I haven’t changed – the public has. I’m an insider now, which is hilarious.
The only time I had a normal boyfriend was during the time of AIDS, so maybe that saved me. It’s certainly not karma.
I’m here today because of LSD. LSD gave me the confidence to be who I am today. Completely.
I tried heroin. I shot up in high school, but I just thought it was so dreary: puking and nodding.
Coke didn’t last long enough; it gave me a hangover for two weeks for being high for ten minutes.
I’ll have pot in my home for guests – I’m polite! – but I don’t sit around and smoke by myself, ever. Not like I did when I was young.
Pot came first when I was young. But I did the work. It wasn’t a battle of what came first. They went together like “love and marriage, horse and carriage!”
Hairspray is the only movie I made that’s subversive, because they’re doing it in every high school in America. A man’s playing a woman, and two men sing a love song to each other.
I think it’s all independent films. There aren’t any! If they were looking for me when I was making Polyester, then it’d be perfect, but they’re not. I’m not looking for that. TV is much bigger and better now; far more people see it.
I was always flattered, but I just want my movies to make money. I want to be commercial. I’m never the person who says, “I don’t care if people don’t see my movies.” I always want people to see my movies.
People still come to Baltimore and say, “I didn’t realize you made documentaries.”
When I was young, no one wanted to be one; now even the President of the United States would call himself an outsider. So now I’m for insiders.
I couch-surfed for years. But I always wanted to live in Baltimore; I still do. If I had to choose, it would always be Baltimore.
I never got along in school really – I already knew what I wanted to do. I have never in my life got a paycheck from anywhere in the world that asked if I went to school.
I live in San Francisco, I live in Provincetown. They’re all the same, apart from Baltimore. Baltimore’s the only cheap place left.
A lot of kids are moving to Baltimore, because we have a great music scene and we’ve got edge. Come on down, we’ve got scary edge. But great edge – it’s still a city you can be a bohemian in.
I don’t like heroin, unless you’re a jazz musician and then you have to be on it because jazz is the sound of heroin.
At the premiere of Hairspray on Broadway, Harvey Fierstein’s mom said to my mom, “Didn’t we raise great sons?” and my mother just started sobbing, because I’m sure they’d both been through other nights when people didn’t say that.
I’ve always believed in the goodness of people. I teach in prison. They all said, don’t do it. Carry a gun, take Mace. Are you kidding? I guess, they’re around so many criminal elements that they fear for.
If I died tomorrow I’ve accomplished what I set out to do in my life. I enjoy making my movies, I enjoy doing what I do. I have a nice life.