The person who goes to the Troma movie knows that he or she may love the Troma movie or, he or she may hate the Troma movie; but the movie goer knows that he or she will never forget the Troma movie.
In the '80s, I can't say that Amy and I were aware of an independent film community. We could only get a certain amount of money for our pictures, which made them low budget movies, but they were distributed through studios.
I did a string of about six or seven Elvis movies, all in a row. He made all of those movies in two years' time. All of them bad. Don't quote me.
In my career, I've never been a box office name. Granted, a couple of my movies have made a lot of money, but I'd do other movies which make very little money, or they're not seen that much.
Comedies are just never that expensive quite frankly. They really aren't. We aren't doing green screen shooting, so even Hangover II in Bangkok might seem like it's expensive, you're flying over and back, but they're just not that expensive to make when you do it the way we do it which is very focused and I've done it before.
When it's a bad movie you want to release it quietly. You try to keep it a secret like an STD.
My father Kamran Khan was a successful producer, director and actor in B-grade films.
I do smaller films, I'm not getting big paydays. I feel like we're just kind of scraping together here.
I've made somewhere around 150 pictures, and a lot of them are B-pictures, I can tell you that. I'd say there's about one hundred of them I don't remember.
I was not into B-movies. A lot of it is sloppy.
My first film was a movie shot in 1974. I was 18 on that movie set. It was called 'Big Bad Mama.' I turned 19 on the next movie I worked on, which was a black 'Blazing Saddles.' I worked in the art department. It was called 'Darktown Strutters.'
I guess, in a sense, 'Audition' was a film that gave me an opportunity that I hadn't had up until that point. So that's definitely one that is important to me. Then there's 'Visitor Q' that kind of taught me that there are some kinds of films that can only be made as low-budget films that really wouldn't work as anything else.
I did a few independent films, but there is no money in them.
I really loved making 'A Walk to Remember', so I'm not afraid of making smaller films. But for me, I just need to connect to the characters.
On the last couple of movies I made - big-budget Hollywood movies - I really missed being able to create my own material.
The lifeblood of my career has been independent film.
Unless you're making Marvel movies, I think CGI usually suffers, especially in mid-budget-range horror movies where you see CGI.
I'm like the king of the low-budget sequel. People ask, 'What film are you gonna do next?' 'I don't know, but it's probably got a 3 or 4 in the title.'
You can always make a film somehow. You can beg, borrow, steal the equipment, use credit cards, use your friends' goodwill, wheedle your way into this or that situation. The real problem is, how do you get people to see it once it is made?
In the beginning, it wasn't even a question of deciding I'm going to do independent film and not commercial films - I wasn't being offered any commercial films, and there wasn't an independent scene.
The Cannes film festival is about big-budget films but also remarkable films made in different political regimes by film-makers with little resources.
Certain subjects are best done with stars. Certain subjects like 'Alai Payuthe' are done with non-stars. In such films, stars are a burden.
When I started, every film got a full theatrical distribution. Today, almost no low budget films, maybe two or three a year, will get a full theatrical distribution. We've been frozen out of that, which means they must be aware that for a full theatrical distribution it either has to be something like Saw or some exploitation film of today or an extremely well made personal film.
The truth is that I didn't start out making commercial movies. My films were not film festival movies with the possible exception slightly of 'Super,' but I was able to nurture my gifts through the works of artists making lower budget films that needed a place and an outlet.
I like film books at the bottom of the barrel and art books at the top. 'The Ghastly One,' by Jimmy McDonough, is a hilarious biography of one of the most hideous directors who ever picked up a movie camera - Andy Milligan.
