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.
Time marches on and I don’t care how people watch my movies as long as they see them. I don’t care if they’re on their phone.
An underground hit didn’t make any money and it cost a dollar to get in.
It isn’t enough to shock. It’s easy to shock. Real surprise is what I’m after.
I built a career on negative reviews. I didn’t get a good review ever until Fran Lebowitz gave me a good review in Interview. That was the first good review I got in 10 years.
I think I technically learned some things, hopefully. But I go to the movies for characters and story and a berserk vision.
If you purposefully look to shock people, it isn’t funny. That’s what 50 million dollar Hollywood comedies do ; try to be shocking and dirty.
You see a kid making a film on a cell phone. He doesn’t know what he’s doing either. But it comes out kind of good.
Everybody should wish they had home movies of themselves, acting out their lunacy on LSD.
I like hard movies; I like ones that are basically the opposite of a date movie.
There was a cultural war going on, the ’60s was going on. All the film critics were square.
Anytime you make someone laugh or satirize something, it’s the best way to change someone’s opinion because they’re defenseless – they laugh, they listen.
I don’t trust anyone that hasn’t been to jail at least once in their life.
I’m trying to do of a certain attitude in life. I’m against separatism. I’m for everyone to gather. I’m for everyone lunatic to hang out together. I want to hear somebody else’s bad night, not just mine.
Things are going great in every part of my life except movies. That’s okay. I’ve got a lot of other parts of my life. I’ve made 15 movies. You can see any one of my movies and it says the same thing.
I keep on having ideas and developments. Some happen and some don’t, but I still always have a way of telling a story.
People that pick up hitchhikers I believe are basically good people that believe in other people and understand problems and don’t judge people. That’s always the kind of person I’m looking for.
It delights me to find something that kids are doing that surprises me that seems new. That’s the best feeling you can have.
I get dumber as the day goes along. Every second of the day that goes along, I get stupider.
I think the extremes are something that’s really interesting to see coalesce in movies.
I was thinking about sort of the similarities between “art movies” and lowbrow movies like kitschy sexploitation films. I think they share certain qualities, whether they’re hyper-stylized or overly emotive or just very visual.