Biography

[young characters] The problem with teenagers is that there is no depth to them...even a picture like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, there is only so much depth you can apply to these kids.

[why he didn't attend University] I have attention deficit disorder, so it was hard for me to focus, and back then they didn't have anything for kids like that. In English terms it was called St. Vitus' Dance, where you couldn't sit still.

[the influence of director Sidney Furie movies] They were all so compelling, the way he used a camera, his editing. It really made me decide to leave my day job being an art director in the magazines and go into movies. The only guy doing that kind of thing at the time was Sidney, so I thought there should be two guys. In order to be a director, it takes that kind of outsized arrogance.

[the film boom in Canada during the '80s] It lasted about seven years. Then the bozo conservatives pulled the tax credit and it started to slide and it never really came back until the provinces brought in their own tax credits towards the end of the '80s, and that spurred the television boom.

[how the industry was changing in 2011] The whole business is changing radically, particularly with theater-going audiences and [the rise of] video-on-demand. We don't know where it's going to wind up in ten years time. People are only going to big movies. There's no real movie stars anymore. A movie star like Humphrey Bogart can bring an audience into a mediocre movie. But now it's mostly the concept, like Paranormal Activity. The movie star is the idea.