On the last couple of movies I made - big-budget Hollywood movies - I really missed being able to create my own material.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I've been blessed with enough wealth that I can make a film myself up to a certain budget. So one way I thought I would reinvent myself was just to make these very small, personal films that I've financed myself.
I started making my own short films as a way of being able to give myself something to do and to study my craft.
It's nice when you're working in Hollywood and there's a movie you'd like to see that no one is making anymore. You make it yourself.
That's why I'm really trying to produce my own stuff. This film was so good, because I produced it myself, and developed it, and made it with New Line, which is a smaller studio, so I was in control of a lot of stuff that I wasn't in control of for my other films.
When I moved to Los Angeles, I wrote spec screenplays. I was really poor, and I thought I was just gonna do this for a while to make a little money so I could write novels. I thought movies were a second-class art form. I condescended to it - I didn't know enough to know it was really gonna be hard.
I love making films more than anything, but it's tough.
When I started making films, like almost every filmmaker, I think, you're just so excited to be able to make a movie that you'll do anything.
I was able to make many different kinds of movies. They enriched me on many different levels.
I started to make my own films, however small and however independent they were, from the beginning. And so, even though I was nobody, I was always the master of my own work.
As long as you keep your budgets small, there's a way of making films.