Frankly, you're always up and down. You're successful and then you're not.

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.

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.

One thing I'm not is a moralistic filmmaker. I'm not trying to tell people what to do, and I'm not trying to lead.

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 grew up interested in the underside of Hollywood, which I think David Lynch does really well.