Randy Moore looks like a big kid — a grown-up Mike Teavee whose love of the Chocolate Factory is simply in his blood. And indeed the filmmaker, whose covert Disney World-set surrealist comedy Escape from Tomorrow (out this weekend) is making waves in the industry, spent much of his youth bopping around the Magic Kingdom (his dad lived near Orlando). Moore has channeled feelings from those days into a monochromatic, guerilla-style nightmare. About a family of four who take a fateful trip to the "happiest place on Earth" and are greeted by prostitutes and something called the "Cat Flu," among other things, the movie explores, often hilariously, that delicate line between the cheery and the horrific.

There's been speculation about Disney legal retaliation, but so far the director is in the clear. What's much more unsettling, he says, is the number of strange things he's observed at Disney over the years. We met him in New York City to talk about some of the park's freakiest elements, like mystery meat, Epcot weirdos, and a princess fest that's "worse than the psych ward." Here are his words, below:

When I was seven or eight years old, I was on It's a Small World and it came to a fork. And this may have been from my imagination, but I saw an open tunnel that was going to another part of the ride — a part that everyone else was not going to — and inside, I saw another small world. And in the middle of that, there was this large, green man, who looked like a cross between the Hulk and the Jolly Green Giant. He was rearranging these blocks, which made me think that that was how they made the rides at Disney. And I was terrified of going on the ride again. That stayed with me.

Disney is almost a corporate religion, and these characters are worshiped by millions of people. There was this moment where I was watching this show called Fantasmic!, and Mickey appears on top of a mountain in a hail of fireworks and lasers and music, dressed up as the Sorcerer's Apprentice. There was this audible gasp, and it wasn't from the kids; it was from the adults, as if they had just witnessed a real miracle. This is beyond just being "regular" entertainment. I think when people are worshiping a cartoon mouse, they need to re-examine their... priorities.

I think I'm a little OCD, so, for me, especially with all the kids, it seemed like there was definitely a fear of the germ factor. And it sort of happened later on in life that I got that way, and saw this place as a giant petri dish. Everyone's touching exactly the same things, people are hacking up lungs left and right, and you see kids throwing up after rides. I think that's where the idea of the Cat Flu came in. There needed to be this kind of antimatter to the happiness at the park. And bird flu was going around when I was writing the script, and I also made the mouse-cat connection.

I've seen countless grown men ogle the princesses. These girls that Disney World hires are all beautiful, but this is supposed to be the least sexualized place there is, so I feel like there's a big sexual repression inside that park. Before I knew I was going to work on this, and I was just going to Disney World as a tourist, I'd always bring one of my kids with me. I thought it was creepy for a grown man to go there by himself. But I saw a lot of grown men walking around totally alone. And I'd see them on multiple occasions. These were season-pass holders. In a perfect world, I'd like to say they just loved the Disney experience, but who knows?

My wife's a nurse, and she sometimes floats floors in her hospital. And we were at a princess fair, where the princesses are dancing on a stage, and all the little girls are dressed like princesses, and they're selling $30 magic wands and stuff like that. And it was crazy! No one was listening to their parents, and they were all wiggling and squirming all over the place, and it was just madness. It was crowded, my wife was hot and covered in sweat, and she turned to me and said, "This is worse than working the psych ward at the hospital." And, for me, I was still under the spell of going there as a child, and I was trying to give everyone the happiest day that they could have. And I didn't.

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Families end up hating each other there, and I've always seen that. I see many parents yelling in ways I know they wouldn't at home. It really feels like this environment that's like, "We're spending all this money! We have to go an all these rides! The fireworks are going to start in a second! I wanna go on this ride! No, I wanna go on this ride!" And it's just tearing families apart. And then, at the same time, there are other families who are wearing matching shirts, and outfits that say, you know, "Johnson Family Vacation." With matching red Crocs.

There's a dark side that people enjoy. I think the Disney folks really do like their villainesses, who are strangely sexual. There are a lot of people who are drawn to the villains, just as much as people are drawn to the heroines. And I think they play that up. And then there's that sign that says "Wel-cum" on Tom Sawyer Island [eds. note: which appears in the film], so that's a little... yeah.

The lines definitely wear you down. When I was a kid, that was the worst part. I bought into every other aspect, but waiting in lines was definitely the huge downside. Taking my own kid, I realized it can be sweet to stand in line and hold your daughter for an hour, but then you also see the breakdown of all human dignity going on. Everyone's swinging from the chains, and not listening to their parents, and there are arguments left and right.

Someone I know, who worked at the park, told me that the turkey legs are emu. She's a reliable source, and I really believed it, and I think she still believes it. There are some people online who believe it, and when I wrote it, I totally believed it. Now, I don't know. I need to test it. I need to go get one of those legs and bring it to a lab or something. I've never seen turkey legs in "real life" like the ones that they have. They're much bigger, they're greasier, and they're more sinewy. I don't know. It's strange.

Epcot is wild, and it's the one place where you can drink. Because they have the world showcase, and you can go from pavilion to pavilion, having a beer in Germany and sake in Japan. And by the time you get to Mexico at the end, you're drinking tequila. There are more drunk people there than anywhere else in the park. The weirdest thing I saw at Epcot was two portly people just sort of taking a nap, on the ground, in front of the geodesic sphere. And no one disturbed them for like half an hour. And I don't know if they were on their honeymoon or what, but here was their dream: to come and sleep underneath the ball. It was really disturbing.

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