I was born in 1940 in Minnesota and grew up in the country... dirt roads, swamps, lakes, woods.

I hate losing laughs; they're rare things.

I don't think you ever learn just one thing. At some point you start unlearning things. I have been working hard to unlearn everything I know.

What I want to do is make films that astonish people, that astound people, and I hope you want to do that too. It's easy to make money. It's easy to make films like everybody else. But to make films that explode like grenades in people's heads and leave shrapnel for the rest of their lives is a very important thing. That's what the great filmmakers did for me. I've got images from Fellini, from Bergman, from Kurowsawa, from Bunuel, all stuck in my brain.

I think that's the problem with kids now. Everything is manufactured. And then they're sitting there watching the television, where all the work is done for them. Radio made me use my imagination.

They all sort of get mixed up in my head, to be quite honest. They're all dealing with similar things. It's about how you deal with reality, by ignoring it sometimes, reinventing it other times, and that's how you get through it.

I was born in 1940 in Minnesota and grew up in the country... dirt roads, swamps, lakes, woods.