When I grew up in the '60s, we were actually dominated by this, you know, sort of conforming '50s culture, even though we were like trying to express our own culture, like, the dominant culture was the thing that was forming us. And I think that that's true today.

Well, I want to do everything in sort of a documentary style, ever since I started in the '80s.

My art teacher in junior high was a very out gay man and a mentor to me. He would tell us about Greenwich Village and show us the 'Village Voice' and describe his life, but it was all sort of subversive and below the radar.

Narcotics have been systematically scapegoated and demonized. The idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is ananathema to these idiots. I predict that in the near future, right wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus.

You're following your track, the story, your only plan, your map for the audience, and all the other stuff is, like, the fun stuff: the costumes, the locations, the set-dressing and the actors. They can all be variable as you like if you stick - however roughly - to the path.

Modern-day cinema takes the form of a sermon. You don't get to think, you only get to receive information.

Silent is about needing to make a scene shorter by having physical things to cut to. That way, you can manipulate a character to the other side of the room. But, if they say the wrong thing, it might locate that action in a particular part of the scene. It's a mechanical need.