I believe that the whole idea of the consumer society is tottering. We've kept ourselves going by producing more and more goods, most of which people don't need. I'm anti-consumerism; I own four pairs of black Levis and that's it.
Society in the English countryside is still strangely, quaintly divided. If black comedy and a certain type of social commentary are what you want, I think English rural communities offer quite a lot of material.
The first programming assignment I had in high school was to find the first 100 Fibonacci numbers. Instead, I thought it would be cooler to write a program to get the teacher's password and all the other students' passwords. And the teacher gave me a...
An asteroid or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, nuclear war, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us.
I had written a tune called 'Shake, Rattle and Roll,' but the white stations refused to play it - they thought it was low-class black music. We thought what we needed was a new name. But a white disc jockey named Alan Freed laid on it, and he thought...
I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about black music, about soul music.
I didn't like any British music before The Beatles. For me, it was all about black American music. But then I became a successful pop singer, even though the kind of music I liked was more elitist, which is what I'm trying to get back to.
One day in 1984, at the height of his fame, Michael Jackson made a visit to the White House. President and Nancy Reagan may not have dug his music, but they understood the power Mr. Jackson commanded as a common pop-cultural touchstone for just about...
I'll get up in the morning while they've all got hangovers and run my 5 miles. But the women who do run are usually 10 years younger than me and they're really obsessed about running. That's all they do. They're really boring.
My father was short for a man, with a child's plaything for a name - Spinner. He had flawless dark brown skin and a head full of big, wet-looking curls, black as oil. And he had the smile of a scoundrel - the kind of smile that disarmed men and undre...
Remember those black-and-white films with Frank Sinatra? Those guys looked like men and they were only 27! Listen to Otis Redding singing 'Try A Little Tenderness'. That was a man who understood what a man has to know in the world. Show me a real man...
You may be assured that we won't ever let your words die. Like the words of our Master, Jesus Christ, they will live in our minds and our hearts and in the souls of black men and white men, brown men and yellow men as long as time shall last.
With 'Black Rain,' I spent a lot of time with homicide detectives, and I spent a lot of time with different brokers on 'Wall Street.' It helps get the rhythm of the piece and the tone, and how overplayed or underplayed it might be. That's also the ma...
'Black Swan' does what Hollywood movies have always done - it spends its energies on getting some surface things right while getting everything important wrong. Darren Aronofsky, the director, applies the same techniques and the same sensibility here...
Like the Negro League players, I traveled through the segregated south as a young man. Because I was black, I was denied service at many restaurants and could only drink from water fountains marked 'Colored.' When I went to the movies, I would have t...
Dilios: [narrating] The Ephors choose only the most beautiful Spartan girls to live among them as oracles. Their beauty is their curse. For the old wretches have the needs of men... and souls as black as hell.
Uniformed Policeman #1: [describing the Batmobile] He is in a vehicle! Dispatcher: Make and color? Uniformed Policeman #1: It's a... black...? [looks at his partner, who shrugs] Uniformed Policeman #1: ...tank!
"Hoot": [speaking about the shooting earlier] Nice man, very smooth. Gordon: Single shot through the engine block. "Hoot": Shit, that's a shame. That was a nice jeep.
[imitating Cpt. Steele] Pilla: Speak up, you say this is your safety? Well, this is my boot, son, and it will fit up your ass with the proper amount of force!
[after Hoot cuts in front of Blackburn in the line for food] Blackburn: Hey man, there's a line. "Hoot": I know. Blackburn: And this isn't the back of it. "Hoot": Yeah, I know.
"Hoot": Sergeant, you got your men this far. You did it right today. Now you gotta start thinking about getting them out of here.
