PAUL W. S. ANDERSON

I guess the way I shoot things is slightly influenced by the way videogames are cut and shot.

I very much see 'Resident Evil' as my franchise that I kicked, screaming, into life.

3D is obviously not as suited to drama and romantic comedies. But for what I do, I felt that 3D was a very, very appropriate technology.

I think for the disaster to work and the drama to work, you really need to feel like you're really in that world.

I think, quite often, filmmakers kind of think so much about what the franchise will be and sometimes can neglect to put their efforts into the movie that they are actually making.

When I first came to Hollywood to make 'Mortal Kombat' back in the day, there was this rule that female-led action movies don't work and American studios didn't want to make them.

'Pompeii' is definitely a passion project for me.

'Pompeii' is kind of a lifelong obsession for me.

I've always seen my movies in particular as being an immersive experience. I mean, with the technology at my disposal, I've always tried to make them as immersive an experience as possible.

I think 'Death Race 2000' is a classic, but it's a classic from the 1970s, and I think it's a particular kind of drive-in-exploitation movie satire masterpiece, and it was very much a movie of its time.

You can film the most exciting car chase and the most exciting stunts, but if you don't care about the person inside the car, and you don't care about their predicament, you're not really going to care about the action, either.

Every time I go to Japan and meet Capcom, it is like going to see the Umbrella Corporation. You ask them things, and they won't give you a straight answer about anything.

I really believe, especially with 3D, you kind of have to approach it as this holistic thing. You have to kind of mount a 3D movie; you can't just add 3D as a kind of a special sauce sprinkled on top of a dish afterwards to give you an extra 20-percent in theater grosses, which I think is the way a lot of studios perceive it.

I think when people think of Pompeii, they think it was just destroyed by the volcano. Yes, it was the eruption of the volcano that eventually caused the pyroclastic surge that swept over Pompeii and destroyed it for good. But also, they had to face the effects of a very extreme earthquake and a tidal wave that swept in from the Bay of Naples.

I always refer to the first 'Resident Evil' movie as 'the little movie that could' because, at the time, it was kind of unfashionable to do video game movies.

My grandfather, who brought me up, was a coal miner. I visited the mines with him. I remember it vividly. It was horrible. I'm glad I didn't go into the family business.

'Death Race' was a very modern action movie, and it used all of those modern action techniques with lots of hand-held camera, lots of punchy zooms, and lots of quick movements and quick cuts.

I've always - from my very first film, 'Shopping,' which was Jude Law and Sadie Frost, I mean, I've always liked strong women characters in films.

I'm a big 3-D convert.

We are definitely modernizing 'The Three Musketeers' without compromising the fun of shooting a period piece. But in our film, corsets and feathered hats don't take center stage. Our version is rich in eye-popping action, romance, and adventure.

When I started working as a writer-director, that's when he became Paul Thomas Anderson and I became Paul W.S. Anderson. Neither of us can write and direct an American movie under the name Paul Anderson.

No one rocks a heavy machine gun like Michelle Rodriguez.

I started in television in the U.K., and I've always wanted to get back into TV.

Pompeii was an incredibly corrupt city. Pompeii was the Las Vegas of the Roman Empire.

'Pompeii' will be PG-13. I think it has to have a level of violence and death in it because you've got a volcano exploding. But it will be another PG-13 movie.