I always try to better myself with every movie I make. I don't take anything sitting back, and so I try to learn from every film I make and carry that onto the next movie because I think it's important as a filmmaker to keep growing with each film, and I think I am growing with each movie.

I want to start off making the kinds of films that I loved growing up as a kid. Fun horror films that are scary but at the same time, after you finish the movie, it leaves you excited to see more.

Language-wise, my mom and dad's dialect, they're pretty obscure. It's Chinese, but not your traditional Chinese, like Cantonese or Mandarin. It wasn't something that I got to use very much growing up. We eventually just spoke English around the house.

When you conceive the scene, you go, 'That is scary, right?' When you shoot it, a lot of times you're not quite sure. Hopefully what you can shoot is what your conception is.

My first western was 'Death Hunt' with Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin; that was where I learned to ride. The movie was based on a true story about a guy that eluded the Mounties in Canada. We were in Canada for six weeks riding horses.

Grief reveals itself in the most mundane activities, like eating. It's never when you're looking at old pictures.

In its rather clinical view of death, 'True Grit' rivals the hardboiled world of 'Red Harvest'-era Dashiell Hammett and prefigures Cormac McCarthy by 20 years.

I grew up in the suburbs and basically associate the suburbs with cultural death.