Luckily, he was in the process of moving to France at the time, anyway. But if he had stayed in the States, I don't know how he would have handled that, because it was getting pretty crazy. I mean, a celebrity which he really did not welcome. And I can't blame him.

That would be getting up at 5 am... I don't understand why film's shoot such brutal hours. I think it'd be worth it to not be so strictly cost-effective and have an 8 hour day. The film's would benefit in the end.

Because I found myself telling the story of his family to people without the visual aids that I was able to employ by filming them eventually. But I very much knew exactly what I was going to do.

So I told Robert from the start that if we couldn't get Charles and Max to take part, but especially Charles, that I didn't want to make the film. So would he call his mother and talk to Charles and see if Charles would at all be interested.

I think the other misconceptions when the film came out, he was very upset that it was so widely released and so widely seen. And neither one of us - well, I think I had hopes it would be, 'cause I really did think it was something special.

Luckily, he was in the process of moving to France at the time, anyway. But if he had stayed in the States, I don't know how he would have handled that, because it was getting pretty crazy. I mean, a celebrity which he really did not welcome. And I can't blame him.

Whereas my producer literally worked on this thing for 10 years and because I gave that presenter credit to David Lynch, she to this day never gets credit. It really kills me.

I hope they get something of interest out of it, but I'd rather they all hate it and I like it, instead of vice versa... I make films to please myself first, and if the audience likes them, all the better.

It makes it difficult to decide which to go see, since no film about say, some tragic genocide in Africa is going to get a bad review even if it's poorly made.

Well, that was certainly - to me, until we could film in Charles' room, I didn't even want to bother filming anything else. And in fact, I did hold off and that was the first thing we filmed.

I was inspired to do anything I could to get out of what I was doing... today, I'm motivated to pay the bills.

And I sense it was a rather constructed, almost half narrative fiction film in some ways. A lot of it was staged and manipulated to get those things in there that I knew to be strong.

A lot of things I have turned down ended up being a big embarrassment. Like that script, 'The Beaver.' I thought that was one of the worst scripts I had ever read. But everyone said, 'Ooh it's on the Black List.' Yeah, well, good for it. They're a bunch of idiots. I saw the final film, and there were no surprises.

Chicago always hit me as such a gloomy place - I just remember all the snow getting dirty as soon as it would fall, all the decaying brown brick buildings around where we lived, all this soot all over the place.

For a long time, there was this rumor that I turned down doing 'Austin Powers,' which is not true. While they did send me the script, I don't think I was ever a serious consideration to direct it. I'm sure they probably sent it to 20 others as well.

I collect old Coon Chicken Inn memorabilia. I collect black memorabilia, like old minstrel posters. It was a real place. There was one in Seattle, one in Portland, and one in Salt Lake City. They started in 1925, and then they went out of business around 1958.

I gotta tell you, I don't have many close friends, and if I do wind up making friends with somebody, it takes me a long time, usually.

I try to make a film that's very entertaining, very funny, but also gives you something to think about. And the strongest thing I have to offer is my point of view, to get across how I see the world in hopes that it can change the way other people see the world, hopefully for the better.

I've stopped going to see art films because every critic gives them four stars and say things like 'masterpiece,' 'spellbinding' and 'mesmerizing.' I mean, they're doing that with my film, but I don't want to use those blurbs. Critical reviews aren't worth too much anymore because just about every film can get one or two of them.

Maybe if I found something I was really passionate about, which is entirely possible, I would make another documentary, but it's not a good career choice for anybody. I don't recommend it.

My hat's off to documentary filmmakers. I don't know if I'm ever going back to it. You're treated like a second-class citizen at most film festivals. You take the bus while everybody else is flown first-class. If you're a feature film director, you're put in a five-star hotel, and if you're a documentary director, you stay in a Motel 6.

People like light and silly, and they like stuff that's really energetic, and you get a character in a film bouncing around and screaming, people laugh. That's all it takes. I don't find that funny. To me, what's funny is dialogue and nuance of character and performance.

People think I have an interest in comics, but I'm only interested in comics from the '40s, like 'Donald Duck' comics.

The Weinsteins believe in test screenings. I don't. I don't think good films are made that way. Call me crazy, but I'd like to think you need a singular vision to make good art.

The last Christmas movie I really liked was 'It's a Wonderful Life,' probably. It's sort of a schmaltzy movie, but it's not without its dark moments. It still gets to me every year.

The main trouble with Hollywood is that the guys you have to pitch to, the guys who run the studios, are all business school grads.

The things I want to make into a film, they're personal, esoteric things, and I don't expect anyone else to like them as much as I do. I generally like my films more than anybody else will.

When I went around promoting 'Crumb,' there would be days I'd wake up in, like, Houston or Cleveland, and I'd step outside the hotel and get no idea where I was. It all looks the same: one big corporate, consumer theme park. It's all, 'Here's the Starbucks, and here's the Gap, and we'll go over to Banana Republic and the Cineplex.'

I started recording because I was always complaining about the records that I was getting of my songs. At least if I did them and messed them up, I wouldn't have anyone else to blame.

It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry.

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist.

It's hard to blame someone because they simply don't have time.

I blame myself more so because I hung a curve. If you want to point a finger, point it at me.

I do not believe we can blame genetics for adultery, homosexuality, dishonesty and other character flaws.

What to do? We yanked the dress up over her lovely attributes and with the addition of a scarf, the problem was solved. Sorry, guys, blame that stuffy censor. He hated surprises.

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

To err is human - and to blame it on a computer is even more so.

The anger that appears to be building up between the sexes becomes more virulent with every day that passes. And far from women taking the blame... the fact is that men are invariably portrayed as the bad guys. Being a good man is like being a good Nazi.

Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.

I've criticized President Bush for his failure to use his veto pen. There's plenty of blame to go around. The question is how to solve problems. It's not bailouts. What made America great? Free markets, free enterprise, manufacturing, job creation. That's how we're gonna do it, not by enlarging government.

If people don't like Marxism, they should blame the British Museum.

I think in the wake of Katrina, the Coast Guard may well have been the only entity or agency that came out of that exercise free of fault and free of blame.

I wish I could blame it on the choreography, but it's not a musical. I just had a clumsy moment.

I think it's very important that you make your own decision about what you are. Therefore you're responsible for your actions, so you don't blame other people.

People blame me because these water mains break, but I ask you, if the water mains didn't break, would it be my responsibility to fix them then?

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society?

Luck's always to blame.

And I think, on the other end, there were actors who were not as good as I was, perhaps who could have hung in too, but began to blame everything on race.