Quotes

[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.

[critics] Today it's irrelevant, because the real critics that I grew up with, like Vincent Canby, in the New York Times, if one was maligned by them, it was really a knife through the heart. I think I would have liked a really good review by Pauline Kael or Penelope Gilliatt, but they're gone now. Today, with the Internet, everyone is a critic. It's meaningless.

[Olivia d'Abo] Yeah, she was fabulous. She was a great actress. I was just saying the other night, it's beyond me why she didn't become a megastar. I used her as the ultimate Playboy bunny [in the 1987 TV movie "Really Weird Tales"], except that she was a great actress. Most bunnies aren't that bright, but Olivia was very bright, and she was stunning. I don't know what happened. She had everything. It's just bad luck that happens to some people.

[violent films from other countries influencing Canada] Canada has always been one of the nicest places on Earth. It's more like Scandinavia than anywhere else. It's a very laid-back, honorable, fair-minded, trustworthy group of people compared to anywhere else. They certainly didn't have that kind of thing, not until the 1990s, and now the influence of the world has influenced Canada, and we have all sorts of whackos now. But for a long time that didn't happen there.

People think I'm a little odd and eccentric because I collect teddy bears. But what is coming out next summer? A movie starring Mr. Action Himself, Mr. Hit You in the Face and Beat You and Pulverize You, Mark Wahlberg, playing a man who takes around, everywhere he goes, a teddy bear and talks to him. I was exonerated! I can't imagine anyone else who can exonerate me better than Mark Wahlberg.

[negative opinions of his work] I was in the book store the other day, there was a book out on American directors ["The Wallflower Critical Guide to Contemporary North American Directors"] and I was in there. I think Ed Wood comes out better than me in that book. The guy [Ian Cooper] found no value in anything I ever did, it was complete and utter crap to him. That's fine, that's a personal review.

Any director who takes credit for great performances should be shot.

[problem actors] Generally speaking, it's the insecure actors who aren't very good who are the problem. A great actor might disagree or may do odd things, but there's generally no problem if you agree going in what you're trying to do. I have had a few instances where the actors don't seem to know what show they're on, quite honestly.

[Director Mike Nichols] said unless you're an assistant director, you don't know how anyone else directs. It's like sex, you never know how anyone else does it. You also don't know how you are on set.

[actors he doesn't like] The only two that I didn't find very good or nice at all were Cybil Shepherd and Hal Linden, but that's only two out of a 40-year career. With Cybil, it was understandable. "Moonlighting" was arranged as a star vehicle for her and from the first episode, Bruce Willis stole the show. But she was just not very nice. Hal Linden was working on "Black Magic," with Harry Morgan. Harry was such a great actor, but then he would come and sit with me and have a coffee, and was just a reasonable man. Whereas as soon as you said "Cut," Hal Linden would walk to his dressing room as though he was a megastar.