I've been sober now for 18 years. With all the drugs, psychedelics and narcotics I did, I was [really] an alcoholic. Honestly, I only used to do cocaine so I could sober up and drink more. My last five years of drinking was a nightmare. I was drinking a half-gallon of rum with a fifth of rum on the side, in case I ran out, 28 beers a day, and three grams of cocaine just to keep me moving around. And I thought I was doing fine because I wasn't crawling around drunk on the floor.

The inside of the Pentagon is an incredible place and a dramatic set. We do [travel] outside, but the inside workings of the civilian oversight of the military inside the Pentagon is really about as exciting as anything you ever want to deal with. It is really amazing.

Photography and painting, all of that fed into my directing eventually.

Work is fun to me. All those years of being an actor and a director and not being able to get a job - two weeks is too long to not know what my next job will be.

[After Easy Rider] I couldn't get another movie, so I lived in Mexico City for a couple of years. I lived in Paris for a couple of years. I didn't take any photographs, and then I went to Japan and saw a Nikon used. I bought it, and I just started, like an alcoholic. I shot 300 rolls of film. That was the beginning of me starting again.

People keep asking me, 'What evil lurks in you to play such bad characters?' There is no evil in me, I just wear tight underwear.

Well, it's not just money. I consider myself establishment right now. I'm borderline establishment, I'm hanging on by my toenails - but I'm establishment.