I think any big success is paralyzing. I have observed it in others.

It's interesting that gay men and young women have been the twin engines of the Bettie [Page] cult.

I think morale is the hardest part, not comparing yourself to someone else. I think everyone compares themselves to someone more successful than they are. Everyone does it. You have to embrace your own rocky path.

When people see the conventions, they think they're going to get the straightforward genre - I don't give them that and they get mad. People see that and they think I don't understand the conventions because I'm not a good filmmaker.

In my early thirties I was working in television as a researcher. I was really stuck for a period of five years. I got to TV when I was thirty. I hated being a music writer, and kept wondering why I couldn't be doing the exciting things that my friends were doing in television.

I wonder if Bettie Page original gay cult had something to do with the ironies inherent in her image, as well as her innate fabulousness as an image.

One of the secrets of being a great photographic model, as it is for a great film actor, is that you let the camera in. It's an intimacy that the model or actor creates with the lens, that then transmits itself to the viewer.