Janet Reno, during her confirmation hearings, said she would come down harder on porno, and lately she's talked about how violence on television has an effect on violence in the real world.
The only place we were really told to tone it down - where other people would use the word censorship, but I wouldn't - was when we did MTV right after the Beavis and Butt-head thing.
But it's much more exciting to make Die Hard. One of the reasons that I think that movie is so successful is it deals with those very important blue-collar relationship themes. But it's more visually beautiful to show things blowing up. It just gives you more on the screen.
Every nut who kills people has a Bible lying around. If you're looking for violent rape imagery, the Bible's right there in your hotel room. If you just want to look up ways to screw people up, there it is, and you're justified because God told you to.
I'm a big fan of huge populations of people, so you'd think with 300 million people in the country, you don't even have to please 1% to be phenomenally successful.
It wasn't success, because Teller and I, by the time Asparagus Valley got together - within a year, we had achieved all our goals. I mean, our goal was to earn our living doing exactly what we wanted. Which is many people's goal.
Before you can read, you know the difference between a story and reality. And, of course, by the time you're old enough to do any real damage with an Uzi, you've learned that difference.
Whereas you have someone like Houdini, who works really, really hard to get really, really famous, and then has actual intellectual ideas that he puts into the culture that stay there.
The First Amendment says nothing about your getting paid for saying anything. It just says you can say it. I don't believe that if a corporation pulls all the money out of you or a network pulls their money away or you get fired, you're being censored.
