There was a great magazine in the '80s called 'Cinemagic' for home moviemakers who liked to do monster and special effects movies. It was like a magazine written just for me.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I started using film as part of live theatre performance - what used to be called performance art - and I became intrigued by film.
I actually have great respect for the professionals on both sides, journalism designers in the fashion industry, and I wanted to make a movie that celebrated what they did as much as poke fun at the challenges of their lives.
My dad had a commercial film company, so he had a videotape player before anyone. So he got Mel Brooks movies or Citizen Kane or some classic old movies. And every summer the revival house in Evanston would show the great films from the '50s and '60s and '70s.
I was able to make many different kinds of movies. They enriched me on many different levels.
I had no interest in cinema until I was 24 years old. My friends had posters of their favourite stars in their houses, but I was far from a film buff - very detached from films.
When I was young, I loved movies so much I wanted to make one.
John Schlesinger had one of his friends designing it and he had never done a film before. Ten days before it started, they didn't have any costumes. I was rung up and joined up.
I used to send away for eight-minute Super 8 movies of various Ray Harryhausen scenes advertised on the back of 'Famous Monsters of Filmland' magazine.
I saw 'Sleeping Beauty' when I was, like, 6 years old at the Mercury Theatre. Then, when I came to Disney, I was in the company of these wonderful artists. People like Glen Keane, like Mark Henn, who were brilliant animators who could really bring these things to life.
I've always loved movies, since I was a little kid, but I never wanted to be part of that industry. It always seemed horrifying, the way films were made.