Daily Inspiration Quote by Richard King

There’s a sly defensiveness baked into this line: a director best known for horror quietly reminding you he’s not a one-trick haunted house. “I have done some short pieces” is doing double duty. On the surface it’s modest, almost throwaway. Underneath, it’s a résumé shim: evidence of range offered without sounding like a hard sell. The phrase “that are not horror” lands like a corrective to an audience (or industry gatekeepers) who’ve already filed him under one genre and stopped looking.

The subtext is about typecasting, but also about the strange hierarchy of formats. Shorts are often treated as calling cards rather than “real” work, yet they’re where directors can experiment most freely. By pointing to shorts, King signals craft and curiosity - the ability to build tone, character, and rhythm without leaning on the familiar machinery of fear. He’s implying: my instincts aren’t limited to jump scares; I can calibrate a scene for something else entirely.

Context matters because horror, as a brand, can be both a rocket and a cage. It gets you noticed, proves you can direct atmosphere on a budget, and builds a loyal audience. It also invites the industry’s laziest compliment: “He’s a horror guy.” King’s sentence is a small act of self-positioning, a bid to be read as a director first and a genre specialist second.