Quotes

[on Color of Night (1994)] I did learn a tremendous life lesson, and that was the true meaning of a final cut. It's the one they make in your chest for the bypass.

[on his long layoff after The Stunt Man (1980)] I got hooked on a project called Air America, and I actually spent five years on it, researching in Southeast Asia and writing the screenplay. It was the best screenplay I've ever written, including The Stunt Man (1980), I believe. Sean Connery committed to it, and we were looking for the second leading man and had a lot of good possibilities. I went to Southeast Asia and scouted locations and put together a production that was almost bulletproof. I remember the head of one of the Asian air forces had offered to bomb any country I wanted so I could get it on film. [Laughs.] I thought that was reasonable cooperation.

[on Hells Angels on Wheels (1967)] I wasn't very fond of the script, so I improvised a lot. I had been very loyal to the written word before that, considering it some kind of sacred duty, not realizing that there are three films: the one you write, the one you shoot, and the one you cut. And they better all be different, or you've made no contribution.

[on The Stunt Man (1980)] It was probably the best-reviewed picture in decades, which after 10 years of rejection for me was an enormous gift.

[on the decade-long struggle to get financing for The Stunt Man (1980)] They couldn't figure out if it was a comedy, a drama, if it was a social satire, if it was an action adventure...and, of course, the answer was, 'Yes, it's all those things.' But that isn't a satisfactory answer to a studio executive.

When I called him [Steve Railsback] to read for The Stunt Man, it was clear he was that innocent, West Texas kid with the naivete that the part needed, as well as the dark, lethal underside that terrifies Barbara Hershey about going into the woods with him at night.