For six months I'd do movies and make it all about me. Then the other six months, it's not about me and it doesn't matter what my hair looks like or what anything looks like.
I remember my first taste of American big movies was 'Ghost Rider.' I'm in two little scenes. But for those two little scenes they had 400 extras, upside-down stunt cars, and a fire brigade.
The reason I started writing movies was because I kept getting parts that I just kind of stepped into. I didn't have to do a lot of work and I ended up getting sort of bored.
The things I see now on TV and in movies are so outlandish. Kids doing rude things with pies! And the language that they use! It's being outrageous for the sake of being outrageous. I can't watch it. It turns me off.
You know, sound was still a fairly new thing when I came into movies. And the reason musicals happened is because of sound. They could put music in the picture! That's how it all began.
By the '50s and '60s, war movies had become big and impersonal. They almost never bothered to characterize the Japanese enemy as particularly evil; in fact, they never bothered to characterize him at all.
I grew up watching those blaxploitation movies. Ron O'Neal, Richard Roundtree, Jim Brown, Pam Grier. For the first time, I saw 'The Negro' get one over on 'The Man.'
I never set out to build some behemoth comedy career. My taste in movies is far more eclectic than that so my aspirations as a filmmaker are far more eclectic than that.
I've seen little pieces of 'Interview with a Vampire' when it was on TV, but I kind of always go yuck! I don't watch R-rated movies, so that really cuts down on a lot of the horror.
I'm not one of those actors where filmmakers that I admire ask me to be in their movies. I meet them at parties and they're nice to me, but they never ask me to work with them.
Duets is about six people, so it's like three different movies - three different duets. I was on the set 18 days, spread out over three and a half or four weeks.
I don't like to see a scary image because it sticks in my mind. Which is maybe why I get hired to do the scary movies because I'm truly scared and upset.
I wasn't a fan of horror movies before 'Saw,' but through these films, I have definitely become a big fan and really come to respect and appreciate the genre and the fans that support it.
Warner Bros. has talked about going out with low-cost DVDs simultaneously in China because piracy is so huge there. It will be a while before bigger movies go out in all formats; in five years, everything will.
Even if I'd had a really happy relationship with my father and there was no emotional hiatus for a decade and a half, I probably would still have made some of the same choices for movies that I've made.
Because of how much movies cost, it's dangerous to be experimental on one film after the other. But we can experiment with television. We can do things that are fringe and bring ideas to the table that are offbeat and original.
I don't worry about what everyone wants to see. I make movies that please a writer, director and myself. I always think there are enough people smart as me and sensitive as me.
You can't TV surf without coming across an Andy of Mayberry episode where you've just got to watch Don as Barney. That's why I put Don in several of my movies.
I figure you're only here for a matter of moments. Ever since I was a kid watching movies I've always wanted to make people laugh or have some sort of emotional reaction.
We did Holy Grail, and I got my name up there as one of the directors. After that, I started moving more and more down the line I wanted to, which was making movies.
Ultimately, making movies is a really, really small world. Being on sets and going to the same locations, like shooting in Shreveport, you're always working with somebody from another set that you worked with.
