For 'Filth,' we had about 12 producers on the thing. The opening credits go on for months. Most of them are actually financers rather than producers. And the only way that we could raise the budget without interference from a studio was to have a lot of different financers on board.
Hezbollah is notorious for using charities and front organizations to hide its funding sources.
It will be almost impossible for any other candidate to raise the money that the Clintons can raise.
I think it helps to get a film made because people who put money in are nervous. They like to have something recognisable enough to make them secure that there's a pattern there - that someone else put their money into something like this and made it back.
The question now is does Obama have any hope of raising money? I don't think he'll raise it out of the New York people, I don't think he's going to raise it out the Hollywood people, so where's the money going to come from for Barack Obama?
The arms race for money being what it is, fundraising starts shortly after someone is elected to Congress.
Much of what candidates have to do is raise money and appeal to constituencies or interest groups that can provide that money.
I was never a big networker, but I was a spin doctor, all those shock shows, that's how I got my first backers. But fashion's a scary industry to be in, especially if you've not grown up with it.
I saw the Blair-Mandelson regime as a coup, and I think it was a well-funded coup as well - resources obviously came from big private-sector backers. But all through that period the bulk of the rank and file party were what the party has always been, a socialist party.
But I feel that I have a responsibility to help the film and I have relations with the studio and with those who put up the money so that I can tell a story that I believe in.
The financing of my films has always been international.
Pieces of April' was going to be a 3 to 7 million dollar film and we had three entities, two studios, and one wealthy man and they all backed out. It was quite a blow.
The vast majority of our film producers are independent producers who live hand to mouth trying to get projects made that they love. They are not owners, they're not money people, and in fact, those who just have the money don't always get a producer credit.
The opening-night audience is mostly friends of the cast and backers of the show, and they cometo applaud their money.
The model today is that as much as 70 percent of the financing of the picture would come from overseas. Now we're beginning to run out of suckers, because there are not that many people overseas who are willing to put up more than half the money for a movie.
