Fifty years seems like a good anniversary. Even after I'm dead, how much better could I get than this? I mean, it's great, I'm not dead, so I get to see it.

I haven't changed - the public has. I'm an insider now, which is hilarious.

I just went to Times Square and the underground movies, sometimes three a day. I did get my education. But I really believed then, in 1966, they would not have allowed me to make any of the movies I made. Today, you could make a snuff movie at NYU and get an A.

I always want to see films that are startling and amazing. Not just shocking. Shocking is easy to do. But startling in the way that makes you change how you think about things. Those are the movies I like the best.

I can't complain about anything. It's like saying, "I don't like talkies." Time marches on and I don't care how people watch my movies as long as they see them. I don't care if they're on their phone. Believe me, if you ever want to watch my early films they would look a lot better on your phone than they would on a movie screen. The smaller the better.

Maybe there is no better novel in the world than Denton Welch's In Youth Is Pleasure. Just holding it in my hands, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, is enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger.

I could never kill myself. I approve of suicide if you have horrible health. Otherwise it's the ultimate hissy fit.