I look for the ability to work. Directing is hard work. They don't teach you that in film school. Critics are not aware of it, but it is hard, physical work.

I do believe motion pictures are the significant art form of our time. And I think the main reason is, they're an art form of movement, as opposed to static art forms of previous times.

I've never made the film I wanted to make. No matter what happens, it never turns out exactly as I hoped.

When I started, every film got a full theatrical distribution. Today, almost no low budget films, maybe two or three a year, will get a full theatrical distribution. We've been frozen out of that, which means they must be aware that for a full theatrical distribution it either has to be something like Saw or some exploitation film of today or an extremely well made personal film.

There was a fairly big difference between Detroit and Beverly Hills. I remember this. Detroit actually was a prosperous bustling city when we moved here in 1941. But the first day in Detroit, you always wore a shirt and a tie to school. And I wore a shirt and a tie to Beverly Hills High School, and a girl came up to me and said, "Where are you from?" And I said, "Detroit." And she said, "And you won't be wearing a tie tomorrow, will you?" And I said, "You're absolutely correct." So that was my first adjustment to a slightly more casual environment.

I was called recently in some article "Hollywood's Oldest Established Rebel." So I'm sort of working from the inside now, with still a little bit of a rebellious spirit.

Maybe it's just a matter of getting older and being aware that the market for medium-budget and low-budget films, which is of course what I spent most of my life making, has diminished. And maybe the quantity of ideas has diminished a little bit.