Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The best piece of advice I ever got from anyone was when Spike Jonze said, 'Take money out of the equation.' And that's actually when Vice started making lots of money. That's when I stopped worrying about money and started worrying about what I wanted to do.
Ah, there's a director. Astonishing, Spike Lee. A feisty guy, but a guy who's, I think, incredibly misunderstood. I think people review his politics or his color as opposed to his filmmaking sometimes. Because he's a wonderful, wonderful filmmaker and a lover of the art.
Spike Lee gave me the greatest reaction to the fact that I was this athlete-meets-artist, because I think he saw that I was different. I learned that oftentimes, Spike directs in a sense that he might just stare at you and look at you in a telepathic way of communicating.
I was a pretentious teenager, so of course I had, you know, 'Raging Bull' posters and all of that. 'Raging Bull' is not a pretentious movie, but me having the poster was a pretentious action. I even grew a goatee and had a Knicks cap, because I thought I wanted to be like Spike Lee.
We are watching industries crumble, Wall Street firms disappear, unemployment spike, and unprecedented government intervention. And our designated opinion leaders want to know: Is Obama up this week? Is he down? And is his leadership style more like Bill Clinton's, or Abraham Lincoln's?
And it's the President of the United States who said he wasn't going to spike the football and all this, we shouldn't gloat about it, running campaign ads, gloating about it and saying the other guy isn't good enough to do the tough things that I did, which I think is, one reprehensible.
My heroes were people like Jim Jarmusch. Scorsese was my god. Spike Lee was exciting, doing exactly what we thought we were going to do: personal movies based in, and about, New York. My heroes were all participating in an economic model that was collapsing as I was finishing film school.
People can see that we are part of a tradition of absurd comedy, stretching from Spike Milligan and Peter Cook through to Monty Python and Vic Reeves. We're not like Ricky Gervais's hyper-real cringe comedy. We're at the other end of the scale, but there's room for the sillier stuff, too.
I destroyed all my geek stuff because I didn't want to be a geek, and I regret it to this day. Consumed in the geek bonfire of the vanities was a collection of autographs and letters from Peter Cushing, Spike Milligan and Frankie Howerd, the first Doctor Whos, actual astronauts, and many more.
I want to be taken seriously as the type of musician that plays stuff like an electric rake. I mean, how seriously do you take someone like Spike Jones? They take him pretty seriously - a really good musician who made a great contribution in terms of humor, which is part of what I try to do too.
I would say, look, any fighter that's out there or any star athlete - not star athlete in the sense of a baseball player, but like a Brock Lesnar - that really wants to fight, we're going to have a conversation with them. Because if they can move the needle, we're going to want them on Spike TV.
Back in 2005, Judicial Watch uncovered a Border Patrol survey conducted by the Bush administration in 2004 to determine what impact amnesty would have on illegal immigration. Want to take a guess at the outcome? Even the rumor of Mr. Bush's amnesty program led to a sharp spike in illegal immigration.
The Goons were always one of our favourites; we always felt we were in that tradition - Goons, Monty Python, Peter Cook, Vic and Bob, Spike Milligan. We felt we were part of that lineage, but in England, it wasn't happening like that. There was a brand of comedy like 'The Office,' which was very real.
Spike Lee is one of my biggest influences. What I love about Spike, other than he's just a fun guy to hang around, is that Spike is fearless. As much as people talk about him being politically outspoken, let's not forget that he's one of the best screenwriters, ever, in addition to being a visual master.
Among video game developers, it's called 'crunch': a sudden spike in work hours, as many as 20 a day, that can last for days or weeks on end. During this time, they sleep at work, limit bathroom breaks and cut out anything that pulls their attention away from their screens, including family and even food.
There's obviously a group who enjoys what Tyler Perry is putting out there. And why fault them? And there's a group that loves the things that Spike does. So they should enjoy that, too. Is it my taste? Maybe not, but I'm not going to fault anybody for doing what they're doing as long as people are showing up.
I'm such a fan of actors and also enjoy watching them work so that I can help their acting in any way I can. Sometimes it walks a tricky line because you want to be entertaining to some degree. But honesty is always entertaining to me. I'm a big Woody Allen and Spike Lee fan, and I find their films to be very honest.
Spike optioned my first book, 'Now the Hell Will Start,' and he trusted me to write the screenplay, too. That was an awesome learning experience - I grew up watching Spike's movies, and here he was giving me handwritten notes about structure and dialogue. His feedback taught me so much about how to craft a cinematic narrative.
A few years after I graduated, I was doing a play in Boston and was asked to audition for Christophe Durang's play, 'Vonya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,' and I got the part. We were performing in Lincoln Center when, during our weekly meeting with producers, they that said they loved our show and wanted to take us to Broadway.
What got me motivated was my dad's idea that I go to Morehouse College in Atlanta. It's an all-black, all-male school. Martin Luther King went there. The most famous person in my class was Spike Lee. And I really caught fire. I was so inspired by the people around me that I went from C's and D's to straight A's by the time I left.
I would still work with Mel Gibson! He's talented, man! Come on, he came up with 'Apocalypto,' man! I want to work with this guy. I've worked with Steven Seagal. He's out of his mind. I mean, I've worked with Spike Lee for four films. I've worked with some people that you can say are right there teetering between genius and madness.
'Fight Master' is a show that Spike came up with. Obviously, Spike has a vested interest in Bellator, which is filling a void that was created when the UFC and 'The Ultimate Fighter' left and went to Fox. I think this fills a huge piece of the puzzle for the folks at Spike, in terms of demographics and what programming they like to do.
My mother took my brother and I to a production of 'The Tempest', and it was in this very small - it could have been the basement of a church or a black box. The space was vast, but there were maybe 15 seats in the middle. Ariel came out wearing a nude sparkly thong and spike heels, and the muses had these gossamer see-through gowns on.
When you ride fast and then rest for a bit, it causes a spike in your heart rate and helps your body deal with lactic acid. But you don't need to make it too complicated. Yorkshire is perfect because the hills work as intervals - you ride up them hard and then recover before the next one. Or you can just sprint to the next tree or lamppost.
At the start of each week, I generally cook a box of quinoa, and while it's simmering, I saute onions, garlic and any veggies I have on hand in a separate pan. I season the vegetables with Spike, a seasoning blend my mom always used when I was growing up, or a little Bragg Liquid Aminos. I always add crushed red pepper and chopped fresh herbs.
The film-maker Alejandro Jodorowsky - his films are hard to watch - they're so dense and rich - but they're probably the best things ever made. And Spike Milligan, who was light years ahead of the rest - I played some of his stuff to Jack Black once. He'd never heard of him, so watching him listen to Spike for the first time was just hilarious.
