Are you a believer?

Oh yeah, religion is life, whether we like it or not we are all dealing with religion today. The price of petrol is religion. The craziness in the Middle East is religion. The abdication of personal responsibility is religion. But don't interpret this as religion equals problems equals why the world is a heap. It is failure to interpret what I think what religion should be about that has the world in a mess. So I am very much a believer in religion.

So does that help you to make a film like this which has the book of Revelation at its core?

The book of Revelation is the Bible's last great parlor trick.  It makes sure you can never close the Bible and go right, done, read that, moving on. It makes the Bible exist in perpetuity because obviously there is a clue in the title...it's about revelation, it's about code and personal or group interpretation of the coda contained therein. Everyone says it's a warning and it is and it isn't; it actually has a happy ending because He smites the Beast. I was speaking to a theological scholar in New York at an open forum and he said it is probably the most misquoted piece of literature in history. Which is bizarre but what happens is that the misconception starts to become reality and the next thing you know, you are off to the races.

Is it a concern that some people might take the film too seriously?

I hope they do take it literary because there is a literal notion at work in the movie which is very simple...evil is man-made. We are in a mess because we did it. We are destroying the planet, we are destroying each other and it is self inflicted. But I know what you mean...will a kid come along who is the spawn of a dog? But you never see these actions in the movie. The genius of David Seltzer's script and Dick Donner's movie is that there is a lot of synaptic jumping required to put it all together. But it's fascinating how that rock wants to roll down that hill. In America they are just giddy...saying - that's George Bush at the end! But I didn't say that, in fact the timeline doesn't even make sense. But the leap is to go there straight away.

Are you miffed that the Catholic church has not damned you and this film?

No the poor old Catholic Church, with The Da Vinci Code and all that...fell for it again. I'm not going to defend them or damn them. But some marketing people are probably thinking...let's do a Da Vinci, let's get everyone upset and it'll be great. But I don't think there was much hope of that with this film. What the film says is what is being peddled on Sundays is 100 per cent true. They are not going to come out against that. What has happened is that some Christian groups in America have damned the film of being irrelevant...But I'm not disappointed that they didn't start a fire over it.

What about the alleged curse of The Omen?

I'm between a rock and a hard place here because from the get-go the PR people were like asking if anyone had died today...I don't particularly want to indulge that because we had more than our fair share of bad luck. It's like being an animal in a zoo and it's not fun for the animals. When it was happening to us in the day to day operations it became   depressing. We had weird stuff go wrong; we had cameras shut down that shouldn't. We got film destroyed in labs that was unexplainable...13,500 feet film, two days worth of shooting. It was the scene when the boy's hair is cut to show the 666 and the fight with Mrs. Blaylock - all destroyed! I was an assistant cameraman, I have been doing this for 15 years and you'll get a scratch, you'll lose a roll maybe but to lose an entire batch in the lab that night...80 per cent of the film was utterly destroyed...It reminded me of the times as a kid when you messed about with a Ouija board and then something happens so that you wished you had not done that. There was a bit of that to this. So it started to get too much. Whether or not it is voodoo nonsense or not, I don't know. I am a superstitious person by nature and it is a very debilitating disease because you invent problems for yourself that you have to cure with key words and processes.

How important was the theatrical release being 06/06/06?

It would have been churlish to ignore using that string of numbers which is one of the biggest plot devices in the movie. So from phone call number one...do you want to do the movie? to phone call number two...can you bring it in in nine and a half months?...My favorite twist on the numbers is something a German told me the other day...three sixes is 18 and the first and eighth letter of the alphabet is A and H...Adolf Hitler.

Was it deliberate that Liev Schreiber sounds like Gregory Peck?

He has a boomy voice but he occasionally slipped into it. But he has a great voice. Maybe it was an unconscious, unhelpable thing.

The casting is great; did you get everyone you wanted?

I got a big piece of cardboard and pinned pictures of who I thought would be great under their character titles. Michael Gambon was there, Pete Postlethwaite, David Thewlis, Mia Farrow and Liev Schreiber. I thought we would never get them but this whole movie if it is any good it's because of them. I flew to New York to meet Julia Stiles.  I called Liev, David, Pete and Michael. There was a snowball effect...after I had one person the others followed.

Do you have extra scenes that will be part of the DVD release of The Omen?

There are no deleted scenes; we got everything we wanted in the movie. There was a struggle for a moment with the MPAA over an R-rating or PG-13. It became an interesting argument on content over perception. They said it was R-rated because there was a guy dropping a fetus and I said it was a child's toy dipped in red paint. Their perception was that was a fetus. But there was a documentary crew charting the making of The Omen and that will be on the DVD. The guys were there when all the weird things happened so that is all quite well documented.

The scene with the dogs in the cemetery is scary, how long did that take to film?

That scene took two days. The dogs were impossible. They were not trained dogs. We would get there and the dogs would be restrained by ropes and wires! We spent thousands of dollars painting out the ropes and wires. Liev broke a rib in that scene because when the dog grabbed his arm it cracked a rib. There is a piece on the DVD of us rehearsing with the dogs and the dog went right for the dog handler's face instead of his arm!

Was Mia Farrow thrilled to be playing Rosemary's Nanny?

I think she got a kick of it, there was a certain irony of closing the circle and for cineastes it is delightful. Besides that she totally reversed the role. When you see Billie Whitelaw in the original you think she's bad and Gregory Peck shouldn't hire her. So we went the other way to make it look as though Mia has been sent by God to help these people so she plays it sweetly.

What were the problems of using a child actor?

Anyone's perception watching the film is that he must have been there during the scary scenes. The reality is that he wasn't there for a lot of the trickier stuff. But the genius of the part is that less is more from the Damien character. So my constant direction to him was to do nothing. The only different time was the fight in the car. That was tough because he is six years old and he has spent his life being told to be polite. Then I'm telling him to punch Julia and pull her hair. He got upset and confused because he was friends with Julia.

Was there a debate over having the 9/11 reference in the film?

In New York after a screening one guy nearly physically attacked me during the Q&A. He asked if I was from New York after I said I was not, he ran at me screaming...how dare you use the image of 9/11! In terms of the grief it is understandable that it is more intense in New York but there is no way that it was a localized event and there is no way that you can show a series of images that show the notion that we have begun a downward spiral without referencing that.  It is planned ignorance to not refer to 9/11 if you are trying to make a point about where we are today.

Has Dick Donner [director of the original version of The Omen] seen the film?

Yes he has. I wrote and said I love his films and as a mark of respect I set up a screening. And he liked the film.