I’m a film director. Gay is an adjective that I certainly am, but I don’t know that it’s my first one. I think if you’re just a gay filmmaker, you get pigeonholed just like if you say I’m a black filmmaker, I’m a Spanish filmmaker, I’m a whatever.
Valentine’s Day is my mother’s birthday. If I’m wildly in love, I’ve sent people chicken hearts, which seems to appeal to the kind of person that I’ve been in love with.
I have no interest in ever making a movie I didn’t write. If they were going to take my house away, then I guess I might have to. But my agent knows not to even bother sending me the scripts.
I make independent movies. I don’t know how to do anything else. I don’t know any other job that I could really get.
People are going to say, “I was a lesbian back in the 90s” just like people say, “I was a hippie in the 60s”. I see them struggling. Rich girls struggling with their heterosexuality.
I think that nobody gets mad at me anymore, no matter what I say, because I don’t think I’m mean. I am interested in what’s next.
Shutting down governments on your computer is just as much as fun as going to a riot at Yale.
I never thought I had more fun when I was young than kids are having today. I think they have just as much fun. It’s a different way to have fun.
I think that young people understand me perfectly. I think that’s the luckiest thing about my career, that I get older and they get younger, and it didn’t stop with my generation.
To me, racist jokes are not funny. I am politically correct, in a weird way. I like to push the boundaries that are politically correct.
It reinforced everything that I believe. I am an optimist. I believe in the goodness of people.
I must admit, even my fans everywhere I go in the world – just this week I was in London and Glasgow and the week before I was in Des Moines – my fans all look the same in all those cities – they look great!
I think social justice is important. I think it’s not fair.
I never thought I’d be 52 years old. I don’t think that anybody at 16 thinks like that.
When I started my goal was to make a successful underground movie. I started making movies in the mid-60s. Underground cinema then only lasted about two or three years.
I think that in America there is a new movement of underground movies that wants to kick the ass of independent films that they think whine too much.
I go to colleges all the time in America, and everyone’s gay, and I think how can this be? And it’s only in rich schools. In poor schools, nobody’s gay.
God knows if you could start a new sex act that’s more important than making a good movie.
I haven’t committed all the crimes in my movies, I would have gotten the death penalty many years ago if I had.
I think that’s why I’ve lasted this long because I love everything I make fun of! I make fun of myself first! I mean, I started my career by calling my films “trash” – the local critics used to complain that I beat the critic to the typewriter.