Last Action Hero (1993) was the worst time I've ever had in this business. (...) The whole thing would have profited from a little more digestion. The movie, from the moment the studio said they wanted to do it until it was in the theatres, was nine-and-a-half months. Which was a month too short. In hindsight, we were arrogant, too. (...) It was something like three weeks from the end of shooting to when it was in the theatres...Do you know the old joke? The editing department says to Cecil B. DeMille, 'The editors are dropping like flies.' And DeMille says, 'Hire more flies!' We were living that. There are enormous sequences in the film that are literally how it came out of my camera. We cut the heads and tails off, and that's the sequence; it wasn't edited at all. (...) I didn't have time to get intimately involved in all the press disasters, but the advertising campaign was terrible. It did seem that if they hadn't overhyped the movie, it would have been a lot easier to sell it. Because it's actually sweet and kind of small in its heart. It isn't Kleopatra (1963). It's the anti-Cleopatra. And if they had come on a little more quietly, it probably would have worked out better for them. (...) I saw Jurassic Park (1993) that summer: it's a fabulous movie. But the studio tried to set us against each other, which was an idiotic thing to do. Because we weren't the greatest action movie of all time. We were never supposed to be. (...) That was a crazy time and you get to take a bite at the world as you find it. I'm happy I made it, but we pushed ourselves too far. [Empire 2012]
