, where we're primarily Protestant. "

" The role that blood plays in Christian iconography is huge - the washing of the blood, the shedding of blood, the blood of the cross, the crucifixion, the violence of that imagery. These are horrific, and yet they are at the center of the Christian faith. There is a place where beauty and terror merge, and it's at the cross. "

" Screenplays are the currency of Hollywood. "

" I really love horror novels, horror films, that are pointing at deeper ideas and thematic meaning. It's a way of thinking about films differently; that's what I think I like the most about it. I love the fact that's it's pointing at a more mysterious world - that the world is more of a mysterious place than we tend to let ourselves believe. "

" Some of the most intelligent people I've met in my life are priests and pastors; now, a lot of them aren't that, though. Some of the most sanctimonious and hypocritical people I've met are priests and pastors, also. "

" My understanding of religion and science is that they're both arrogant schools of thought, and whether they acknowledge it or not they continually broadcast the idea that they have the world figured out. And what they don't know, they have a theory for which is probably correct. It feels like that shrinks the world, rather than expands it. "

" The momentum of my creative life and intellectual growth is still the momentum of breaking out of fundamentalism. Because of that, I'm very grateful for it. But I'm also grateful that at the center of it was something that I still believe to be true - those fundamentals of faith. "

" In my films, I either want the music to be very subtle and very buried or just put it right out in front and be super blunt with it. "

" I think the Christ-myth stories make great stories, whether it's 'The Matrix' or 'Braveheart,' they all are tapping into some kind of deep myth in our DNA, and by myth I don't necessarily mean false. "