If you're going to put yourself above everybody else, you might end up alone.Collection: Alone
Every day I've got to be thankful that I am alive, and you never know - the cliche is, I guess, you could get hit by a bus tomorrow, so you'd better be at peace with whatever you got going at the moment.Collection: Thankful
The spiral in a snail's shell is the same mathematically as the spiral in the Milky Way galaxy, and it's also the same mathematically as the spirals in our DNA. It's the same ratio that you'll find in very basic music that transcends cultures all over the world.Collection: Music
There's an absolute prejudice that good movies are dramas and comedies are more dismissable. But I couldn't disagree more.
Normally you read a screenplay - and I read a lot of them - and the characters don't feel like people. They feel like plot devices or cliches or stereotypes.
Sometimes what someone else does is really not what you expected them to do, which to be honest, sometimes doesn't work.
I would like to do a musical, if I could find a cool one. A song-and-dance role is closer to me personally than other characters I play.
Making checklists of things you're looking for in a person is the numero uno thing you can do to guarantee you'll be alone forever.
Storytelling in general is a communal act. Throughout human history, people would gather around, whether by the fire or at a tavern, and tell stories. One person would chime in, then another, maybe someone would repeat a story they heard already but with a different spin. It's a collective process.
I like making little videos and little records. I've always loved video cameras and four-track cassette recorders, still cameras, anything.
Hollywood has the idea that movies have to be dumb. But especially movies for or about teenagers have to be really dumb!
When I was a teenager I loved acting, but I really just loved it for myself. I didn't like the fact that anyone else saw the work I was doing. When I moved to New York, I started to realize that I wanted people to see the stuff that I was doing, and I wanted it to mean something to them.
Ummm... well, the only thing I want to do is stuff with people who care about what they're doing, which sounds obvious, but it's really not.
Actors didn't use to be celebrities. A hundred years ago, they put the theaters next to the brothels.
To me, a sex scene in a movie generally means a gratuitous scene that doesn't serve the story but gives a kind of excuse - we've got these two actors, we want to see them naked, so let's bring in the music and the soft light.
The movies I watch and the music I listen to and the books I read - those are important to me. It's very important to me, and I don't know what I would do without those things.
While I'm not a celebrity, it's such a weird concept that society has cooked up for us. Astronauts and teachers are much more amazing than actors.
I didn't want to just work within Hollywood when I started a production company. I wanted to be able to collaborate with great artists from all over the world.
That is very different from how it used to be in the 20th century. Media was very one way. There's a small little industry. It broadcasted its message and everyone else in the world just had to listen. Now the internet is allowing what used to be a monologue to become a dialogue. I think that's healthy and actually restoring a more natural way.
The Internet is allowing us to get back to what's really more natural, which is that storytelling is a shared thing. It's our natural way to be communal.
I don't blame folks for not wanting to put me in their movies or whatever. I understand if their audiences had an association with me.
A lot of the motivation for doing the 'Make 'Em Laugh' on SNL was because I had just finished shooting 'Inception,' where there were zero-gravity scenes and I got into really good shape and was training and did all these stunts. Coming off of that, that instilled me with the confidence to do 'Make 'Em Laugh.'
A lot of people, most people who are working, they do it for money. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. It so happens that I made a lot of money already, so I don't have to worry that much about it. I wouldn't fault anybody for doing it for the money, but it doesn't interest me right now.
Supermarket tabloids and celebrity gossip shows are not just innocently shallow entertainment, but a fundamental part of a much larger movement that involves apathy, greed and hierarchy.
Celebrity doesn't have anything to do with art or craft. It's about being rich and thinking that you're better than everybody else.
My dad never blew anything up, but he probably had friends who did. He and my mom have always preached that the pen is mightier than a Molotov cocktail.
If the goal is to get the best artists, actors, and filmmakers in the world to create the best movies, Hollywood does a decent job. And I think no one would disagree with me that it also makes a ton of bad movies and employs a bunch of hacks.
To be honest, I sort of feel like 'movie actor' isn't of this time. I love it. But it's a 20th-century art form.
I think, honestly, that the word 'indie' is a false gimmick. 'Independent' used to mean a movie that was financed outside corporate Hollywood, but a lot of what gets called independent these days is totally produced within that system. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Quality isn't about where the money came from or which company gets to put their name on the thing. What matters is who made the movie and why they made it.
When I was a teenager, if anyone recognized me for anything I did, it would ruin my day. I couldn't handle it. It was some sort of neurotic phobia. I guess I was paranoid that people would treat me differently, or in an unfair way, because of my job.
When I arrived at Columbia, I gave up acting and became interested in all things French. French poetry, French history, French literature.
When I started editing on my home computer, I said to myself, 'Well, I could be at home studying for a class or I could be at home editing a video.'
I think that anybody who says 'This is the one way to go about being an actor' has probably not done a lot of professional work before.