One of the worst things you can do is have a limited budget and try to do some big looking film. That's when you end up with very bad work.

When I started I had no knowledge of films whatsoever. I was an engineering major at Stanford. And I found out as a senior that they had two film critics on the Stanford Daily, and they got free passes to all the theaters in Palo Alto. So I thought, I'll do that, and I became a film critic. And then I became interested in films. But I had no time to study anything in that area because I was a senior, just finishing up as engineering.

Other writers, producers, and directors of low-budget films would often put down the film they were making, saying it was just something to make money with. I never felt that. If I took the assignment, I'd give it my best shot.

There are eleven or twelve or thirteen cities in China with populations of over 10 million people and most people in the West have never even heard of these cities.

I love the process of making films and an incidental satisfaction is the fact that most of them made money.

In science-fiction films the monster should always be bigger than the leading lady.

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.