Everything encourages you not to tell stories of gay lives. There is no economy yet for that kind of cinema.

People, for reasons of kind of security, they tend to move towards people like themselves.

I have a career now, and I have to say, five years ago I didn't. I'm 50, and you never know what works, but I think part of that is because - in this way that can't be defined but which can be examined - we cannot work alone.

I think as a gay person, there was no way in my generation to not grow up with shame and a sense of being wrong. It was impossible to avoid. Externally, you might make choices that are very public and very open but internally that was a struggle.

By 1988, I was living in New York myself.

All history is defined by shifting modes of reality and time and how things change. That’s what I love about cinema. It changes in the moment.

My early films were about self discovery, and films of internal conflict. At that level, they were very personal.