I wandered around not knowing what I was doing in The Great Waldo Pepper and feeling pretty lost, and they rightly cut my part down. I don't think I was in very good emotional shape. I think I was a bit of a mess. I'd done about six movies back-to-back, and was in a state of complete exhaustion.

I got a reputation for being sort of nuts and difficult, because I was at that point, so I wasn't much in demand. And also, on the basic level, I'd made a lot of movies that didn't make money. And if you make movies that don't make money - I mean, it is a business, after all - you are not in demand.

The thing about all good horror movies is that the fans expect a couple of inside jokes. Maybe I'm supposed to be saying how terrified I was while making it, but it was really fun.

The studios still had development programs for young people. Because you weren't talking about the budgets of small nations the way you are now when you make a movie. There was a lot more freedom to fail.

With any group of people in life, sad things happen, and crazy things, and happy things. When you're in the public eye, it's just amplified, that's all.

It was a wonderful time to be young. The 1960s didn't end until about 1976. We all believed in Make Love, Not War. We were idealistic innocents, despite the drugs and sex.

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.