Easy Rider' was never a motorcycle movie to me. A lot of it was about politically what was going on in the country.

I couldn't get a job acting all the time and there were down periods where I could take photographs or paint. I got into a lot of trouble when I was young, from making two films with James Dean, watching him work and then him dying and thinking I could turn down work. There was a big difference, he was a star and I wasn't. So I got in a lot of trouble and was essentially banned from Hollywood.

I wanted to be an actor. I decided when I was very young, when I first saw movies, that I wanted to be an actor.

Art is a bad word in Hollywood. You use art too many times and they show you the elevator and then your name is taken off the parking lot.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

I used to have to wear a gas mask to school when I was a kid because of the dust. I would tell people that the first light I saw was in a movie theater, because the sun was just a little glow.

Just because it happened to you, doesn't mean it's interesting.