I love horror movies because they're really fun. They tap into those wonderful primal emotions.

Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls was made all about drugs, when to most of us, that just meant pot and magic mushrooms. He made it seem like we were all shooting heroin into our eyeballs. But that's part of the whole '60s and what it represented: feminism and civil rights and trying to stop the war. Hopefully we're starting to see some of that optimism again, through the excitement around Barack Obama.

I guess I came to terms with my demons. Or else I'd be in big trouble, wouldn't I? Horrifying as it was to crack up in the public eye, it made me look at myself and fix it. People were exploitative; that's human nature. I'll tell you, being pretty crazy while being chased by the National Enquirer is not good. The British tabloids were the worst. But you take the cards you're dealt, and I got better. I'm now ferociously healthy in body and mind. You couldn't pay me to go near a psychiatrist again. Stopping seeing them was my first step to getting well.

I was saying to Paul Schrader that he missed the idealism and the passion of that era in Hollywood, but also in American life, that '60s sense of optimism and hope.

I was very active in the peace movement, still am.

We were sweet, lovely people who wanted to throw out all the staid institutions who placed money and wars above all else. When you're young you think that's how life works.

The thing about the wacky fans is that they're really sweet.