Art, Work & Creativity

• Art must be radical, art must upset people as much as possible. I am radical and obviously I suffer consequence. But I think that only this can lead to the evolution of the human kind.

• Art must be deep and pregnant, art can't be for all, popular art is just nonsensical. I am an artist, and art applies to people like me, interesting and convoluted people. But our society tends and the more will tend in the opposite direction, that is to make everything available for everybody and always. Art will be more and more reproducible and more and more accessible.

• To get what I wanted, or to do the things that I wanted to do, or to have impact, I had to be very clever and part of being very clever requires a kind of creative language so I was always willing to do it that way. But I've also done it in other ways; through revenge; through violence; through salesmanship; through hard work; through building; through working with my hands. I'm not a young poet. I'm a working person.

• In its most compelling form, artwork is done by people who made something without purpose. They don't have a direct, clear purpose so they're making something in a more abstract way. They're not thinking about a show, about an audience, about a concert, about an album. They're making something without a purpose. It's like: "I just gotta do this." That's on its pedestrian level. On its most sophisticated level, they have that same motivation, I just gotta do this, but there's an intensified level of thought, concept, esthetic and point-of-view, but still maintained: "I gotta do this." That's not what I'm doing in cinema. That's not what I do with music, and that's not what I do as an actor. I may use the same level of creativity, I may use more creativity, I may use the same level of technique, I may use more technique, I may use the same levels of design and planning, whatever it is. I may collaborate in similar ways. But I'm not making art. I'm simply making film. When I make a film? I'm making two things. One, I'm making something that's missing from the collection of films that I think should be in the library in my own mind. Y'know? You're making a film that's missing. It's been checked out of the library and never returned and I'm making it so it exists again. And the second thing is, I'm making merely what I would have an idea in my mind, a film that I would want to see.

• My creativity is always motivated by what's missing, the same way it comes from what's broken, what needs to be cleaned, what needs to be prepared because I don't have it. It always comes from loss or from the seed of something that needs to be protected and grown.

• I believe that profound vision is when a leader takes you somewhere where you don't want to go because it's an unknown place, it's an unknown ideal. If the Beatles knew what they would do in 1969 in 1964, they would have done it in 1964. They could never have imagined that. And a profound visionary is someone who can, not completely imagine that, but whose thoughts lead to that. And you can never communicate profound vision to the mainstream, so I'm an elitist on that level.

• What I meant to say when I said that I hustle was that I don't identify myself as an artist in a preconceived concept of what it means to be an artist. That's what a bunch of TV actors who finally get a movie job like to think of themselves. I've done so many different things. I've done a million different things for money. I've done a million things to have impact into culture. I've done a million things for love and approval and social status. So when I said 'I hustle' I was trying to describe the basic premise of what motivates me to do all these different things, and it's certainly not poetic and anybody who tells you that it is for themselves is full of shit.

Life

• When you ask me what do I enjoy the most, the pleasure that I get is in the impact, not the specific activity. The pleasure is in the result, not so much in the process. The process is just unconscious. I'm preoccupied with the result. So the process, I don't notice it as much. I don't sit there on set directing a movie saying to myself: "Wow, man, this is just great". It's not like that. I'm still thinking about the film, just about the film and trying to control as many things as possible. I have the most pleasure when I'm working, when I'm in the most control, when I don't have other people's egos or other obstacles distracting me. I'm very controlling and that's where I find the most pleasure when I have people who trust me working with me.
• I remember the first time I had a normal day, I was in Rome. It was very odd that I had a normal day in Europe because of what happened. I was walking down Via Canditi in Rome and the sun was shining and I didn't think about fear or doubt or any negative thought for one whole afternoon. I was just a normal person and I thought, "Wow! It's nice to just have a normal day!" I was twenty eight years old and that was the first nice day of my life. For twelve years, I had not gone ten minutes without fear and doubt.
• I have this big poor fear... Big poor fear... so I would pay my rent four or five years in advance. Every penny that I made I would pay rent in advance. I have those depression and fear things. I felt that if I took that fear away... if I knew that I had food and a home... that I had the luxury to be sick and depressed again. And by having the luxury to be sick and depressed, I never got sick and depressed again. It was really the fear of it coming back that haunted me. As long as I could pay my shrink bill and my rent then I was straight.
• The same level of damage finds the same level of damage. Both people either have to get better together, or they have to stay sick together. But if one of them moves out of that extreme, that kind of relationship falls apart. So usually the choice is, to stay sick together. And sometimes one person moves on. It's very rare that both people recover in sync. Very unusual.

Film

• When you make a film, you can’t sit there and watch your film from beginning to end because the phone rings, you want to change something, you take notes – you can’t do it. The only way to do it is to organize a screening somewhere for anybody. And you watch it and because there’s other people there, you stay quiet. You don’t do anything and you feel any doubts you have enhance themselves, anything you like enhances itself. You don’t really care what people think. People hated the first screening of “Buffalo 66,” or they loved one time a screening when I thought there was still problems with the film. But whatever it does, it brings it out of you. It really does... Most filmmakers do that 100 times. With “Buffalo 66,” I went from the rough-cut to the finished film in a few days of editing. I did the same thing with “Brown Bunny.” Just a few days of seeing exactly what was wrong.

Bleach Magazine, June 1998

• I'm not an artist, I'm a hustler. As a hustler I've done many things. You should really believe it when I tell you that, 'cause I'm not being sarcastic. I'm a total hustler. What that means is I've hustled to make a buck and I've hustled to change the world and I've hustled to take revenge--but it's always hustling. I've never had a career or a single goal. I've never been formally educated. To get things together, to make a living, I constantly have to hustle.

• The best place on earth for me is inside a car driving.

• I'm so in love with the United States. Not as a patriot. I'm in love with America like it's my first girlfriend. The geography, the people, the smell, the touch, the taste, the gas stations. I'm madly in love with America. Madly in love. And I was the guy that people used to say, "He's so European." I mean, I never felt like that. I don't relate to those monkeys. I just can't relate to them. I'm a super American--Captain America.

• I have a feeling that I'm not going to live very long. I'm not saying that to be melodramatic. I just have known my whole life how long I was gonna to live and what was gonna happen. Everything that's happened to me has kind of fit in the picture. I always thought that I would do what I've done and get as far as I have now and something bad would happen. Like a chick would kill me or I'd crash my car going down Nicholas Canyon just when it looked like I finally settled in to something. I cry sometimes thinking how sad that is because I really enjoy life now, I'm so happy. There were a lot of years where I was in a lot of pain and unable to enjoy my life. Even today, I came in for the photo shoot aggravated, frazzled, and pissed off, but in my own miserable way, I'm the happiest guy in the world.

• The person that I idolized more than anyone else in my whole life was Chris Squire, the bass player from Yes. The reason for that is he was the person I liked most at this time in my life when I needed someone like that.

"Buffalo Boy"; Observer, September 30, 2001

• I'm not looking for a career. And I don't need to be regarded. I'm not Harmony Korine or Paul Anderson or Darren Aronofsky, who are already working on their chapter in the history of film books. I have the capacity to do lots of different things.

• Ambition's OK if it relates to the work. But most Hollywood people's ambitions are to do with what they get from the work. I think I'm good at collaborating, but what I don't do well is collaborate with people who have no real passion about what they do. Film people are suspicious of me. You would think that they'd respond well to my honesty and directness, but on the whole they're threatened by it.

• If you think of adults as victims, even for a second, you open a door that you really don't want to open. And the worst part about opening that door is that it's the most destructive door to open for the people you're trying to help... I'm aware that, out of context, all this can sound harsh, but I'm not like that. I can't bear to see pain in anyone, or anything, though I do all the time, because I'm not prepared to cut myself off from it. I'm just very conceptual in all ways. If you really believe in principles, if you focus on them more than personalities, it's less dangerous.

• I'm an extremist. Even in art, if my work wasn't 50 times more interesting than me and my petty life, it would be useless.

• I'll make out sometimes, try to get a hand job or something really detached. But I can't face the repulsion I get from being with someone who I don't really like.

• I can't lie to myself anymore. I'm probably more like a woman in that way. I have to be in love to have intercourse. Which is horrible. I'm worse now than before. And in a city where there's endless opportunity. I'm a physically ugly person.

• I've had lots of extreme behaviour. But I don't do things without being aware of them. It doesn't mean that I'll always be the best person I can be. But I don't become the worst person I can be without being aware of it. Even if I don't tell the people around me that I'm aware of what I did, I'm always aware of what I did.

• I hate acting too much and find it too hard work to do it for free.

On Brown Bunny (2004)

• I'm making something that's missing from the collection of films that I think should be in the library in my own mind. Y'know? You're making a film that's missing.

• If people are only focused on the controversial issues surrounding Brown Bunny, especially on the graphic sexual issues, they’re missing what children miss when they’re in a car traveling to a place they want to go. They’re missing the experience of getting there. They’re missing all the beautiful things that are happening on their way there, and they’re missing the continuity of what the entire trip as a whole means to them. So they’re missing things the way adolescents miss things. If you look at that film without prejudice or hearsay or, even worse, suspicion about why it was made and what my intentions were to make it, then you become unaware of the multi-complex innuendos, narrations, aesthetics, and sensibilities, and concepts, and nuances, and melodramas that happen along the way.

Various

• I don't give a fuck about my body, about myself, about my face, about my reputation, about anything to do with my career. I put the focus on things that I think are important and beautiful. And they transcend me. And my work is much more interesting than me.

• I constantly try to reinvent my sensibilities and my ideas. I enjoy some of the satisfaction that I get when I feel good about what I've done. But the process is quite lonely and quite painful.

• The Internet has two problems: the first one is that you never know who you are in front of and you run the risk of falling into the trap of wrong interpretation; the second problem is that the Internet gives you a lot of information you can't control. Instead I believe in little but good: I am in favor of élitism.

• I don't trust or love anyone. Because people are all creepy. Creepy creepy creeps. Creeping around. Creeping here and creeping there. Creeping everywhere. Crippity crappity creepies.

• I'm the happiest the saddest guy in the world can be.

• She was the nicest lady I ever met in my life - on Meryl Streep.