Now both my films have been number one at the Australian box office and it took about two years just to get the finance for this film so if it's hard for me then God help everyone else.

I have come close to producing films. But generally by the time they hit the screen there's about 50 people with producer credits so what's the point. I usually find scripts I like with no money attached and take them to producers that I know and try to raise finance.

I think that my vampires in general were influenced by my being allowed to watch the Hammer vampire films. Vampire Circus also shown as Circus of Fear was one of those movies.

My fear is that as soon as I get married and have kids that I'll kind of do what a lot of people do and suddenly start making 'Now I'm gonna make films for kids.' I really hope I don't do that.

Of course Hollywood is still making some excellent pictures which reflect the great artistry that made Hollywood famous throughout the world but these films are exceptions judging from box office returns and press reviews.

Exploitation films were famous for taking an issue an exploiting it because they could move much faster than a studio could. If there was any hot topic they would run out and make a quick movie and make a buck on it by changing it around and using it in some way to give some relevance.

I now have two different audiences. There's the one that has been watching my action films for 20 years and the American family audience. American jokes less fighting.

My family and our neighbors and friends thought of Africa and its Africans as extensions of the stereotyped characters that we saw in movies and on television in films such as 'Tarzan' and in programs such as 'Ramar of the Jungle' and 'Sheena Queen of the Jungle.'

The fact that food plays such an important part in my films has everything to do with my family.

I really have created a family. I work with the people I love I travel with them I make films with them and I'm in an office with them. So in a weird way - I know I haven't birthed a child - I feel that I'm a part of creating a family. It's a tribe. I love that word.

I grew up in a family that was multifaceted sexually oriented and pretty much open to everything. And because I was working my friends were all adults. I had a tough time going to different schools because people knew me from films and I was the fat child who got beaten up every day.

Tyler Perry's brand is faith family and this whole thing that I've built while my company 34th Street Films is like Disney's Touchstone. We can do anything. People don't know what to expect from me yet.

Doing films in Latin America is like an act of faith. I mean you really have to believe in what you're doing because if not you feel like it's a waste of time because you might as well be doing something that at least pays you the rent.

I think that films about faith made for faith-based communities have a certain tactic.

I have this embedded faith in the process through which films of a certain type get discovered on longer timelines.

My films seem to be about men's struggle with failure.

I get asked 'How can you have such failures in your films?' Well what else is life about? There's some sense of constant failure in something. Humor gives you a distance from it.

With a lot of films people are sitting on the outside looking in but I want the audience to get a bit more intimately involved with what's going on so that they maybe can experience it a little bit more intensely.

My films don't give you an easy ride. I can see that. The sense I get is that people have quite a physical experience with them. They feel afterwards that they've really been through something.

Films that are entertainments give simple answers but I think that's ultimately more cynical as it denies the viewer room to think. If there are more answers at the end then surely it is a richer experience.

That's one of the benefits of working on big budget films. You work with people who have a lot of experience and you get to learn a lot.

You experience the films through the actors so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination.

I don't want people to sit there and objectively watch the film. I want them to experience it as something that's under their skin so you try to make the films really tactile.

Some of us are interested in directors but really the vast majority of us are interested in actors. You experience the films through the actors so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination.