Look at 'Avatar:' the foreign ticket sales were over twice the domestic returns. The mind boggles at those kinds of numbers, but that's what you get when you effectively reach out to a global audience. If that kind of thing came to comics, it would undoubtedly change how people perceive the mainstream industry.
But I think we need the international market.
They like my books better in England than in France; a translation would be very successful there.
It's becoming increasingly harder and harder; there's no such thing as independent film anymore. There aren't any, they don't exist. In the old days you could go and get a certain amount of the budget with foreign sales, now everybody wants a marketable angle.
Luckily, with 'The Collector' the first time around, it really took off in the DVD world and foreign, so it was just a pleasant surprise that a couple of years later there we were, doing it again.
If you're a film studio, you're making a movie for a foreign market. You're pursuing ideas that travel well. It changes the movies we see and how movies are made.
Literary life used to be quite different in Britain in the years I lived there, from 1971 to 1989, because money was not a factor - no one made very much except from U.S. sales and the occasional windfall.
Every airplane sale overseas generates U.S. jobs.
Some stars can make five or six failures in a row and continue to work - with a raise. I can't figure how that works. Maybe foreign sales or a smart agent.
Other countries are open to purchasing foreign short films because they have a market for them.
I just recently crossed over into Europe. They're showing my special Hot and Fluffy in Europe and selling the DVD there too. And they're doing the same thing in Australia and Canada. And I think the biggest part was I did the special in a predominantly Latino area, but I kept the show mainstream and across the board.
I think each film I do has less and less dialogue. It really helps a lot for foreign sales, because when I go to Europe, there's very little problem with communication. All the gags are visual. The music they can understand, and it helps communicate a lot better.
