Making a film is like going down a mine-once you've started you bid a metaphoricalgoodbye to the daylight and the outside world for the duration.

Yes, but I think if you look at it with a sort of gay sensibility and want everything to be positive about gay life, it could be interpreted as antigay.

We taped all this and then got it transcribed and picked the best lines or ideas or ways to take a scene. I've done that many times, and it can improve the script but also wreck a perfectly good scene.

Still, the film nearly didn't happen a number of times. There were great arguments with United Artists about how to reduce the cost because they were nothing if not conscious of the price of the film.

No, United Artists was a very extraordinary organization, because once they had agreed on the director, they believed in letting him have his way. They trusted me, and that doesn't often happen.

I thought his performance was absolutely wonderful and had said so, but he seemed, as actors quite often are when they first see something, to be disappointed. I think he expected more from the film and himself.

I have a feeling he felt Jon Voight had run away with the film, which he didn't, though he was brilliant in it, in a much less easy part. I just don't know what had got into him, but something had.

There are certain actors who are very good at improvising, like Dustin Hoffman and Glenda Jackson.

I've never felt that using something with tongue in cheek has been a bad thing.

That attitude toward women as objects may have worked for the late Sixties, but it doesn't do so now.