I was a banker in Morocco when I first saw 'American Graffiti.' It was before I was an actor, a melancholy time in my life, and this mood was reflected in the film.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
'American Graffiti' stayed in my mind, but I don't think to this day I've done a film that captured that same level of melancholy. It was so well done. Talking about it has given me the idea I might try harder to make that melancholy film!
I didn't start doing graffiti until two years after I got to New York. Jean Michel Basquiat was one of my main inspirations for doing graffiti. For a year I didn't know who Jean Michel was, but I knew his work.
I grew up within Italian-American neighborhoods, everybody was coming into the house all the time, kids running around, that sort of stuff, so when I finally got into my own area, so to speak, to make films, I still carried on.
I was a young film student around the time of the new wave in film in the 1970s; old Hollywood was naff and over. For me, as a film student, I was going to see French and Italian cinema; American cinema was 'Easy Rider' and 'Taxi Driver.' Everything was gritty.
I spent a couple of years doing American films. I did a few.
I'm a painter. I was a graffiti artist, and I painted all over the world.
I made this Swedish movie called 'Snabba Cash,' or 'Easy Money,' and it was shown at the Berlin Film Festival. A lot of American studios, agents, and people like that saw it there and liked it.
I remember when I got my first opportunity to work in America, I didn't speak a lot of English, so I only really knew my lines for the movie I was doing.
During the Sixties, the Americans thought I was the greatest thing in the history of cinema.
During the Eighties, when I was hurting for money, I thought, 'Hang on a minute - I can paint.' I was living in New York and I thought it would get the grocery money coming in, and it escalated from there.