Quotes

[on L'ouragan de la vengeance (1966) and The Shooting ou La Mort Tragique de Leland Drum (1966), which were shot simultaneously but released several years apart] We thought there would be a couple of more Roger Corman movies that would play on the second half of a double bill somewhere. So any thoughts about doing something different were for our own personal satisfaction. We never thought that anybody would ever notice.

I like to work on a film where it's continually opening up its secrets to me. I think any work of art, not just a film, is a mystery. I think it was Jean Cocteau who said it should reveal its secrets slowly.

[on Macadam à deux voies (1971)] It's a film about inner life rather than outer life. It's not a film about other films; it's not a pastiche.

When I was selling Eskimo Pies in Hollywood as a teenager, pushing a wagon around Paramount, Columbia and all the studios, my dream was to have my own parking space in any studio -- I didn't care where. My problem has always been that I've had my little parking space, but I was never in a studio long enough to have my name painted on one.

I believe the best movies are road movies. The road is very enigmatic. The road is life.

[on Jack Nicholson] There's something diabolical about him. Jack's evil.

[on Douce nuit, sanglante nuit: coma dépassé (1989)] Personally I think it's my best work. I mean, I don't think it's my best movie... in fact, it's probably my worst, to be honest. But Arthur Gorson asked me to come on-board in March of '89 and we had our final cut ready in June that same year. Even if the movie doesn't really hold up when I watch it now, I can't help but be proud of how quickly we put it together.

The idea of the road movie as a separate genre is, in a way, a little absurd because every movie is in some way a road movie.

I love reading everybody's interpretation of any movie I make, I'm fascinated by all these different readings, but my primary intent is to move the audience.

I don't think a lot about the movies I'm making and I kind of take the scripts at face value and deal with it.

You make a movie for money and it loses money, you have nothing. You make a movie for art and it loses money, you have art.