Back in 1978, when I was still in high school, I went to see a Broadway show, 'Paul Robeson,' starring James Earl Jones. It was all about Robeson's journey as a human being, an artist, a champion of civil rights. Had I not seen the play, I might not have known who Robeson was. I was certainly never taught about him in school.
I've always had the same principle for choosing roles, which is to try and make movies that I would pay to see. As I get older, that's meant different things.
Just making a movie the way 'All is Lost' had to be made was a great experience, because it was structured differently than any other film I will make for the rest of my life.
Well, I took a sabbatical. I walked away from shooting movies because I couldn't handle the travel. I'm a single parent. I had young kids, and I found that keeping in touch with them from hotel rooms and airports wasn't working for me. So I stopped.
Dancers can get to see almost everything now. When I used to go into companies to make a piece, the dancers had hardly ever seen my work. Now they can watch it on YouTube. It means they're much faster at picking up material.
Touch was important. The evening of the Third of July we would go around the neighborhood and look at the fireworks others had bought, taking them out of the brown paper sack and handling them cautiously as if they were precious stones. There was envy when we saw sacks with more in them than we had.
If you had a record company believing in you enough to cut an album then you had better have the ability to work the album on the road.
We had a pretty good lead, so why push it.
I think the people at my record label know I'm a Christian and again, I've been really blessed that I've never had to get into a head-butt war over moral standards or anything like that.
We learned that Trump had not given a million dollars away. When Corey Lewandowski told me that, it was a lie.
I think the fact that I created something and had an enormous influence is indisputable.
I had always intended to make a living out of playing blues. But I never admitted it to myself. I don't suppose I could have given a logical reason for it ever becoming possible to do so.
John Wetteland had a very good curveball. He threw it for a strike, too, in any count, any situation. But, he really didn't use it much. He didn't want to throw it. He wanted to throw fastball-slider.
I quite often don't have breakfast, and I never have lunch. I find it helps not to wake my stomach up because if I had a good big breakfast, I would be ready for a snack at 11 and then a three-course lunch, then I'd be ready for tea, then a cocktail and then an enormous dinner.
When a film works, the director had a lot to do with that, but the director also didn't have a lot to do with that. There are so many moving parts. It's really about being open to how the river is flowing and trying to get on the river.
I never saw my grandfather because he had died before I was born, but I have good memories of my grandmother and of how she could play the piano at the old house.
I grew up in the 1970s, but I don't think a whole lot had changed from the '60s. Oh, it had changed in the law books - but not in the kitchens of white homes.
I had a one day slip, Matt. So what do you do? You get up and you go on, and you try not to do it again.
As far as I can remember, every dime I ever had went to something extravagant. I would rather spend more, buy fewer items and have them forever.
But the worst handicap we had the prohibition of naming individual units who had done the fighting.
I had enjoyed life in Paris, and, taking all things into consideration, enjoyed it wholesomely.
I know deaf people. I have discussed the issues with them I've also thought about them a lot so I have some insights that go a little further than people who haven't had contact with the deaf community.
I went through a phase when I was 13 where I would only fall in love with people over the age of 19 or 20. I never had a real relationship with any of these people, but it was definitely the guy I wanted to hang out with and wanted to go on trips with. I would be like, 'But, Daddy, he's a musician!'.
I wish I looked more like my mother, but I think I look like my father. I wish I had one of those naturally beautiful faces. Or a more quirky face. I'm right down the middle: not interesting enough, not pretty enough.
I enjoyed my life when I had nothing... and kinda like the idea of just being happy with me.
I read the collected works of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and made a list of everything the old Baptist preacher had ever condemned as immoral or untoward. The subjects of his condemnation ranged from college-age women going braless to dogs wearing clothes to Beyonce.
But let's just say, I'm Irish. I grew up in the 1950s. Religion had a very tight iron fist.
Can you blame them? We have to filter so much information these days. But it does make it difficult for an artist. I'm 46 years old now. I've had a lot of life experience and my voice has changed. People who expect the same old me are bound to be disappointed.
By the second tour I had rice cakes and hummus with me, and I was jumping rope in my room.
I'm sure there was some part of his soul was intrinsically happy, but he probably had to go through some permutations to really get that to blossom. I'm sure Dad had his challenges, but I think that joy was there from the beginning and he had to find a way to make his life support that and express that.
My expertise was in public finance, particularly corporate taxation, since I had worked at the US Treasury.
I've had many ideas come from clients.
I had a lot of time to think, and that is not good for your mind. And when it actually happened, it was not so much a celebration but the relief. It was an exorcism anxiety. After each race there is a procedure in which you get taken off to the podium and the TV interviews.
The music alone wasn't enough. It was great, but when an artist had an amazing look - like the MC5, or the Stooges, or Alice Cooper - you really got sucked in. The wardrobe was so important. At a show, you were engrossed in the music, but you were also engrossed in everything from the haircuts to what they were wearing.
The world is full of people who say, 'But I had that idea first,' but did they do anything about it? Nope, they sat on their bum dreaming.
As I had collaborated with visual artists before whether on installations, on performance pieces, in the context of theatre works and as I had taught for a time in art colleges the idea of writing music in response to painting was not alien.
