I never saw a department store Santa as a kid. My mother was afraid to take me.

It's certainly a difficult time right now to try to make small, smart films. I'm not trying to be self-serving, but you get to Hollywood, and if you want to make something big and loud and dumb, it's pretty easy.

It makes it difficult to decide which to go see, since no film about say, some tragic genocide in Africa is going to get a bad review even if it's poorly made.

Because I found myself telling the story of his family to people without the visual aids that I was able to employ by filming them eventually. But I very much knew exactly what I was going to do.

I was inspired to do anything I could to get out of what I was doing... today, I'm motivated to pay the bills.

Luckily, he was in the process of moving to France at the time, anyway. But if he had stayed in the States, I don't know how he would have handled that, because it was getting pretty crazy. I mean, a celebrity which he really did not welcome. And I can't blame him.

I hope they get something of interest out of it, but I'd rather they all hate it and I like it, instead of vice versa... I make films to please myself first, and if the audience likes them, all the better.