All of a sudden, those few pages of script that he had shown me with the weird images I could visualize all of that in my brain, and I knew that there was this mad little genius at work here and I really wanted to do the film.
It's a real gift to work with my sister. We obviously have such a shorthand communicating with each other that it makes the process easier. And from growing up together and watching so many films together, we ended up with pretty similar taste.
If you stick with a vision, it might not all work, but some of it will be absolute genius. To me, 15 minutes worth of absolute genius in a film is so much better than two hours of mediocrity. I would rather pay to see something different like that.
It never ceases to surprise me, the people I get to work with. I'm in a French film with Sandrine Bonnaire? I adore Sandrine Bonnaire. I'm doing a picture for Robert Redford? The Sundance Kid? I have to pinch myself sometimes.
That is a big danger, losing your inspiration. When I work in film and television I try to do each take a little differently. I never want to do the same thing twice, because then you're not being spontaneous, you're just recreating something.
I always sort of create practical problems so that I don't have to see a film I've just done. I'm too vulnerable, too fragile. People see your work, and there's nothing you can do. You're completely exposed.
You have to, in a way, just get your head down and do the work and not expect every day to bring riches and not expect every minute to bring wild excitement, 'cause it just doesn't. It doesn't on films, anyway.
I didn't set out to make this kind of picture. It just came my way. But its been going on for me for 16 years now and its wonderful for an actor to work consistently. There seems to be an insatiable audience for this type of film.
I believe I'm doing the right thing in trying to step away from that and to take chances and work on little independent films and do stuff like that wild dance scene.
I know that every actor that I know, when Daniel Day-Lewis does a film, and he doesn't work that often, but we run to the theater to see what he's up to, and with such delicious excitement. The same goes for Meryl Streep.
Yes, actually ever since I saw his films and tried to write about them, Sirk's been in everything I've done. Not Sirk himself, but what I've learned from his work.
I usually work on a film soundtrack for two years, turning in a song every few months, and that keeps my creative energy high, because I'm constantly rotating projects. The trick is to make sure I don't work too hard and get exhausted.
I like to keep my budgets at a certain price when I work for someone else, and even more so now that I'm working for myself, and use new technologies to deliver films that look like they have high production levels.
In the film industry, we tend to pick up where others have left off, and I'd like to think the influences I picked up from Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sylvester Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme are visible in my work.
It's like getting into film - I didn't say early on, 'I'm going to become a filmmaker,' 'I'm going to show my work at MoMA.' When you start to think those things, you're in trouble.
The thing about film-making is I give it everything, that's why I work so hard. I always tell young actors to take charge. It's not that hard. Sign your own cheques, be responsible.
Women have a certain sexuality, and I think their bodies are beautiful, and I'm not embarrassed to explore that in a film. But there are things you get offered that are vulgar and violent - just like there's a side of me that's vulgar and violent.
There was an interesting article in Los Angeles Magazine about women directors. A woman director makes one bad independent film and her career is over. Guys tend to get an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
Japanese women have always loved my films, even when no one else did. Ever since I made 'Maurice' in the 1980s, I've been getting hundreds of letter from Japanese girls. They definitely have a special place in my heart.
The whole series is black-and-white, so when I went to shoot one of the women I only had black-and-white film with me. She had reddish hair and was a very pretty girl, a nice girl.
A problem was the lack of cooperation of the Afghan community itself. The women, though living in Iran, were under cover and not willing to participate in the film, and none of the ethnic groups were willing to work together or be together.
