[Asked why he never made a film like the art house titles his company distributed: I]t's an economic situation. All of those films were made in Europ… - Roger Corman

We were shooting a Ku Klux Klan parade led by Bill [William Shatner], and he went through the black part of town in a parade of cars carrying crosses with the hoods, and then they burned the flaming cross. We shot late at night; I said, "Cut, print!" and everybody went, "Yeah, we're out of here!" Guys raced to their cars, the grips threw the last couple of things in the trucks and we just drove straight north.

My father was an engineer and I intended to follow in his footsteps, but movies became my real passion. Careful planning is important in engineering, so I used that experience to focus on film preproduction. With the low budgets I had, I couldn't afford to have the cast and crew waiting around for days on a 10-day picture while I figured out how and what to shoot.

It's not so much watching them but understanding how they were made – the preparation and willingness to deviate when necessary especially if you're on a low budget, I also took every film I made seriously and did my best on every one.