As astute followers of 'Life in Hell' will notice, Akbar and Jeff wear the same striped T-shirt as Charlie Brown. 'Peanuts' was very important to me.
People in the metros are busy making ends meet, but through my films, I like to give the reality of life a skip, and choose concepts which will give audiences a stress-free two-and-a-half hours.
If we knew exactly what animal life was like before the fall into sin and knew what nature was like before the law of entropy invaded it, we would already be living in heaven.
It's part of our nature. As much as I love (brother and guitarist Eddie), if you put us in a room with no one else for 15 minutes, we'd be at each other's throats.
As much as we love playing the small clubs, we'd really like to get ourselves in front of a larger audience. I'm not talking about arenas or anything, but nice theaters and larger clubs.
I love many places to which I have no connection, but identifying an ancestor, or someone I think is an ancestor, has taken me to places I'd never have gone to otherwise.
To me, the main and most exciting thing about photography is to meet people. The picture is the result of what happened between me and them on the set.
Dealing with jackasses on every front today. Good thing I have tiger blood and Adonis DNA. (Charlie Sheen Reference)
I think people are more apt to believe photographs, especially if it's something fantastic. They're willing to be more gullible. Sometimes they want fantasy.
Within two hours of where I live, you have mountains and desert as location. I like the natural elements that abstract into light, texture, shape and shadow.
I could not - and I still cannot - see a sustainable career as a filmmaker in which I focus fully on our gay stories.
I've always been interested in how the individual comes to know and accept him or herself, which I think has been hard for me.
I grew up thinking there was something called 'independent film,' which I wouldn't necessarily have had access to if there wasn't Sundance.
I have been very influenced by the director Maurice Pialat, who I continue to be in conversation and conflict with and get inspiration from.
I don't think I'd ever start making a film until I had both the intimacy with the subject and the distance to make it live in a certain way.
I conveniently was not accepted to film school, which I applied to in 1987, and so I decided I would become a filmmaker instead of a student.
Sometimes it's literally just a feeling that you get that somebody is more interested than someone else; and they may both say they're interested, but you get a feeling.
It's like your children talking about holidays, you find they have a quite different memory of it from you. Perhaps everything is not how it is, but how it's remembered.
But I always wanted my characters to be more than cyphers for the failings of their world. And I never had to look too hard to find a part of myself in them.
Intellectualism came very late to America. That's why Americans are so proud of it. I found very few real intellectuals in America. But there are so many pseudo-intellectuals.
When things aren't working out for people, the end of the world seems like an easy way to wipe the slate clean.
