All of my films deal with the same thing: striving, socially and culturally, to stay alive.

Happy endings are absolutely ludicrous, they're not true at all. We see the guy carry the girl across the threshold and everybody lives happily ever after -- that's bullshit. Three weeks later he's beating her up and she's suing for divorce and he's got cancer.

There was not a lot of dialogue. The titles were just to keep you up. It's the visual stimulation that hits the audience. That's the reason for film. Otherwise, we might as well turn the light out and call it radio.

I am not an expert. That is someone else's job. If I were expert, the approach would be all wrong. It would be from the inside. I am a blunderer. I usually don't know what I am going into at the start. I go into the fog and trust something will be there.

I like audiences to crane their necks.

Men make clothes for the women they'd like to be with or in most cases the women they'd like to be.

I make no apologies for Popeye. Behind M*A*S*H, it's my biggest hit. It got maligned by the critics because it wasn't Superman. It wasn't about special effects and it wasn't made for 14-year-old boys. The majority of films are made for 14-year-old boys; I don't know where they get the eight bucks to get in. It's hush money from the parents.