Go Into The Story Interview: Scott Derrickson

My interview with the co-writer and director of the hit Marvel movie Doctor Strange as well as horror movies The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Sinister.

Here are links to the six installments of the entire interview:

Part 1: “Fear became the hurdle I would spend most of my adult life trying to clear. A lot of my work demonstrates that plainly. It’s certainly why I ended up working in the horror genre.”

Part 2: “I remember watching that it was like a sudden epiphany — I started thinking, ‘Somebody did that. Somebody got this piece of music and put it with these images. That’s why this is so awesome. Somebody actually did that. Hey, wouldn’t it be awesome to be that guy?’”

Part 3: “Horror can carry so much meaning, reckoning with evil in the world, within nature, and most of all within our own human condition. It can connect to our unspoken and unspeakable fears in ways that I don’t think even horror literature can reach.”

Part 4: “I could look at it as a religious person, as a person of belief, and it didn’t really make any sense. I could look at it as a purely medical, psychological tragedy. But that didn’t make real sense to me either. There was no easy way to reckon with the facts of what actually happened.”

Part 5: “I try to respect the creative process and put to the test what I believe and see what growth there is in the story for me to learn from, and how this story can expand me. If it enriches and resonates with me, then hopefully it will do the same for the audience.”

Part 6: “While shooting, I had written on the front of my script, a quote by Thomas a Kempis: ‘Who has a harder fight than he who is striving to overcome himself?’”

Scott is repped by WME and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.

Twitter: @scottderrickson

For nearly 200 Go Into The Story interviews with screenwriters, filmmakers, and Hollywood insiders, go here.