Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film.

The daredevil aspect to what I did there is moving a monstrously big ship over a mountain in the jungle of Peru with 800 or 900 or so native people from the area. So that idea was wild but the way it was executed was prudent. Nobody was ever hurt and when it became clear that we had to be more secure with the posts that would hold the ship, I spent 12 days having a post built that would have withstood the force of 10 times the weight of my ship.

I do whatever pushes me hardest. It's coming at me and I try to... it's like uninvited guest and I have to wrestle them out the door or through the window - get them out and get over with them quickly.

I know whenever it comes to be really dysfunctional and vile and base and hostile on screen, I'm good at that.

There's this kind of strange mythology about me in the media because I've done unusual things.

My contacts with the film industry can be described in very simple terms: The industry does not really need me, and I do not really need the industry.

I always had a feeling, for example, that there should be something from Verdi's "Requiem" in the film. You hear it when you see the lava flow in Iceland. That turned out to be a very easy choice.