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

If you have had some taste of success, it's extremely addicting. I think the withdrawal from that is what's most devastating. I don't think it's the success that kills people, it's the withdrawal.

People make films about all kinds of relationships, but they won't do these extremely intense platonic love affairs that happen between young girls. In a way they are more intense than anything else you ever have, and that's what I wanted to make a film about, though it was in the context of a horror film.

Bettie Page was the first person to do bondage as fashion, because for her it really was all about dressing up.

I was lucky with my first film because it had Warhol in it. That was the selling point.

It's hard when your first thing is something everyone loves. Actually, that never happened to me. I was lucky that my first film, which is actually the best reviewed of all my films, didn't have that success.

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.