I know what it is like to fear violence. I understand the adrenalin rush that comes before violent confrontations. I write my scripts from an emotional point of view and direct so the audience can experience this adrenalin rush.
The whole idea of 'Death Line' was to kind of highlight class distinctions in England more than to make a scary movie, and I just kind of wrapped my political treatise of the class distinctions in England in this movie.
Television offered me the opportunity to do new things; I had written a lot of scripts other than scary movies. I had actually written some romantic comedies and stuff that I really wanted to try my hand at, and nobody would let me do that. Television allowed me to do anything I wanted.
I grew up in Albany Park in Chicago and then went to Lake View High School.
I have this data bank garbage can in the back of my head that is an emotional collection of events that have occurred in my life.
I was an outsider as a kid, and I grew up around a lot of violence.
One of the great things going on in Chicago is the educational facilities here. And the largest film school in the world is right here in Chicago: Columbia College.
Having been subjected to the pigeonholing of Hollywood myself, I realized that once you become a studio-approved director, your chances of ever making your own film again are zero. You make the films that the studio wants you to make.
The gruesomeness of 'Death Line' was an absolute necessity for me to bring up the political content of the film. I wanted to show how devastating class distinction could be.
'Vice Squad' needed to be real if it was going to have the impact that I wanted it to have.
I think that we, as a civilization, need to sit down and figure out how to solve political problems over a table, not over a battlefield.
I'm very much against war; I'm very much against terrorism of any kind. I find terrorism to be one of the most appalling things that can exist in society.
I am anything but a misogynist - I am quite far to the other side of that.
You get an audience to laugh and then show them something horrific, it's going to be even more horrific because they've had the release of the laugh before it.
Working with Jack Albertson was one of my great joys.
I love making movies, but a movie becomes your entire life for, like, two to two and a half years. There's no way around it; if you're really going to be serious about a movie, it has to be your life.
In feature films, unless there was a body count, they weren't hiring me to direct it.
'Lisa' was a film that I am really proud of and is probably hopefully going to be remade.
