At a horror movie, you can see other people dealing with the scary things. They can bolster you. You can think, 'Okay, if that guy can deal with it, I can deal with it.' There are lessons to be learned there, as opposed to having a frivolous popcorn experience. I think some of this stuff is good for your soul.

Dan Trachtenberg

Categorized in : You Good Soul Experience

I spent a long time trying to make it in the commercial world hoping that commercials would then lead to movies. That was a less-travelled path at the time, although it's very well-travelled now.

Dan Trachtenberg

trying long world

I grew up loving Ridley Scott and Tony Scott and Michael Bay and Adrian Lyne.

Dan Trachtenberg

grew grew-up

I was very excited to hone in on John Goodman. Casting John first really set the tone. He's very good at being terrifying and being hilarious, and I loved the idea of that character not being merely 'moustache-twirly'. I enjoyed being scared by him.

Dan Trachtenberg

casting character ideas

I've always been a fan of [Mary Elizabeth Winstead's]. She gets to do some fun action-y stuff she brings this gritty swashbuckle to. I think there's a lot of movies that have women in peril running away from the scarier things and then end up being saved by a man, so it's great to see this character MacGyver her way out of situations, whether physically MacGyvering away, or mentally MacGyvering a way out of something. I relate to her more than I relate to most leading men in movies.

Dan Trachtenberg

running fun character

I allow myself to get firmly sucked in. I love that! I come from that.

Dan Trachtenberg

I've definitely seen things that have made me laugh. And there's some things that are really smart and like, "Oh man, we should have done that, that's really cool!" And there's some things that are like, "Oh, do they know something? I don't know!" So there's the whole variety of things that are in those theories. But they're cool.

Dan Trachtenberg

smart should-have men

One of the first cassette tapes I ever purchased was the Rambo III score. I was not allowed to see Rambo, but my mom would allow me to buy the music, so I would listen to that score over and over and imagine the movie. But those limitations and not being able to access those things made me so much more excited about them.

Dan Trachtenberg

rambo able mom

A lot of the commercials that I was doing were very slice-of-life, emotional, documentary-style, not big and cinematic and ultimately like the kind of movie I wanted to make.

Dan Trachtenberg

documentaries style emotional

So much of the film is non-verbal, and yet you know everything she's thinking and feeling and she's so resourceful.

Dan Trachtenberg

company-news

I love being able to tell a story visually. It's something I love about making commercials, where you put a magnifying glass over the mundane and make it feel extraordinary.

Dan Trachtenberg

story feel you love

Life is a very scary thing because it's unknown. Anything can happen anytime, and that is terrifying for all of us: to not to be in control.

Dan Trachtenberg

life-is-a happen control life

I still don't know how to jump-start a car, even though it's been told to me a million times. But I do love thinking about how creativity works.

Dan Trachtenberg

me car love thinking

I appreciate the craft in 'Bioshock' and 'Resident Evil,' and I've played all of them. But I also learned that I don't like playing them because I get really scared.

Dan Trachtenberg

craft like appreciate evil

I thought that we all were afraid of death, but I've talked to my wife and other people, and they're not afraid of death the way I am. I find that really confusing. I don't like the idea of nothingness - that's terrifying to me.

Dan Trachtenberg

i-am me wife death

The reason I think we hold films like 'The Sixth Sense' and 'Citizen Kane' in such high regard is those are movies that were amplified by their twists but were already bringing the goods.

Dan Trachtenberg

high movies think reason

I don't think a lot of people would spot the video-game influences in '10 Cloverfield Lane.' People think it's just a Hitchcockian mystery. And I was heavily influenced by Alfred Hitchcock, for sure. But for a generation prior to mine, that would be the sole influence. Since I grew up playing video games, I drew so much inspiration from that world.

Dan Trachtenberg

video-games generation people world

Before we understood that houses shift just over time because the ground is moving, the creaks in a house were assumed to be apparitions, or ghosts. Before we understood that we live on a planet, and there are others, the only answers to where we came from had to be something supernatural.

Dan Trachtenberg

live house time moving

My family went Intellivision instead of Atari. I would go over to my friends' houses to play their Ataris and was so jealous of that. I don't remember them ever being jealous that I had the Intellivision.

Dan Trachtenberg

friends jealous family remember

I never really lost touch with video games. Even while shooting '10 Cloverfield Lane,' I brought my PlayStation with me, the most portable of all the consoles, and was playing every night.

Dan Trachtenberg

video-games never me night

I used to review games on 'The Totally Rad Show,' and the best thing about that was I would finish games. Now, it's become challenging for me to actually sit through an entire game. I tend to get excited about the next shiny thing.

Dan Trachtenberg

finish best game me