I figured, 'When is that ever going to happen again?'. So I basically set out the opposite way movies are made; I set out with a budget first. I said, 'What can I do well for $40,000?'.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There's the concept that if I do this big budget project, then that will help me do the things I really want to do and bring more money to those films.
It is extremely difficult to get movies that cost more than $40 million to be made these days.
I don't see me doing $100 million films because $100 million films, the very nature of them, you need to offend as few people as possible just to make your money back.
It's not a great feeling for a film to suffer financially, but you can't sit and mope about it. You just have to just move on to next project - I try to always be working on a new project when my last one hits the theaters.
In fact, I had a series of offers which would have brought me a lot of money to make films and package TV programs. There were people who said to me, we'll put a million dollars in your bank account tomorrow, which is a hard thing to turn down.
Talking to other people who make low-budget movies, everyone kind of has the same struggle.
We have so many films that we can fit into the slate a year, and we spend $100 million on those films in order to make $400 million dollars. We don't spend $20 million in hopes of eking out $40 million.
Films were never in my budget. Didn't occur to me till much later. I hoped for a long, good life, which I've had and I'm having as an actor. I didn't expect the rest.
What do you spend $200 million on, with a film? I can't wrap my brain around that one.
Well, I was getting a lot of money then, and I wasn't getting any Hollywood films, so I just did those. I'd always do a play in between. Whenever I ran low on funds, I'd always rush off to do a movie somewhere.