Biografía

Died when the helicopter in which he was a passenger hit electrical power lines and crashed. He was 30 years old.

Wrote the script for Manitou (1978) in three days, along with Jon Cedar and Tim Pope.

He was a big fan of Alfred Hitchcock.

Sued Film Ventures Internatonal chief Edward L. Montoro for profits from Grizzly, garras de la muerte (1976).

Frequently used music by Lalo Schifrin and Robert O. Ragland.

[Starlog issue 13, 1978] Manitou (1978) was something that was never done before. So I did it. It's a cross between El exorcista (1973) and La guerra de las galaxias (1977). It has a lot of shock in it as well. I'm a director who believes a lot in the instant shock theory as well as build up shock. Under the [Alfred Hitchcock] theory, it's better to build an audience up, then get them to relax, then hit them over the head with everything you got. It keeps them constantly tense.

I know what my other pictures were. I know what was bad about them. I also know that they were pretty good when you consider how inexpensively they were made. Anybody should be able to make a good movie if they spend $20 million the way they did on El exorcista (1973). Comparatively speaking, for what we spent on it, Seducción diabólica (1974) was probably a better picture than "The Exorcist."

Other people learned how to make movies in film schools. I learned by doing it. Nobody saw [William Friedkin's] or Steven Spielberg's mistakes, but all my mistakes were right up there on the screen for everybody to see.

I love making movies so much that hard work doesn't bother me. I work 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Some days, I'm so excited about what we're doing I can't wait to get out of bed the next morning and start again. If I were an attorney or running a factory, I would probably die or spend all my time on a golf course. I would have been miserable and ended up an alcoholic by the time I was 30.

I'm constantly called an egomaniac, but you have to have an ego to survive. I don't pretend to be anything I'm not. I don't think I'll ever be a D.W. Griffith.