I think indie films are really important, because they show the studios and the audiences when they see them, great stories. Really interesting, small stories.
After I was fired from Disney, I did some of the worst movies ever made.
There was a phase in my career in my late 20s and 30s when I was doing strange, arty-farty Euro films that were, you could tell, never had much chance of any release anywhere in the world.
Independent films are really the best ones out there. They're the most original stories, and they're very good.
I really don't consider myself to be a conventional Hollywood star. I've never really been marketed by the big studios to do mass market box office films.
I can't say that I wouldn't prefer to make small films, basically because I think they are probably more interesting in terms of the material. But every now and again, it's quite good to do a big one.
I'd love to be a filmmaker and look back and be like, 'Ah, man, we were part of that whole '80s video nasty thing!'
When I go and make smaller films, I actually never think about them being made for a smaller audience.
Indie film isn't dead, it just grew up.
We've been remarkably lucky in that we've been free to make the movies we've wanted to make the way we've wanted to make them. They've all been made for a price.
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.'
In an ideal world, I'd bounce between big projects and no-budget TV dramas with fantastic scripts. A lot of Hollywood films tend to be bloated, bombastic, loud. At the same time, I do like the infrastructure of making a blockbuster; it's like having a big train set.
I love independent filmmaking. I don't agree with a lot of it, but that's the point.
Basically, independent film doesn't exist anymore. It does if you have two or three stars in your film, but it's just very difficult.
For me, Mexploitation seemed like something that should have existed, but didn't.
'Yosemite' opened doors for me in the New York theater community in amazing ways. There's a whole world of fearless young theater makers here who put shows together on a shoestring budget and with gigantic hearts.
When I got out of school, I just started doing plays of the off-off-Broadway route, and for many years, that's what I did, slowly doing work in tiny theaters, building relationships with people in the business. It's not a showy story.
I think it's important to do smaller films because I think that's where a lot of new things are happening.
I'm not saying that it's wrong to make huge Hollywood films but it's just a different kind of feeling, a different sort of pleasure.
I've had such a great track record in making a huge profit when the movies are smaller.
The older I get, the more I'm drawn to the smaller films, but I still hope to keep bigger films in my repertoire. It's just maybe going to be a shift in focus, but I'll definitely still hopefully be kicking around in those.
I tend to watch a lot of lower-budget movies to find out what's doing down there and find out who's coming up.
I've always made sequels, even when I was making Super 8 movies if the audience liked it.
I remember when first, Stripes, and then Animal House came out - which I was really proud of, even though it was kind of loose and quite raucous - there were imitative movies that were not quite as good.
I was one of those kids who had never seen an indie film before I got to college. If it wasn't a big, huge tentpole movie, or if it wasn't on the radio, I hadn't experienced it.
