I've had a couple of family members deal with cancer, and I remember that moment where they're going into surgery, and you just have no idea what's going to happen, and it's really scary.
I spent two years telling studio heads that it wasn't a cancer picture. I hate cancer pictures. I don't want to see a cancer picture. There is only one thing worth saying about cancer, and that is that there are human beings in cancer wards.
I don't mean to be flippant about cancer - it was hard, it was tough and it was scary. Then my next manuscript was about cancer because I had a whole new topic to write about. And because I wrote, it didn't take over. Writing took the chaos out of cancer.
Those films that really speak to the primal fear that we, as human beings, have about the unknown have always intrigued me. That's the really scary thing, not the slasher, macabre movies. It's the ones that deal with the inner fear: the unknown realms and the mysticisms that are scary.
Well, the first thing that clued me in to the fact that there was something really scary about breast cancer, way beyond the thought of dying, was coming across an ad in the newspaper for pink breast cancer teddy bears. I am not that afraid of dying, but I am terrified of dying with a pink teddy bear under my arm.
When people get cancer now, the first thing you do is you go to some doctors to get some advice, figure out what to do. People live a long long life after a cancer diagnosis. Not that it's not scary. The people I know have done so many stupid things. And they're still alive. Just being alive at this point is kind of icing on the cake.
Scaring someone's the hardest thing to do, and that's why most of scary movies are not scary. They're sick, but not scary. There's a lot of sickness out there, of people who then sit there and watch it, which I think is absolutely dismaying.
Scaring someone's the hardest thing to do, and that's why most of these scary movies are not scary. They're sick, but not scary. There's a lot of sickness out there, of people who then sit there and watch it, which I think is absolutely dismaying.
I want people to talk about my comedy, about cancer, about body issues, about scars, because cancer, it's a big deal, but scars are not a big deal. My skin healed. Relax, you know? That's all it is.
In mid-July 2007, after a routine mammogram, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. As cancer diagnoses go, mine wasn't particularly scary. The affected area was small, and the surgeon seemed to think that a lumpectomy followed by radiation would eradicate the cancerous tissue.
Eventually cancer becomes just another annoying thing that you deal with, you know, like cellulite.
The cancer in me became an awareness of the cancer that is everywhere. The cancer of cruelty, the cancer of carelessness, the cancer of greed.
Having cancer is one thing; looking like you have cancer is another thing. It's a disease that already takes so much.
It's a scary word, 'cancer.'
To be diagnosed with cancer was a frightening thing, and my first reaction was sheer panic, but I was really fortunate that the cancer was caught at such an early stage that I didn't need chemo or radiotherapy. But I know that cancer is a chronic condition, and once you've had it, you're on the list, because it can come back.
I have had stalkers over the years. The police deal with it but it is very scary. One man kept turning up where we filmed 'Countdown in Leeds,' which was scary. It was sad as he'd been sectioned and thought I was talking to him through the TV.