One of the things that I do like about filmmaking is that you find out how to solve new problems.

Because many of the films I've made have had an intellectualedge, it's harder for me to lie. It's harder for me to go to peoplewith money and say I don't care about art, all I care about iscommerce; all I really want to do is make money.

There's no escape. I'm God's only man.

Words are a completely different form of expression. The word P-E-N-I-S is an entirely different form of communication than a photograph of the same thing. H

Nobody has shot a strip club in black and white in a long time.

I had this whole issue of doing a crime film in the 2010s. The genre's been mined very, very heavily. Post-Scorsese, post-Tarantino, post-Guy Ritchie, what do you do? I wasn't attracted to pulp so much as all of a sudden I had a pulp problem. I had to find a way to make this interesting, because there's a lot of crime films that come out on VOD every week, and a number of these star Nicolas Cage.

The secret of the creative life is to feel at ease with your own embarrassment.