Now, it's almost impossible to go out and do a film about a new form of music.

I can't believe I actually was in my own movie.

The first Decline I did was out of sheer love and appreciation for the music. In 1977, it was more about bands, because punk was a new form of music. It was groundbreaking and political.

I really feel kind of guilty spending 80 million dollars. People are starving in the world.

Your best protection is to have an established agent make the contact.

Before you approach a production entity or even a potential producer, you should write up a treatment and register your show with the Writers Guild of America.

This generation has given up on growth. They're just hoping for survival.

Big studio comedies are such a headache.

I actually picked up copies of Decline I and II at a flea market once. I walked out without paying.

Now, it's almost impossible to go out and do a film about a new form of music.

I live on this nice three acres in Hollywood.

Those movies, Decline I and II and Suburbia, are dearly loved, but they never made any money. I didn't even have the rights for some of them.

I got IRS records to finance what I wanted to do.

There are thousands of directors in Hollywood.

For the most part, studio movies have huge budgets. They don't do anything under 30 to 40 million. When you have that much money at stake, you have so many people breathing down your neck.

If you are looking for a producer, try to contact established producers. Don't let the fear of theft paralyze you, or you will never get anywhere with it.

When men have money and power they get turned on, sexually. They get horny as hell. Can't imagine why, though.

Rabid fans were literally jumping into the camera.

Decline III, I funded myself, from the studio money. That, and I sold a lot of drugs. Kidding. Don't print that.

I was always into music. I think everyone is when they're a teenager, as a way to drown out the world.

Me and Johnny Rotten have been talking about doing a movie of his book, No Irish, No Dogs, No Blacks. We have a script, so hopefully that's going to happen at some point in our careers.

I love punk rock, but I also love metal.

When we did Wayne's World, it was 14 million dollars and they didn't bug us too much because they just thought it was some little movie that nobody was ever going to see. We showed them.

In other countries, it's a common thing to have outcast children running around the streets in packs, and I don't think we're so far away from it here.

Different parents have different standards for their children.

It is the idea that it's a movie in a movie. So I did it.

It's really hard to imagine there ever being the kind of impact there was when punk rock happened in the late 70's. I wish there would be one big change like that again, but I don't know if that'll ever happen.

Arnold and Jamie Lee must have worked over the years with directors that did 50 takes, because I'd get like three takes or so and say, Ok, that's it, we're done.

Nobody wanted to touch Decline III when they found out what it was about.

It is fun to try figure out the things that really are real and the things that aren't.

This generation has given up on growth. Theyre just hoping for survival.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise.

'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.

The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.

If he didn't fall in love he would have never come back near the end of the film. Because, what man is going to dishonor himself so that he comes back in front of the man that took a woman away from him... and warns her to save her life?

Robert Altman's Nashville is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I have a movie coming out called Spun, which will be at the Toronto Film Fest.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before.