I’ll tell you a story about that. I have very close friends who used to have a jazz club in Hong Kong. I was there every night, I was their photographer, just because I was their friend. Four of them were Supreme Court judges. And one day I came in and there had been an article like the ones you’re talking about, and the head of the Supreme Court, who was a little bit drunk, said to me, “If you came before my court I’d throw you in jail for lies like that. I saw this article in the newspaper about you being a Norwegian sailor and this and that—what total bullshit, that’s impossible.” And I realized, fuck—even someone I regard as a friend doesn’t believe how I live. And certainly, it’s so far outside of convention, I better fucking forget about convention. I’m doomed no matter what. Kids from film schools say to me, “I love your work, I wanna be like you, I wanna make my first film next week.” And I go, “Yeah. What have you done? You’ve been through an academic system, and if you’ve been to film school I assume you have a certain amount of wealth, what the fuck have you done in life? What are you gonna tell people? You gonna talk about your high school experiences in America? Or how wonderful it is to go skating illegally in Trafalgar Square? What the fuck are you gonna talk about?” It’s a problem. Of course, if you don’t have anything to say, why open your mouth? It’s just gonna be platitudes. Or something clichéd. Or something totally unnecessary to anyone else’s experience. That’s what you see all the time. People making films about making films. Because that’s all they know!
