Where did you get the name "Cecil B. Demented"?
I got it because a headline writer wrote "Cecil B. Demented" above a publicity piece. I thought "What a compliment!" I kept that as the idea for the name of the character to inspire a real lunatic director. A cult director. They used to call me a cult director. A real cult director would look in the camera and say "Send me money! Get me a movie deal!" And people would do it.
Does the film reflect your own experiences in Hollywood?
You know, I've had not bad experiences in Hollywood. Certainly, I'm not living in my car here, going around terrorising the Palais, and unplugging projectors. I've just made a movie about political radicals and terrorists. It's always been something that has interested me. I didn't want to make a movie that was nostalgic about that. I wanted to imagine if politics were movies; if there were tank battles in the streets about taste in movies. If everyone had a tattoo of their favourite director, wouldn't dating be easier? It would get over a lot.
Are you a fan of Cecil B. DeMille?
I don't especially like him. He made epics. I made trash epics. But he did have the first signature director look - the riding boots and everything. He was a foot fetishist too, you know. I always liked that about him. I didn't even know that until I began looking through books. He would have inappropriate close-ups of shoes - in the middle of a battle scene, you'd see one shoe!
