You are someone who is making films not only outside of the Hollywood system but also outside of the mini-major system - Miramax, Fox Searchlight, Fine Line, 

I’m still broke and a lowlife, I tell you.

But Dead Man, you sold it blind to Miramax - meaning they couldn’t see it even though you had a print- for a good amount of money just before Cannes. That testifies to a strong interest American distributors have in your work. Yet, look at the cerdits of the movie and it’s all European financing.

Mostly European, there’s some Japanese money in there and some bankers finished it but I don’t want to go into that.

My point is, if you wanted to make a movie with one of those American companies, you could have. You wouldn’t have to mess with stitching financing together from all over. Yours is a more complicated method of financing but I suspect it offers you more freedom and autonomy.

Exactly. The only thing that matters to me is to protect my ability to be the navigator of the ship. I decide how the film is cut, how long it is, what music is used, who the cast is. I make films by hand. I’m there every day in the editing room. I’m there in the financing. I write the script. I collaborate with a lot of great people. I don’t believe in the auteur thing but somebody has to say, look, a filmmaker should make the film, not businessmen. My films are ghettoized by being called art movies… they will make anything a dirty word to make commerce and corporate control the priority. That’s Hollywood. Who has the most powerful agent and how much money can the lawyers suck out of the above-the-line? It’s one of the most overpaid of any field in America, entertainment. The Academy Awards - why don’t we have awards for short order cooks or bus drivers?

Have you explored these new, “Filmmaker-friendly” companies?

Yes, there were two of those companies that wanted to be involved with Dead Man but they wanted script approval, editing approval. They wanted to be on my set. Hey, man- I don’t work that way. I do it my way or I don’t do it. It helps me in negotiating to know that I will walk away if I don’t have control.

As you get older, are you still finding films that turn you on as much as stuff did that you encountered in your twenties?

It continues to happen. I didn’t discover Ophuls until eight years ago and I had to see every one of his films… I go off on binges. Could be Brigitte Bardot, could be Dolph Lundgren.

Have you seen many of them?

Yeah of those guys - Van Damme, Steven Seagal and Dolph Lundgren - I prefer Dolph.

Why?

Van Damme I find annoying. There’s something smug about his face. I like how Dolph Lundgren is so robotic. He doesn’t pretend to play a character that has some emotional dilemma.