Quotes

Let's face it, life is a vale of tears.

The answer is to go back to the basics of religion--try to be as nice and friendly to people as you can daily. That's what it comes down to. But if you get crass, nasty people who slap you across the face for no reason, you can't turn the other cheek to them. You have to kick them in the other cheek. You have to be as low and depraved as they are. They don't understand anything else.

Do you come from a happy home? I don't. I really didn't have a pleasant childhood . . . but you don't turn into an artist if you have a happy home life. I only write about what I know. I just remember the bad things.

[on Russ Meyer] Russ Meyer? Too glossy for me. I was always asked, "Why can't you turn out a film like Russ Meyer?" I said, "I wouldn't want to turn out a film like Russ Meyer." He's into beautiful, big-breasted broads and beautiful photography, but there's nothing there. No substance. All exploitation films are woman-hating films. What is exploitation but?

I'm an old disciplinarian. People respected me because I put on a good production. Anybody who didn't do the whole drug-and-drink devil-may-care thing at Cino was sort of ostracized. The third show at the Cino . . . they'd all be pie-eyed as Royal Roost, Mona's place. If they drank after just one of my shows they wouldn't be in another. I just don't like alcohol.

When a man is weak in the family and his wife rules the household, you'll find those men have homosexual tendencies or lean in that direction. Most of the guys you meet that are gay have very strong mothers. The mother's idolized, the father's hated . . . or usually taught to be hated by the mother. And the girl who sees her mother beaten by her father will turn out lesbian. These are the basics. Standard patterns.

During the '60s I would go to see one of my double bills on 42nd Street. It was interesting. You see glossy million-dollar Hollywood productions and they're boring. None of my films are. They may be tacky or crudely made, but they're never dull. Theatrical . . . very theatrical. Like filmed stage plays. They look like cinema verite because of the blow-up grain and mobility of the camera. A lot of hand-held stuff. They looked like newsreels.

I don't think any acting teacher is any good. You can't teach acting. All you can do is guide somebody. For one thing, the word "acting" is wrong. It means to act, it means that you're acting. Just [the] word "acting" is terrible. "Oh, I'm an actor, I act out things." It should be "being".

[on actor Dennis Malvasi] Dennis would die for you. He died a million times in Vietnam. He had all this stupidity wrapped up with all this brilliance. He knows opera, knows all classical music. He's a self-taught man, like me. He amazed me. He's a raw, unpolished gem. We were very close. He was like a little brother to me nearly the whole time I ran the Troupe Theater. He used to send bibles to kids all over the world. Bibles to underprivileged kids. He used to be a street kid. Came from the worst section of Brooklyn. He doesn't let anyone know in Brooklyn that he's an actor. He's got knife wounds on his back from a past mugging as well as Vietnam battle scars. If he only had a dollar on him and if a homeless bum would walk up and ask him for any spare change, he would give that bum 50 cents of that dollar, yet he would later go help a Mafia friend of his bury somebody they'd killed. He's a real Jekyll and Hyde character.

Once Fleshpot on 42nd Street (1972) was finished, that's when I got out of exploitation. I got out when the hardcore sex films really began appearing in the theaters. I just couldn't compete against that. That was it. [Lew Mishkin] once told me, "You are the most moral person I've met doing immoral films." I consider myself very conservative. I don't mind filming real sex, but showing all the details . . . I find that sleazy. Why put together a film with dialogue if they can go see a hardcore sex film? Why do dialogue? To enjoy a sex film is when's it's all sex and no story or dialogue, but when you try to put in a plot and dialogue, it's just plain bad.

Artists are nasty. When I'm working I'm a monster . . . and I know that, but it's the only way you can get it done for that money. Low-budget means you can't do it again.

In America, the cinema industry touches the public on a corporal level, without worrying too much about the intellect. If you have a name like Woody Allen you can still pre-order brain sequences, but otherwise they will never let you shoot scenes that contain subtle or intellectual dialogues. For my part, I write my own dialogues. We must follow our own path and, if we become good, the public will realize it. If you keep yourself whole, you will exist forever... you will survive. If you only trade, you can't last more than seven or eight years.

I never slept one full night during the seven years I lived in Manhattan when I had the Troupe Theater because of worrying about the building, the fucking noise of the constant traffic, and the killings. I saw the worst in New York City during those seven years. I saw the sanitation department come around and strip abandoned cars in the street outside the theater. First time they'd loose the bolts, the second time they'd take the tires. One cold and snowy night in '83 I was in the doorway to the theater and I saw a couple of Port Authority cops take a homeless bum, threw him up in the air, and let him land on his head... and they just walked away laughing. I saw two muggings within two hours at the same subway stop at 14th Street. At rush hour, I once saw a black guy wearing a business suit sitting between two cars... taking a dump because all the toilets at the nearby Port Authority bus terminal were closed. That was it! I guy just sitting there in the street defecating! A perfect advertisement for New York. I finally said to myself, "what am I doing here? This is masochism."