I was getting to bed about 10 P.M. so wound up and not getting to sleep by 11, and because I was putting the prosthetics on for five hours, I had to be up at 3 in the morning.
I went to my friend's house one day, and he had an electric guitar he had just bought with a tiny little amp. I turned the volume up to 10 and I hit one chord, and I said, I'm in love.
Sometimes you have to disconnect to stay connected. Remember the old days when you had eye contact during a conversation? When everyone wasn't looking down at a device in their hands? We've become so focused on that tiny screen that we forget the big picture, the people right in front of us.
I'm realizing that for so much of my life I had an older viewpoint; I saw things as an older person. That's common among change-of-life babies. So I have this dichotomy where I'm either, like, super young or feel like I'm coming to the end of my years.
I had several publishers, and they were all the same. They all wanted salacious. And everybody is writing autobiographies, and that's one reason why I'm not going to do it. If young Posh Spice can write her autobiography, then I don't want to write one!
Even in my darkest times I knew I had a good future ahead of me.
When I started to make music at the end of the '90s, I saw myself highly influenced by hip-hop and techno, but I wanted to apply these ideas to something from the local sound; something that had identity, that would say who we were and where we came from.
I opened a restaurant that had nothing but California wines.
For 'Filth,' we had about 12 producers on the thing. The opening credits go on for months. Most of them are actually financers rather than producers. And the only way that we could raise the budget without interference from a studio was to have a lot of different financers on board.
I'm like old shoes. I've never been hip. I think the reason I'm still here is that I was never enough in fashion that I had to be replaced by something new.
As a writer, one of the things we all learned from the movies was a kind of compression that didn't exist before people were used to watching films. For instance, if you wanted to write a flashback in a novel, you once had to really contextualize it a lot, to set it up. Now, readers know exactly what you're doing. Close-ups, too.
If I were in a situation where I had to meet a pack of wolves and my family is with me, I'm going to be scared, but I'm not going to hide behind my son to protect me. They're going to hide behind me.
He had Parkinson's disease for about, I'd say diagnosed for about 11 of the last years of his life. And treatment was not as good as it is now, of course. We're still going along and he died in '85 and he was 77.
They had taken me to an exhibit called 'Psychiatry: Industry of Death' on Hollywood Boulevard, where a Scientologist told me psychiatrists set up the Holocaust. I feared I was being brain-washed. And then I lost it - big time.
In 1970 I realized that there was negligible risk from x-rays but many radiographs had poor image quality so that the risk from a false negative was significant.
I enjoyed the administrative work because it involved working with Congress, city council, and the mayor. I had never been a politician so it was fun - learning political maneuvering.
I grew up with Apocalypse Now and Badlands, so I had a real awe thing going.
I have registered few titles like 'Bharat Bandh,' 'Calendar Girl,' 'Money Politics.' The titles just intrigued me, so I registered. I had a title, 'Jai Ho,' which I gave to Sohail Khan for his next film with Salman Khan. These are typical Madhur Bhandarkar kind of films. I may make a film or not on such titles... not sure yet.
I can't live without my cup of tea. When I was a judge on 'America's Next Top Model,' they had to put me in a hotel where I had my own kitchen, because they can't make tea in America. I was happy then because I could make my own.
I grew up in New Orleans. I had just moved into my dorm at the University of New Orleans, and I was doing laundry, and my mom called me, like, 'We've got to evacuate. There's a hurricane's coming.'
I gave it all that I had, and it's gratifying that others seem to be receiving it so well.
When I was a kid. I started writing when I was 13. I got my first electric guitar when I was 13, but I'd always been singing. I had my first little acoustic when I was six. But I started being in bands when I was 13. Crappy rock bands, avant-garde things where we'd, like, 'wanna go against the norm, man.'
All the government decisions remain and won't be altered until I get in the role and have had a chance to discuss them with my colleagues.
My parents made certain I had no illusions about acting. To them, it was always just a job.
I still have moments when I close myself in, but I wouldn't be on the path that I am with the career that I've had if I didn't have a deep understanding of the sense of my inner freedom.
But for me to have the opportunity to stand in front of a bunch of executives and present myself, I had to hustle in my own way. I can't tell you how frustrating it was that they didn't get that. No joke - I'd leave meetings crying all the time.
I never had any desire to become a well-known actress.
My favorite is still the one that I started off with, which is a Les Paul Standard. I've played that at every gig I've ever had. And that's my starting point in the studio.
I do know Joe Lansdale has the most extraordinary voice you've ever heard in your life in terms of an accent that, when I started doing it, they had to go, 'Whoa, we need less.' But that's how he talks.
I had friends in this band called Mars and they used to play a lot.
I'm a lucky boy. Never wanted for anything; new tracksuit, new pair of football boots. I had a happy childhood.
Two special agents at the front door pulled me outside. By that time, they had already had the house surrounded with loaded weapons, machine guns, shotguns... about 25 federal agents.
When I first did 'The Lord of the Rings,' I was acting on the set with the other actors, but then I had to go back and repeat the process on my own to do the physical capture on a motion capture stage.
Most of 'All Hail West Texas' was written during orientation at a new job I had. I had basically worked this job before, I knew this stuff, so I was writing lyrics in the margins of all the Xeroxed material.
Mum had regular mental tests with her specialist, but because of her academic background, she became brilliant at manipulating them.
There's a big difference between wanting to work and having to work. And I had to learn that the hard way. Now money is very important to me, because I ain't got it.
