There are people who've challenged me on that, but I think there still are. Not everybody looses their virginity when they're 12, there are always these girls who are sort of outside the norm, who have only each other to hang with and talk to. Who are what you would call late bloomers; they don't know it now but when they're 25 they're going to be pretty damn interesting.

There are people who've challenged me on that, but I think there still are. Not everybody looses their virginity when they're 12, there are always these girls who are sort of outside the norm, who have only each other to hang with and talk to. Who are what you would call late bloomers; they don't know it now but when they're 25 they're going to be pretty damn interesting.

Time matters less than the nature of the people.

It would have to stand on the basis of what somebody had done to it and that would be the basis on which it would be judged. So it's a funny art form. You gain a great deal when you have good collaborators and sometimes people just don't understand what you've done.

For many years I thought, "Well, I need to know a lot more to direct." But I looked around and watched all the people I know directing and thought, "No. I just need to know what I want it to be." Then there will be a lot of people to help me get it to there, especially Bobby Bukowski, he's a brilliant cinematographer.

I am, like everybody else, hurt when the thing I've done is misunderstood or attacked but I've gotten old enough to realize that if you do something, not everybody's got to like it. And if everybody likes it, it's probably not that interesting.

When I was in high school, it was the beginning of hippies and free love and sleeping with people was a sign of your liberation and your freedom. Then we [had to worry about] AIDS, so they started lecturing my kids in elementary school about safe sex. Sex turned from something joyful into something kind of dangerous, and it was hard to avoid that sense that it was a different world.