I often find that getting head issues out of the way first makes the heart stuff easier to work on later.
I really just concentrated on putting out solo stuff on my website, just trying things, but this time we thought it was time to do a proper record, where you make a bit of a fanfare about it. Something that says "listen everybody, I'm here".
I used to not listen that much, but I've really learnt to listen to other people and to really listen to what they're saying. I've found, especially being on a film set, people have so many different stories; if you just listen, you can pick up so much stuff. I try to listen as much as I can.
By the time someone gave me some samples of standard screenplays I was already beyond that stuff, because I was not only a tinkerer in ways to do things, I'd started from Dylan Thomas. As a screen dramatist he was a very intense visualist, with great timing and fluency.
I think that scripts should be published, but they are published, really, because when you're a screenwriter, your stuff ends up in samizdat form on thousands and thousands of desks and shelves across the industry.
I have a lot of stuff that I never published because I always had a sense that novels were not finally going to be the way I made my living, because the form was dying commercially.
I don't really believe that people read just the stuff they agree with.
You know, I've always been really interested in this stuff, and I'm going to read this.
I'm really good at building things that shoot, hurl, or throw stuff.
I have a large standalone workshop on the back of my property where I prototype and build stuff. It's bright, roomy, and has a giant door so it's easy to bring projects in or out.
I worry about what we'll do in the future, [about the instantaneous co-opting of pop culture]. Where is our new stuff going to come from?
I'm not the only one: witness Pokemon! They still keep coming up with this stuff that just rivets us in unexpected areas.
I don't go to the movies much anymore. There's very little that draws me. I watch mostly the older stuff, and I often don't sit through the new films.
It's very easy to not know the stuff that you should know about the patient when you're seeing them. It's much easier with an electronic system to find them, because it's all right there and it should be current.
I love doing action and stuff; the problem is usually action movies are not that interesting. Also as I get older I feel like there's less opportunities for me.
We're all ignorant, just about different stuff.
I guess it's interesting traveling, for me, because I never in my life until doing this felt a sense of being from anywhere particularly, whereas now I do feel quite European. Even if we don't get up to England, if we're in France or somewhere like that, it feels more like going back somewhere familiar - more than even America, where we share a lot of cultural stuff.
There's some people who are just very dynamic about social life, and it can be some pretty crazy stuff, but you end up meeting people you like.
I'm too old to be farting around with stuff that isn't precisely what I want to do.
I'm thankful for the big stuff of course-my family, health, human kindness. But I'm also thankful that I don't have to work for Hollywood anymore.
You're not what you have and you're not what you do; you're aninfinite, divine being disguised as a successful person who has accumulated a certain amount of stuff. The stuff is not you. For that reason, you must avoid being attached to it in any way.
The rest of the world really likes our stuff pretty well. It's just we buy so damn much of what they produce.
Writers get to stay with the piece. They don't just turn the script in and somebody else takes it over and goes out and produces it and edits it and all that stuff. We stay with the piece all the way through.
I wrote for magazines. I wrote adventure stuff, I wrote for the 'National Enquirer,' I wrote advertising copy for cemeteries.
I've imparted that philosophy to the writers, but some of them look stuff up while some don't. Same with the editors, directors and actors. To each their own.
