Quotes from Drew Goddard

If I had to pick one scary movie, I'd go with John Carpenter's 'The Thing.' That's probably number one.

I love cult movies. I probably have watched 'Big Trouble In Little China' more than anyone on the planet.

I had one of those families that let me watch things they should not have let me watch. When I was a kid, I remember I watched 'Alien' at, like, 6. It was traumatizing.

Filmmaking is incredible introspective. It forces you to sort of examine yourself in new ways.

You don't want to make a movie just to make a movie. You better have a point of view.

I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, which is my hometown. In Los Alamos is, for people who don't know, a nuclear lab that built the atomic bomb. The only reason the town exists is to make nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction, and that's still happening there.

Some of our best episodes of 'Buffy' were written over a weekend. You can really get in touch with your creative spirit when you're at your most desperate.

You start to fall in love with characters as you work with them, and anytime that you care about your characters and you realize that you're gonna have to kill them, that fear creeps in. It's sad. It's scary, and it's also sad. Because you like these people.

When you are dealing with something that's crazy, you still want actors to play characters and find the reality of the situation, no matter how absurd the situation is.

It was a lot of 'Dungeons and Dragons' all through my teens.

I think audiences crave something new. I don't think audiences want the same old thing, no matter how much conventional Hollywood tells you that.

Certainly, 3rd acts of any movie are hard. It's always hard to have something that will give you the promises from the beginning of the movie. That's true for all movies.

I love TV. I've been lucky that I get to do both, and both have things I love about them, features and TV. I hope I get to do both for the rest of my career.

I can always tell when a filmmaker doesn't care about his or her characters; they just care about setting them up to kill them off.

That's the fun part about being a director. You get to say, 'Oh, now that I'm in charge, I can try and cast whoever I want.' They can always say no, but that's okay.

Clearly, the works of John Carpenter and Sam Raimi are front and center here. Argento is definitely there. But even stuff like the 'Friday the 13th' movies had quite an influence on me growing up.

Like anything, I think there are some wonderful found footage movies, and there are some less good. Certainly when it's done well, I really love it. I really love it as a genre.

There's just something wonderful about getting a small group of people together in an isolated location, and there's something about cabins themselves that imply both horror and fun. When you go to a cabin, you're usually going to have a good time.

If I had all the filmmakers that traumatized me when I was a little kid in this room, all I would say is, 'Thank you,' because they've made me who I am. As much as I say 'trauma,' it all comes from a place of love. The fact that I am feeling emotions at all based on a work is a wonderful thing, so I'm happy to be a part of that discussion.

Here's the thing about 'Cabin in the Woods.' I did virtually no research on this movie.

I do love writing but it is a lonely profession. You're lonely and optimistic at the same time.

The greatest villain of all time is The Joker - he always has been, and I don't know anyone who's not going to have Heath Ledger's performance burnt into their brains for the rest of their lives.

I happen to like things that are funny and dramatic at the same time. I don't see the difference.

I think so much of the horror film is about our primal instincts, and our primal instincts are not just towards violence. It's also towards sex. I feel like horror movies, as much as they're about violence, they're also about sex. It's about our instincts, so in that regard, it's crucial that you honor both of those things.