MTV sat down with John Cusack and picked his brain a bit. He talks about why he chose to do a horror film after all of these years, and what it was like to work with Hilary Duff (he likes her - not in a creepy way).

Attention Zack Snyder: After years of playing the characters we all wanted to be — you know, the guys that were just a bit smarter, just a bit braver, just a bit funnier than the rest of us — John Cusack wants nothing more for himself than to be, well, wanted. The everyman actor sat down with MTV News to discuss his new horror movie, “1408″ (which is based on a Stephen King short story of the same name); what he remembers from “Better Off Dead”; what it’s like working with Hilary Duff; and why, more than anything, he wants Snyder to cast him in his upcoming “Watchmen.” (And if he does, John, what do we want? Ten percent.)

MTV: [”1408″] isn’t what I think of as a typical John Cusack role. … Why horror? Why now?

John Cusack: Well, sometimes you’re lucky, because if there is a good piece of material, it sort of finds you, or the people who are doing it want you to do it and they’re smarter than you so they come after you pretty hard. … The script is pretty great — I’ve always loved Stephen King. And I was always a fan of very, very good horror films — like “The Exorcist,” “The Shining,” those types of movies. … This one had a whole psychological component to it that I thought was kind of ballsy to do. Like, can we pull this off? … It was pretty aggressive and ambitious and out there.

(WENN)

More photos (John Cusack, Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, Tony Shalhoub, Tyrese Gibson, Adyta Sliwinska, Harry Dean Stanton, Sophia Bush) from the premiere of “1408,” plus John talks about working with Hilary Duff, after the jump.

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