Commercial cinema? What is that? As long as you are doing what you honestly feel you should be doing, and going where your instincts take you, it doesn’t make any difference whether a film is regarded as commercial or not. When I worked in a Communist country, there was ideological pressure. Here it’s commercial pressure. With ideological pressure, you’re at the mercy of one idiot, and with commercial pressure you’re at the mercy of the audience. I’d rather be at the mercy of the audience than have some idiot telling me what to think and what to say.

Would you say that artists have political responsibility?

No. They just have to think of what’s right or wrong according to their own conscience. For example, doing Hair was a dilemma for me. It was an anti-Vietnam movie, but I lived under Communism long enough to know that anybody who was fighting Communism was my friend! It was a contradiction, but I accept contradictions like that.