I was originally a painter, and I made films sort of as an extension of that, and then I started to try to make dramatic films because the early films were experimental films.
The films that I loved growing up were the science fiction films from the late seventies and early eighties [films], which were more about the people and how they are affected by the environments that they are in. Whether they are sort of futuristic or alien of whatever they are; that was the science fiction that I loved. So that is what we tried to make, the sort of film that felt like those old films.
There were a lot of people dreaming about making films, and they would finance maybe 6 films a year. Because they were funded by the government, the films sort-of had to deal with serious social issues - and, as a result, nobody went to see those films.
Free time keeps me going. It's just something that's always been a part of my life. I was originally a painter, and I made films sort of as an extension of that, and then I started to try to make dramatic films because the early films were experimental films.
When I stopped making films, they were getting on to the more realistic films and the explicit films and all. They were depicting life as it is, and some of it was unpleasant. I gradually moved away from that.
I don't care about Hollywood films. I'm not against Hollywood films, you know? Hollywood films were very good before, in the 1950s.
When I was making films [early in my career] there were very, very few female directors, and there were certainly no women on set, which made taking one's clothes off all the more difficult.
I think early in my career, I didn't choose films that were crappy films, necessarily, but I didn't go out and campaign for smaller, better roles.
There's music in my films but you seldom hear it. Very early I got the idea that the important things in films were people - the actors. They are the intermediary between the director and the audience. They make direct contact. People to people communication.
Blaxploitation films were black films targeting black people. They were films made to appeal to a culture in a way that was supposed to be unfiltered.
My early films were very European based. It was 'As It Is In Heaven,' 'Together,' they were great international successes, but then I did, I think, 60 movies or something.
I don't know what to expect out of my films. My first two films were with extremely talented directors, and they didn't work. And my next two films were with newcomers, and they worked well. So I've stopped expecting anything from my movies.
I was turning up at sets where inexperienced people were making these badly written films - but they were doing it; that was the point. They were getting their films out there. And they were paying me, so they obviously had access to money. I just thought, 'I can make something better than this.'
When I was in my 20s and 30s, there was such a variety and diversity of types of films that you could see. So many of them were really more about the human condition and about relationships between people, and they were smaller films that had a much greater impact on me as a human being.
I have enjoyed doing some films as they were well written like 'Andaz Apna Apna,' 'Hera Pheri' and 'Cheeni Kum.' These films were high on the comedy quotient as the characters were creating a comic situation.
I didn't really grow up watching a lot of films. I grew up in the middle of Texas in a very rural area, so we were always outside fishing or playing a sport - we were never in front of a TV watching films.