A lot of what is wrong with corporate America has to do with a culture filled with antibodies trained to expel anything different. HR departments often want cookie cutter employees, which inevitably results in cookie cutter solutions.
I really ought to try and make a film that's a bit more cynical. But I don't think I'd know how to do it. I think what it is, is that if you're a film director, you're basically there because you enjoy manipulating people's emotions.
The popular image that Hollywood is ruined by difficult prima donna actors is nonsense. They're certainly very nice to directors. I can't say the same about producers, who I found difficult, paranoid, and certifiably insane, mostly.
The App Store has democratized the creation of content. As a 12-year-old kid, I was able to put my application on the store. No one knows who's behind the screen so you can't tell I'm a 12-year-old.
My first app was released in July or August of 2008. It was a 'fingermill' - a treadmill for your fingers. My level of programming was quite basic to begin with, so it was more gimmicky to start with. Day one it was up there, I had 79 pounds worth of...
I read books all the time. I'm just half looking for something to do; I mostly just read for pleasure. Occasionally I stumble across something that could be a movie, but I don't put a book down just because I don't see a movie in it, either.
Listening to what people were saying wasn't even important. But it was important to look as if you were listening to what people were saying. Actually, listening to what people are saying, to me, interferes with looking as if you were listening to wh...
My mother told me, 'Son, nobody else but God knows.' And that's what I'm about - reaching out to the people, crying with them, giving them hope. Visiting the hospital, visiting the kids with cancer, visiting the adults, and stuff like that. That's wh...
My opinion is that you cannot really blame cinema for the result of what is somebody's mindset. I think it's just entertainment. For me, I've always believed in doing things that I can sit and watch with my family. So far I think I've stuck to that, ...
Theo does comedy now, and he's traveling around the country doing comedy, and I actually just saw him, he's from Louisiana, and I just saw him when I went home to visit my family in Louisiana. I saw his comedy show and he was brilliant.
There will always be a slight difference between the reel and the real. Even my family might know 99 per cent about me, but there will be this one per cent about me that nobody will ever know. Being in this profession, I am fine with biopics or movie...
Everyone has a crazy old lady in their family like 'Mama.' No one ever comes up to me and says 'Mama' is just like them, so no one is ever offended by her. Even young people like to laugh at her. I think she helps kids appreciate their own grandmothe...
My parents never pushed me to be an actress. You can come from a family of actors, and sometimes there have been families that grow you up as an actor, but this wasn't my situation. It's very important to find your own way because it's something you ...
'The Golden Compass' became a bad experience because the studio didn't have faith in the strength of the ideas of the novel, which is ironic because it's one of the greatest fantasy novels ever written, if not the greatest, and they took the religion...
Baseball may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman ha...
Characters in TV and theatre tend to experience a lot of conflict, so I push myself through sport to physical and emotional levels that hurt so I've some other reference for extreme experience that isn't me shouting at my girlfriend or my mum. It's a...
Studying doesn't have to happen in a silo. It can be a social experience. You can engage with your friends and family to find out the answer to a tough question or have someone explain it to you. You can also study anywhere you happen to be and on an...
I came from Long Island, so I had a lot of experience at the stick. I played in junior high school, then I played in high school. The technical aspect of the game was my forte. I had all that experience, then I had strength and I was in good conditio...
Auctomatic was a compressed start-up experience, going from start to launch to acquisition in under a year. We spent a long time building the product before getting our first customer, whereas with Stripe we made sure we had paying customers from the...
In my view, a philanthropist is anyone who gives anything - time, money, experience, skills or networks - in any amount, to create a better world. This is not how we once thought about philanthropy. The word used to conjure up something rather passiv...
Coming down under a parachute is quite different as well. You hit the ground pretty hard, but all the systems work very well to keep it from hurting, so it doesn't even hurt when you hit. It was a great experience to be able to do both.
