I think when you make something that is non-mainstream and people don't have automatic way of consuming, like you don't have a big star, or a hit song or marketing money then you need to find some way to make audience aware of your film.
When I'm making a big movie, I miss and appreciate all the subtleties that come with making a smaller film that is more intimate, more personal.
I think I had the most fun making a movie with 'Dedication,' just because you knew that it was a passion project for everyone involved. We had X amount of days to shoot New York in the cold. No trailers. Just sort of kind of doing it guerilla style in a way.
Whenever I catch a chunk of an Adam Sandler comedy on cable, it looks as badly shot and goofily tossed off as a Jerry Lewis gag reel once he hit the late downslide with 'Hardly Working' and 'Cracking Up.'
I'm fortunate enough to act in a TV show that makes me a lot of money so I can pay for my own movies. I don't have to wait for anybody and that's more of what I like doing. But I still think that you don't have to be connected in the industry to make your movie. You just have to write something that is meant to be made cheaply.
The thing I've come to learn is that what's great about small independent films is the intimacy and the communication that occurs when you're making them.
Nobody in Hollywood ever sets out to make a bad movie ever but about 99% of the time, that's what happens.
Saw' was a film that James Wan and I came up with back in Australia and we were just hoping anyone, literally, anyone would make that film and if nobody would give us the money we were going to shoot it in a garage somewhere.
I don't choose to make low-budget films. But that is the reality of surviving in the Japanese film industry. However, the trade off is, since we're working on small budgets, we have freedom. You can't buy this freedom with money. With this freedom, I think there are an infinite number of possibilities.
My good films were independent and my bad films were not.
My dad was a low budget film director. I grew up as a kid making movies, based on the love of seeing what my dad was doing.
The cool thing about those small-budget movies is that there's a tremendous amount of freedom the filmmakers have since there's less money at stake.
I've spent a great deal of my life doing independent film, and that is partly because the subject matter interests me and partly because that is the basis of the film industry. That's where the film-makers come from, it's where they start and sometimes its where they should have stayed.
Sometimes miraculous films come into being, made by people you've never heard of, starring unknown faces, blindsiding you with creative genius.
The only chance for a guy like me is to make a decent picture for a reasonable budget. If it brings in a profit for investors, maybe I'll have the opportunity to make something else.
I was in the first 'Friday The 13th,' and that was a microbudget horror film.
My heart is in independent film-making. For me, it's where the fun, gritty storytelling is being told.
Between the ages of 18 and 20, I made three hour-long films. One was a superhero film called 'Carbolic Soap.' One was a cop film called 'Dead Right.' And the other was called 'A Fistful Of Fingers.'
'Insidious' is independent. It's like the 'Clerks' of horror films, you know?
I guess, in a sense, 'Audition' was a film that gave me an opportunity that I hadn't had up until that point. So that's definitely one that is important to me. Then there's 'Visitor Q' that kind of taught me that there are some kinds of films that can only be made as low-budget films that really wouldn't work as anything else.
The environment on the sets of the movies I make, it's usually all friends and people that know each other, because no one's getting rich or making money, so it's always about, hopefully, that everyone's on the same page.
I think you do independent movies because you're looking to cut away from commercial movies.
It's always a challenge to make an independent film. It's always a challenge to make a low budget film.
I have respect for anyone who's going to go out and make a movie for a small budget and turn it into a phenomenon. God bless you. Please keep making movies. That's great. But it's not what entertains me.
I did a film that I shot in 24 hours that was self-financed for $5,000. It was a feature called Looking For Jimmy that I shot with a bunch of friends. I spent eight months editing because we had 24 hours of footage that made no sense and I learned a lot about directing while editing that film.
