When I started my goal was to make a successful underground movie. I started making movies in the mid-60s. Underground cinema then only lasted about two or three years.

I tried heroin. I shot up in high school, but I just thought it was so dreary: puking and nodding.

I actually think that my films are intellectual. I think almost everything I do is intellectual, but I would never say that, because that's a compliment. That's up to others to say about me. The same way, I would never say I do art. I think art is up to history. It's up to other people to utter that word. So I try to be humble.

The only way I've learned to change anyone's mind politically is to make them laugh. My whole career has been about that.

As far as socially redeeming value, I hope I don't have any.

Everything makes you who you are, so I was lucky that I had a good family that was horrified by what I wanted to do but was also supportive of it, right to the very end.

Valentine's Day is my mother's birthday. If I'm wildly in love, I've sent people chicken hearts, which seems to appeal to the kind of person that I've been in love with.