I grew up wanting to make movies, and along the way I suddenly found that I had a career doing comedy.
Do you know Don Coscarelli? 'Bubba Ho-Tep?' That's one of my favorite movies in the world. And I love the 'Phantasm' movies.
There's no reason my films can't work as hard as VR does to hook an audience and never let them go, so I think that that it turns the volume up a little bit on storytelling. The same way when I was doing commercials and then I went and shot 'Go,' and 'Go' has a level of pace that is unlike any of my other movies.
You can be mediocre, the way most actors are, and you can still be a top movie star, even if your movies are boring and predictable. All you have to do is know how to sell yourself, let yourself be manufactured.
You can't improvise without a skeletal structure; you can't just go in and start talking. This is a very misunderstood craft because no one else makes movies like this.
I would define independent film as a movie that is not financed by any of the smaller film companies. Because then, those are movies that in all likelihood are made without stars. And then they have to rely just on the material.
I was in the movies. I danced, I sang, I learned to work in front of a camera. It was like being in a repertory company.
There were times when we couldn't even go to the movies, when I was a kid, because there wasn't enough money.
Sometimes, big budget movies with big stars also flop, and sometimes small films manage to win the heart of audiences. Ultimately, it is the viewer who is the king and it depends on the liking of the audiences.
I revel in movies where the monsters tower more over the tiny budgets than the characters they threaten.
I think I've been lucky enough not to have to do movie after movie after movie for financial reasons, so I've been able to live life and also make movies. I didn't have to grind them out. I could go long periods where I was living life rather than tripping over cables.