The reality is that I'm an actor from the Midwest and I was 40 movies into it before I started 'Entourage'.
I started in the psychological thriller side of feature filmmaking with 'Spiral,' which was the first one that I wrote and directed and played the lead in.
When I was five or six, I started dressing up like Davy Crockett.
I didn't realize when I first started writing how much it would set me free from certain situations in my life. It's incredible.
I had a nice part at big newspapers, small newspapers, and then I went to a very big newspaper - 'The Wall Street Journal.' I wrote longer pieces, and I got tired of working so hard on stories that had a shelf life of essentially one day. So then I started working on longer magazine pieces and realized then that you might as well be writing a book.
I auditioned for 'Loving' two years before we started shooting, so in the hopes that I would be playing Mildred, I watched it again. Also it's one of the best documentaries I've seen. I found this couple interminably fascinating; even if I didn't get the part, I just wanted to know more about them and their story.
I've always been very cautious with what I do. You know, that started at a young age. I always had the approach or the mentality I never wanted to embarrass my parents.
It's hard to say exactly when it all started or what show it was, but I started touring when I was 11. I played all over Dallas and Fort Worth, and eventually I was touring the whole state.
I was really creative. I started to dance very young. I loved to dance. I begged my mother to put me into dance classes, and finally, in third grade, she did. Tap and jazz, but not ballet.
I remember my school had some of the first Apple IIs in North Carolina. I remember, when I first started using them, we were using a cassette tape to store programs because we didn't have floppy disk drives.
I started studying theater in school, and then I got into drama school at, like, 19, and it was a national drama school in Montreal, and so it was just you and nine other students for three years, and it was really intense.
I didn't intend 'Hector' to be a self-help book when I first started writing. I wrote it as a little tale about a psychiatrist, like me, who sets off around the world in order to discover the vital ingredients for happiness.
Hopefully I've given something back to darts, which has been brilliant to me. Hopefully I made it a bit popular when I first started; I was part of the breakaway, and I also created a monster, so I think I've done a little bit.
When I first signed to RCA, I was sort of excited and shocked that it was happening. But over the next couple of years, it really started to feel like that game you play when you're a little kid - the one where you put your nose on a bat and then spin around and try to walk.
I was 19 when I wrote 'Dreams,' and that would have been when it started to happen. The band got signed, and I was probably beginning to see different things besides my small town of Ballybricken.
I did play a lot of fingerstyle when I first started playing. I could never really find the right combination of flatpick or fingerpick, so playing fingerstyle is really the easiest way - though it's quite strenuous on the fingertips.
People are like, 'Wow you started your own record label,' and treat me like I'm some sort of innovative genius, when I'm not at all. You've got the Internet and music - you put them together, and people hear your music.
After May 1940, the good times were few and far between; first there was the war, then the capitulation, and then the arrival of the Germans, which is when the trouble started for the Jews.
I consider myself a fortunate working actor, but I really work at it all the time. If I have a couple of weeks off, I'm taking class. You never stop. I started when I was 10 years old in Cleveland, and I've never stopped working my butt off.
I never suffered from the absence of a father. On the contrary, as a child I was more inclined to see men as a disturbing factor. It made things difficult for me when I started working as a director.
I started teaching myself guitar because I loved singing so much. Then one day kind of out of the blue I found I was writing a song. It just happened organically.
When the 'godfather of punk' thing started floatin' around, it was, I was really, really embarrassed. I thought I should have a great, big rig and a cape and everything, and it was very embarrassing. And then after a while, you learn that if people call you anything, this is a great gift.
I started to have these ideas for films. They were like running images in my head. But I didn't think I could be a director. I just literally didn't think it was a possibility. Then I started to suddenly see films of women.
Around '62 in Baltimore, all the girls had those big hairdos. And then suddenly, a few of the really hip ones started doing their hair straight. And people panicked. And it was called going 'Joe,' meaning Joe College. And people would say, 'I don't know. Should I be 'Joe'? I can't decide.'
By the time I started writing plays, Broadway was never an expectation, so it's never been central.
I've tried to help a lot of young artists get started.
When I started out in the eighties, the idea of creating serious comics for adults was pretty laughable to most folks, and for the longest time it was hard to even explain what alternative comics or graphic novels were. Nobody seemed to understand or care. Not so, any longer.
A band asked me to go on tour when I was 22 and asked me to play drums, and I taught myself so I could go on this trip with these people. The drums found me; I didn't find them. When I started playing, I realized how appropriate an instrument it was for me.
When I first started acting, everyone in my family did not want me to act.
When I stopped playing hockey and started acting, the last person I was going to ask for help was my dad. He's the king of being like, 'I don't know. It's good work if you can get it. Good luck.'
The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.
I had very big lips growing up, so my brother started to call me Scooter Fish because he decided a scooter fish has big lips.
As I started to develop as a director, I wanted to do projects that were inherently more cinematic, where the freight was not so much in the dialogue, where it would be carried more by the camera.
I think I'm a bit less inhibited, and not thinking too much before speaking. It's not about being shameful, I'm just a bit more unabashedly myself because of this thing, and it probably started at age 15. I can be around people and say what I think without fear.
It took me a while to really believe in myself or feel determined about it, but then once I realized that it's possible for anyone, and these people who are singers started off very normal... I realized that it was not that hard to do.
It wasn't until I started to read short stories - by people like Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, John Updike... Eudora Welty - that I became excited about the possibilities of writing.
