Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Well, the film initially - we had decided to pair joy with fear because I don't know about you - for me fear was a major motivator in junior high. So we thought there's probably some good stuff there... As the film went on, we had developed all these great scenes that were really funny, but in the third act, it wasn't adding up to anything.
I understand what scripting and programming is, but do I know how to do it? Not really. But, I think that even knocking on the door allows you to understand a little bit of that kind of stuff. Mainly what 'Silicon Valley' has taught me, in that respect, is the business side of it, with that gold rush element as opposed to creating software.
I'm unfinished. I'm unfixed. And the reality is that's where God meets me is in the mess of my life, in the unfixedness, in the brokenness. I thought he did the opposite, he got rid of all that stuff. But if you read the Bible, if you look at it at all, constantly he was showing up in people's lives at the worst possible time of their life.
With The Brood, it was cool because it had the music, it had the different look and at the time reality-based characters were really starting to take the forefront as opposed to the cartoon character stuff that you'd seen in the past. We were already into the Attitude era. It was kind of a gimmick, but it was a cool gimmick. It wasn't corny.
When I was 23, I didn't have much of an interest in politics. All of my interests were in partying and meeting girls and doing stand-up. That's all I cared about. Now, when you have a kid and stuff, you start watching the news and say, 'They shouldn't take money away from this education department.' You start having much more exact opinions.
I was talking to my dad about the stuff he grew up listening to, and 'Operation: Mindcrime' is a record that he had always talked about around the house. He always talked about it as the 'greatest concept album of all time.' One day, I started listening to it, and it just hit me. I was like, 'These songs are all hits. They're all huge songs.'
There is something I call social intelligence. You can do a lot in life on your own and you can do all kinds of stuff, but if you're really bad with people, if you're really naive or aggressive and push people away, if you don't know the political environment you're in, it invalidates all the things you know. You're not going to get anywhere.
I watched 'Freaks and Geeks,' and I was like, 'Oh, if you write about your own personal experiences, and if you're specific about it both in what happened and how you felt about it, it can make for scenes that are really compelling.' For the rest of college, I was basically ripping off 'Freaks and Geeks' with plays I wrote and stuff like that.
There is a difference between the stuff that people put online themselves, like pictures and their trips and flights and meals they've eaten, than the stuff that they don't realize is also going into foreign computers. Like, for example, copies of your emails or every single online search you ever do, 'cause all that is being recorded as well.
I don't follow trends. I'm a trendsetter. I represent all the younger generations; fly kids, creative kids - they look up to me. I got a program that's called ROAR. I go to all high schools everywhere we go, and I talk to all the kids, and I give away 30-35 tickets and passes to the kids doing good in school. Stuff like that means a lot to me.
I can't read music. Instead, I'd do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize - out of like 5,000 kids! The judges were like, 'Very interesting interpretation!' I thought I was playing it right.
I hate plastic bottles. Just think about it before you buy one. We pay more for a gallon of water than we do for a gallon of gas. I think people will realize that water quality standards in most municipalities are as good or better for the stuff coming out of the tap than bottled water companies. You'll save money and save the environment, too.
If you grew up white before the civil rights movement anywhere in the South, all grown-ups lied. They'd tell you stuff like, 'Don't drink out of the colored fountain, dear, it's dirty.' In the white part of town, the white fountain was always covered with chewing gum and the marks of grubby kids' paws, and the colored fountain was always clean.
The first club that reopened in New Orleans was Caesar's, and they called me immediately and said let's do a regular night with you here. So we started FEMA Fridays. It was the only club open in the city, and a lot of people had a lot of money from Katrina, the checks and stuff, so the joy inside that club - I don't think that'll ever come back.
I tried for a long time to make DJ-able dance tracks that were more specific to the stuff that I was playing. Ultimately, I found I wasn't really capable of doing that. The only type of music I was able to make that really made me feel something would just come straight from my heart or straight from whatever emotions I was feeling at that time.
The old Johnny Carson 'Tonight Show' was great in that he was so good with the guests, and it was not about him. I think he was very smart in realizing 'I have plenty of screentime on this show. I do my monologue and we do sketches and stuff like that.' During the interview, he really made it about trying to bring the best thing out of the guest.
With a comedian, it's the opposite. You put that album out, and they've heard it. If they're coming out to see you, you'd better be doing new stuff. There's always a tiny part of the audience that want to hear certain bits of yours, or they've brought friends to see you, and they've told them about some of your bits. Then maybe you should do them.
In England I played everything - swimming, athletics, football, rugby, badminton, cricket - all of that stuff. I was in the first teams for all the sports at Brighton, played on the wing in rugby, and ran 100m, 200m, 400m, and did long jump and even the javelin at one point. In the States I did a bit of track, but mainly I was there for the boxing.
I'm not thinking about the next record really yet. I kind of want to do a bunch of stuff with Jonathan Zawada, the guy who did the album art. I'd like to do some crazy art installations and design some weird synthesizers and work with other people and make some fun stuff for a bit. Maybe tap into virtual reality stuff or maybe write another record.
I grew up with him [Michael Jackson] and I've spent a lot of time at Neverland and nothing has ever happened with me in any way. You have to look at both sides. I do think it is very convenient that his album came out and all this stuff is happening. I definitely do think that's very convenient... It really hurts me to see that his whole life is ruined.
[The Theosophical Society] are ideologues in terms of the way they present the material. That's one of the reasons why, when they teach their courses, you only get a smidgen of stuff and you have to keep coming back every week. They won't do an overview. Because they're trying to bypass your conscious critical faculties by leaking the information slowly.
Don't talk to me about appealing to the public. I am done with the public, for the present anyway. The public reads the headlines and that is all. The story itself is fair and shows the facts. That would be all right if the public read the facts. But it does not. It reads the headlines and listens to the demagogues and that's the stuff public opinion is made of.
Our third partner [with Neal Dodson] was this other guy called Corey [Moosa], and he came in with good ideas and also some access to money, and so we joined forces and drew up a business plan and got financing for the beginnings of the company. We had no idea what we were doing really. We just started looking through material and started producing our own stuff.
First, there are some of my readers who only read Hap and Leonard, not the other stuff, and some who don't read Hap and Leonard, but a large percentage are crossover readers. And yes, I did refuse to go to Vietnam and it looked like prison was in my future, but they sent me to the psychiatrist and he gave me a 1-Y, which is unfit for military service essentially.
I'm not interested in playing the field and all that stuff because frankly I'm not into frivolous relationships. I've got a couple close relationships with friends, a close relationship with my family, and a close relationship with my guitar. I'll know if the right person comes along, and whatever then - cool - but it's not something I'm seeking out at the moment.
Alessandro [Michele] has really done the impossible. He's taken this classic brand [Gucci] and really turned it completely around and taken it in a direction that was so unexpected. [Alessandro and I] met and became friends here in L.A., and then we got to know each other and he asked me to do this. It was really organic and not the way this stuff normally happens.
I guess it's interesting traveling, for me, because I never in my life until doing this felt a sense of being from anywhere particularly, whereas now I do feel quite European. Even if we don't get up to England, if we're in France or somewhere like that, it feels more like going back somewhere familiar - more than even America, where we share a lot of cultural stuff.
It's tough because sometimes you'll just be on the web and things pop up or you get emailed something from a friend. It is definitely impossible to avoid stuff about me sometimes, but it's pretty important to try. It's very rare that things are true about yourself that are on the Internet. It's just sad sometimes. So you definitely try and stay away from it as much as possible.
In the 80s, if you wanted to make electronic music, it was a much tougher and more expensive process. For many people it would involve either spending loads of money on gear or else cutting demos in a proper studio. But I had this Casio keyboard and tape recorder and used to do stuff in my bedroom - I'd listen to Mantronix and all that. That was what I had so that's what I used.
In a way it was a modern story but it played to all those 1980 slasher movies. We did the same thing with this. Patrick wanted to do a 1970's road movie and if you'll see, this is a modern story but it's got so much 1970's in your face feel to it. So that was the point, to take that stuff that we loved growing up and sort of do it for today. I think we accomplished it. We'll see.
When that word came down that the company had decided that we were going to go theatrical, we hooped and hollered and wahooed and all of that stuff, but the good thing is we didn't have to change anything. It's not like all of a sudden we had to reset, like "Oh my gosh, we're going to theater. We've got to make this better. We've got to make this bigger. We've got to add..." It was all done.
My movies are always being played on television, I'm very well known and all that stuff - I go all over the world, I have access to many things, many people, many places and it's wonderful. But now I'm at a point where...I thought it was time to show some of it, to show some of my feelings about things and what I preferred at the time. I prefer them still but not to the extent I did at the time.
I was raised pretty much a fundamentalist, but the one thing that fundamentalism gave to me was the love for that book and a commitment to read and study it. The difficulty is that I've read it all, I didn't skip around, I read it all, and when you read it all, you can't take it literally because you don't want to blame God for a lot of stuff that occurs in that book. There are some pretty violent scenes.
I had to first convince them [prostitutes] that I wasn't a journalist who would yet again put out a notion about them they wouldn't necessarily care for or who would victimize them. You know, journalists come and go. If they come twice, it's a lot. But I come 10 times and hang out with them and share stuff. If you connect with someone just once, that's something. But if you can connect twice, that's something else.
I don't know," I said. "Maybe you're right, and all that stuff I think I missed is overrated. Why should I even bother? What's the point really?" He thought for a moment. "Who says there has to be a point?" he asked. "Or a reason. Maybe it's just something you have to do." He moved down to start bagging while I just stood there, letting this sink in. Just something you have to do. No excuse or rationale necessary. I kind of like that.
Certainly it's great to be able to talk to your friends about something. They might mention a film, and you can find all about it, and you don't have to wait months until you can find a book that might cover the subject and keep it in your head. You can have that kind of immediacy. But there's also something about it, where all the knowledge seems kind of fleeting. All the stuff I learn about in that way, I can be interested in for a day and then it's gone.
The situation they [journalists and Edward Snowden] were in was incredibly heightened. The stakes were high. There was a lot of pressure, a lot of tension, a lot of sense of claustrophobic, clandestine energy that I think was exhilarating for us to explore and recreate. We were fortunate to shoot a fair amount of our stuff at the actual hotel where it all happened in Hong Kong. That added another element of very similitude to the situation, so I feel like it was exciting.
