As a kid, I was always building things. My father had a shop in the house, and we built things - we were kind of a project family. I started out as a painter, and then painting led to cinema, and in cinema, you get to build so many things, or help build them.

You've got to let accidents and strange things happen - let it work, so it's got an organic sort of quality ... By trying to remove yourself you can see some fantastic things sometimes.

All my movies are about strange worlds that you can't go into unless you build them and film them. That's what's so important about film to me. I just like going into strange worlds.

I learned that just beneath the surface there's another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper. I knew it as a kid, but I couldn't find the proof. It was just a kind of feeling. There is goodness in blue skies and flowers, but another force - a wild pain and decay - also accompanies everything.

See, a painting is much cheaper than making a film. And photography is, you know, way cheap. So if I get an idea for a film, there are many ways to get it together and go realise that film. There's really nothing to be afraid of.

Music has fed me a lot of ideas... The film BLUE VELVET came out of Bobby Vinton's version of the song BLUE VELVET.

When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.