Fashion's been really good to me. It financed Patti Smith: Dream of Life.

Ultimately, the film [Dream of Life] is inspirational.

Patti [Smith] was my experiment, to be honest. And the film is what we got out of it. At the end of the day, I learned a lot about how to make a film.

We just grew to trust each other [with Patti Smith] more and more over the years. Most of the time I didn't even have a movie camera.

Angelo Corrao was our editor [in Dream of Life], and he was just so diligent and so old-school in the way he looked at editing. He would take my far-out ideas and tame them and make sense of them.

I wasn't familiar with Patti [Smith ]much at all. When I was asked to photograph her, my wife said, "Oh my God, Patti Smith!" So I looked at some Robert Mapplethorpe books and I recognized those pictures.

I didn't do well in high school, but I took photography, and I loved being able to capture moments.