PAUL MORRISSEY

Andy was an offbeat personality, shy and insecure. The whole reason for taking a camera with him wherever he went was because he was so shy. He'd break the ice by taking pictures.

So many things go on in life that never find their way into the movies because so much of it is unappealing. But that's what I want to show.

You don't put your personal viewpoints in a good movie. A movie should only be concerned with characters, not some big moral, although it's always underneath.

I adore jokes. They're a theatrical contrivance, but the irony of all fiction is that you approach reality by avoiding it a bit; you spoof it a bit.

I never wanted to be anything special. I just wanted to make films.

I'm not against censorship in principle. Not at all. Some things should be censored.

It's good to aggravate people a little. It makes them pay attention.

People treat serious subjects so seriously, which is so obvious a way of dealing with them. I'm always thinking that the best way of dealing with them is to show people as human beings.

I did say to myself one day, 'I'd love to be a Jewish comedian,' but that's my only memory with any connection to show business.

If I thought about planning, I'd plan movies. If I thought about planning my life, I'd plan my life more rationally, not like New Yorkers who live their lives so irrationally, without reason. Maybe that's the connection between my movies and New York: the movies have the same kind of lack of overall design.

My films always play better outside of New York, especially to critics.

There's something about all the films that I have made in that they don't seem old or dated, and some people mention that.

It's a debilitating process, working with the studios. With the length of time it takes for drafts and development deals, your enthusiasm is gone before you're ready to make the film.

Andy wasn't capable of any complicated thoughts or ideas. Ideas need a verb and a noun, a subject. Andy spoke in a kind of stumbling staccato. You had to finish sentences for him. So Andy operated through people who could do things for him. He wished things into happening, things he himself couldn't do.

Very few people took sordid things and made comedies out of them.

Rome has New York's formlessness, aimlessness, a kind of hard-boiled sophistication, blase about everything. In their filmmaking, too, the Italians have this tongue-in-cheek sense of comedy.

I've always been an independent producer. I'd kind of like to be hired help for a change. I don't mind that.

Nico was peculiar. She was extraordinary.

Even Andy never hung his own paintings. He'd sell them or put them in a box.

Every movie I've ever made says the same thing. They all find comedy in people trying to live their lives without any rules.

A good conservative is someone with an open mind.

I like the idea of stepping back into another time period.

I'm not anti-Hollywood; not at all. In fact, I'm rather fascinated by everything that goes on here. When I get hold of a copy of 'Variety,' I read it cover to cover; I love to know what people are doing.

I was brought up with TV comedians. I'll remember them till I go to my grave, all those comedians, as decadent fluff.

What made Andy famous was the years I managed him. I created the Velvet Underground and told him not to worry about them because they would help his career. All those things I did created his fame.