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In terms of popular cinema, 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is as near perfection as I can think of.

I dropped out of college and ended up making this feature film I wrote when I was 19 with some friends. It was terrible.

The only film I ever made for money was something called 'Music From Another Room', which I really didn't like.

Bantam Press. And they commissioned me to write it. And when that was completed, they sold it to Harper and Row. And then I put it out to every movie studio in town. And they all turned it down.

When I was 25 years old and had no money - and didn't know how to make movies and had no experience - I was able to get $25,000 together, and that film was 'The Brothers McMullen.'

I pulled out of making movies in about '96 or '97.

I had those kind of parents where I watched all of these very sophisticated movies: 'Five Easy Pieces', 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.'

Whatever my father did were great films. I don't want to remake any of them.

I've made three musical movies which is pretty good considering that not many are made but I was lucky in other ways. I came along when independent movies were starting to boom.

When studios start telling me why a particular film project won't work, I remember 'Rocky.' I remember that the biggest success Bob Chartoff and I have had was a film nobody wanted to make.