Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I grew up in Evanston and lived in Chicago for a long time, in Old Town and Wrigleyville. I did three films when I was in high school. The first was 'Class,' with Rob Lowe. I had a supporting role in that.
I'm definitely nostalgic about the music of my youth; The Clash and Fishbone and that whole music scene. I still have all that music to this day. There was some great music going on in the late 70s and 80s.
When you see a culture where the intellectual architects of the invasion are not shamed for their behavior but rewarded within the mainstream media culture, black comedy, satire, absurdism is the only response.
It's like those high-school yearbook photos that everyone would rather not see: Oh my God, look at that mullet hair. I have those photos too, but for me, they're, like, entire movies. And they show them on cable.
Death is a billion-dollar business. They can't even pass a law where it takes seven days to get a gun. Why don't you have to go through the same kind of screening you do to get a driver's license? It's totally insane.
Once you have opened up prisoner interrogation, wiretapping, border patrol, jailing and the services of the military, when this has been turned into a for-profit business in this endless war, then we're in deep trouble.
I remember once acting really cool on a bus with this girl named Stephanie. When I got home, I realized that I had a really big zit on my forehead. If you have acne problems, you really shouldn't be acting like Don Juan.
I think that taking night trains or meeting someone on the road is pretty romantic. I've done a couple of things like that. I've surprised someone in Paris. And hopefully, when you surprise someone, they're happy to see you.
I was working with a great actress - a superior artist in every way - and she really liked Celine Dion. I tried very hard, but I couldn't understand it. I just can't listen to Celine Dion! So I guess music is a deal breaker.
I think good actors can sort of see into people and immediately you have a chemistry with them or not. It's like an affair with no mess. You don't actually consummate it, but you get to pretend, imagine what it would be like.
But, you know, I'm sorry, I think democracy requires participation. I mean, I don't want to proselytize but I do feel some sort of duty to participate in the process in some way other than just blindly getting behind a political party.
The Sugar Frosted Nutsack is dizzyingly brilliant. Mark Leyner is a hyperkinetic shaman, who flies the banner of rum and candy and writes like a one-eyed feral bandit. His new book is supremely original, delirious and synapse-shattering.
I wanted to just be a filmmaker, and I thought I wanted to do all the aspects, and it seemed like as a producer was the best way to do it, because I could have... You never have control on a movie, but you have as much control as you can.
Roy, the guy I play in 'The Grifters,' is a guy who had a very bleak life. His mother had him at 13, and then when she was 17 or 18 and he was 4 or 5, they were trapped in a small Texas town somewhere, and she was ready to do anything to get out.
The reason bin Laden staggered the planes going into the towers was so every camera would be focused on the second tower when the plane hit. It was not only the murder, but the perpetual image of the horror that permeated into people's consciousness.
Our parents more or less just kind of wanted us to pursue our passions. Whatever they would have been, they would have helped light the fire. They are very liberal, artistic people, but they didn't force us into acting. They let us find our own ways.
It's something we, guys, have all done. Made tapes for girls, trying to impress them, to meet them on a shared plane of aesthetics. Read them someone else's poetry because they do poetry better than you could do it, because you're too awkward to do it.
There are some good people. But a good chunk of them will lie for no reason at all - it'll be ten o'clock and they'll tell you it's nine. You're looking at the clock and you can't even fathom why they're lying. They just lie because that's what they do.
I just love the process of working with other actors. It's like jamming with a musician, except it takes a little more effort to get to that place as an actor, because you have the cameras and lights and everything. But I love jamming with these people.
There's also some element of coming of age during the Reagan administration, which everybody has painted as some glorious time in America, but I remember as being a very, very dark time. There was apocalypse in the air; the punk rock movement made sense.
My dad had a commercial film company, so he had a videotape player before anyone. So he got Mel Brooks movies or Citizen Kane or some classic old movies. And every summer the revival house in Evanston would show the great films from the '50s and '60s and '70s.
It's supposed to feel good to throw a brick at the right people. There is a long tradition of naming and ridiculing and shaming and calling the villains what they are. Usually it was the artistocracy of the day and satire was the only way to speak truth to power.
Poe had this curious kind of alchemical courage, where he took all the terrible things and terrors that happened in his life, all this shame and fear and pain, and turned them into great works of art. He was a complex, brilliant person who was just wired too tight.
I kept saying that I'd never live in L.A., and I didn't think I would. But that's where the work is, and I ended up making a lot of friends there, and my old friends moved out to Los Angeles too. And also, I think when you're famous, its hard to live in a small town.
You just try to get the best jobs that you can get. Sometimes I produce my own movies, so that's your own sort of vision. That helps things. I don't know what it is. Probably just circumstance. I've definitely been aware of the fact that I want to do different things.
If you're looking at things with the right set of eyes, people are endlessly fascinating. And then, of course, if you look at it the wrong way, then the whole world is horrible and tedious and boring. That's the battle, really--to keep looking at the world in the right way.
Well, acting itself is a form of rebellion, always. Getting up there in front of people, telling stories - you're kind of going against the grain to begin with, wanting to do that, don't you think? Why else would you do it? Except maybe as kind of a way to affirm your very existence.
With acting, you wanna see if you can get into trouble without knowing how you're gonna get out of it. It's like the exact opposite of war, where you need an exit strategy. When you're acting, you should get all the way into trouble with no exit strategy, and have the cameras rolling.
Probably Lloyd in 'Say Anything' is the closest to me - or to who I was at the time. It was just a great love story about people in the '80s, and we all tried to make it feel as real as possible. It was such a wonderful time. We didn't leave anything in the gym; we put it all out there.
I don't agonize over decisions as much these days. The criteria of what's important to me is clear. The insecurity that you feel, and the paranoia that you feel, have been around for a long time - you know it's a liar because it's been lying to you all along - every time you start something new.
I was never a joiner. I tried - I had people I admired and liked and wanted to hang with, but I ended up starting a theatre company and that took me back to Chicago... I guess I wasn't a scenester in the end. Something must have worked out right, as I'm still here - but I'm only a binge socialite.
I wanted to just be a filmmaker, and I thought I wanted to do all the aspects, and it seemed like as a producer was the best way to do it, because I could have... You never have control on a movie, but you have as much control as you can. You can push it through, and you can hire the right people.
I think that Poe is so resonant because he represents that part of us that is in misery or sorrowful or wants to explore the darkness. He wrote a great story called 'The Imp of the Perverse' about the instinct towards self-destruction. Poe is the godfather of Goth literature and that whole movement.
I remember once acting really cool on a bus with this girl named Stephanie. When I got home, I realized that I had a really big zit on my forehead. If you have acne problems, you really shouldn't be acting like Don Juan. I should have been contrite - and apologized for exposing her to the angry pimple.
I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.
These people say free markets are the way to go, but wink, wink, the markets aren't really free. They're just a protectionist racket, and we have to pay for it all on every level. It's really quite extraordinary, and immoral, and illegal. These things need to be named, and shamed, and outed, and mocked, and prosecuted.
It seems to me that one thing people do over and over again is try to figure out how to get married, stay married, fall in love, how to rekindle all this stuff. It seems to me to be a pretty eternal theme so I don't know if you can get typecast from making movies about men relating to women. It seems to be what is going on on the planet a lot.
Did you know that the word person comes from the Latin word persona, which means mask? So maybe being human means we invite spectators to ponder what lies behind. Each of us will be composed of a variety of masks, and if we can see behind the mask, we would get a burst of clarity. And if that flame was bright enough, that's when we fall in love.
Poets are political, they have to be reflections of their times [because] they're living in their times... Poetry is political in that it's standing in opposition to fascism. Good poetry asks a bunch of questions and asks the audience to interact with themselves or see themselves in it; maybe you like it or you don't like it. But the fascist sort of stuff plays on your fears and tells you to jump on the party line and gives some simple excuses - blame this person.