I grew up in Synagogue in the boys' choir. We didn't listen to music in the house; only at temple. Then I went to a mostly African American high school on the South Side of Chicago and joined a gospel choir.
I love biographies. I read Patti Smith's 'Just Kids.' I'm into that time frame in New York, the '70s and '80s. In art school, I read 'Close to the Knives,' the autobiography of the artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz.
After college, I went to Alley Theatre in Houston to work in their apprentice actor program. I thought I was gonna get discovered. It didn't happen. I moved back to Germantown, Tennessee, outside of Memphis, and taught at my old high school.
As a child, I grew up the son of German immigrant parents, so I grew up being teased and called 'Fritz' at school. When I married my wife and went to live in Vienna, I was teased for being a Brit.
There's a darkness under 'The Hangover' because ultimately there's a missing person and it's not really that funny. There's a sort of darkness under it that I love, and still people are laughing as hard if not harder than they did in 'Old School.'
In high school, people wanted to find the worst in me.
After high school, I was going to move out to L.A. and try to pursue my dreams of acting. My parents said, 'That's fine. We support you, but you have to go to school,' which was fine because I'm a studious person anyway; I enjoy it.
Young women today do not marry the men they met in high school, or even the one they go out with at college, because they do not need to.
Out of 3,500 students in my high school, I was the only openly professing Christian kid. Obviously there were challenges. 'Only old and stupid people believe.'
I was used to being successful in school, but academics didn't make me happy.
When I was 12, I went to boarding school, where I discovered the computer, which meant I no longer had to write something down and get someone to play it, I could just type it into the computer and hear it back.
I think some of the funniest and most artistic people I know are the ones who had a hard time at school. They often have humility and artistry. So, as much as I feel bad for kids who have to go through a rough childhood, I believe that if they can turn it around, it's going to make them better people later on.
When I came to New York after high school in 1959 and started to meet musicians, 'Hot House' was like a standard jam session tune.
At school, I was the classroom clown - I was always being thrown out for being naughty. Before I left, a teacher called me in and suggested I became an actor.
In retrospect, I think I had some kind of learning disorder. I could kind of charm my way through grade school, but in high school... I could never seem to grasp things.
I was going to go to school to become a neurological surgeon.
In refugee camps around the world, I met people who were gone. They were still walking around but had lost so much that they were unable to claim any sort of identity. Others I met found who they truly were, and they generally found it through service to others. They became teachers when there was no school, books or pencils.
Drama school introduced me to a world I had no idea about. I wasn't brought up in a literary household at all.
My career got off to a very shaky start when I dropped out of school at the age of 18. Despite my lack of academic credentials, I got a job as a fashion assistant at 'Harper's & Queen.'
I love that I can work from home and take my kids to school every day.
When I went to school, it was radical just to be involved in anything.
The wonderful thing about drama school is that it stretches you in a way the industry doesn't.
When I was working a lot, I felt guilty as a parent. I couldn't pick up my son every day from school, bake him cookies and that kind of thing.
I went to a tiny little high school... I'd make my foray into Calgary if I wanted to see a movie or do something crazy.
I pretty much left full-time, formal education when I was 11, so that was when I was taken out of the school system... The longest stretch I would go back for was a term and a half when I was about 14.
Kids nowadays, I remember when I was in school, they were just rude, even to the teachers and stuff.
You can have great teachers, but if you don't have a good principal, you won't have a good school.
I really focused on three things in high school - my company, basketball and my school work.
I remember actually liking a girl in high school who was kind of an outcast and weird, and people made fun of her. I remember hanging out with her, but I was apprehensive about telling anyone I really liked her.
In middle school, I had the best math teacher I've ever had, and he was deaf... and I felt inspired by him. I knew from then on that I wanted to be a math teacher.
When I left school, I wanted to be an artist, specifically a painter.
I played cello in my high school orchestra.
I'm out of the terse Hemingway school.
I went to public school, and it shaped me as a musician.
I think I've always wanted to direct, but I didn't go to film school. I was lucky enough to work in movies, and I think those became my film school in terms of acting and watching directors work and also writing and co-writing and producing.
School systems now routinely have more administrators than classroom teachers. They have armies of counselors and therapists and nutritionists and 'multi-cultural learning facilitators.'
