But there's a difference between having artistic interests and being psychotic. That's more than a fine line of differentiation, and I do see that a bit too much.

Realism is always subjective in film. There's no such thing as cinema verite. The only true cinema verite would be what Andy Warhol did with his film about the Empire State Building - eight hours or so from one angle, and even then it's not really cinema verite, because you aren't actually there.

I like to eat and the only thing I've ever been addicted to in my life is sugar.

I started out as an actor but now I act to fund my own productions. I've managed to separate my mindset.

It's frustrating when people get upset with me about not going out to DVD - the reason is that I plan to tour with the films for many, many years, not just a month or a week. Literally years. And as soon as I would put it out on DVD, it would ruin the financial possibilities of me making it a theatrical event. Whereas the book, the publishing of a screenplay, would not cause that problem.

As soon as anybody puts anything on film, it automatically has a point of view, and it's somebody else's point of view, and it's impossible for it to be yours.

When I started acting in the film industry when I was 16 years old, in 1980, I was going to all the revival theaters in Los Angeles. They were playing mostly films from the '60s and '70s, some from the early '20s and '30s, before that Hays commission. Those films did question things a lot, and there definitely was a switch in 1934. You can see very distinctly in 1934, it's harder to understand what the real culture was. Films made before 1934, you can really kind of see the racism, sexism, drug use, etc. that was going on at that time. And then it was all stopped.