Quotes from Panos Cosmatos

When I was growing up in the eighties, there was a real nostalgic streak for the fifties. Look at 'Back to the Future.'

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.

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

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.

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.

I still love Abba.

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.

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.

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