When I play live in restaurants and cafes, I don't play my own stuff. I play jazz and 'American Songbook' standards, and I'll fuse it with top 40.
When they write about real stuff like my custody battle, that's no fun. Some things have leaked out about accusations that have gone back and forth and that's just mean. It's a tactic.
I was going to go make a film in Greece. if they caught you with this much marijuana, they threw you in jail, no questions asked, and I was trying to stuff it in my deodorant bottles. I thought, what I am doing?
It's just hard. I wish the studios felt there was more value in these themes and these pieces of material - that they're worth protecting more. Because then it just wouldn't happen. If the studios cared, the stuff would be stopped in a second.
You have to be very flexible and understand as a director, especially as a writer/director, that you cannot hang onto stuff really hard. You have to be ready to accept those happy accidents and to anticipate that they are going to happen and capitali...
My stuff was more of a folk coffeehouse thing, with more acoustic guitar, just me doing a single, and then adding on instruments and voices, with emphasis on lyrics and singing and light kind of acoustic jazz.
I've done so much different stuff, people kinda go, 'Do you live in Islington?' 'Did you used to go to so and so school?' And when I say I'm an actor, they don't believe me!
There is just so much stuff in the world that, to me, is devoid of any real substance, value, and content that I just try to make sure that I am working on things that matter.
Kickback is a police thriller which I wrote. I'm very proud of it. I did it in two parts for France because when I wrote it, there wasn't the audience demand for crime stuff that there is now.
Well, the stuff that I liked growing up was AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, but I also liked the Beatles and guys like Cat Stevens and Elton John.
It's a way of clearing the palate. Kids come into the classroom with all this other stuff in their hands. If they write it down for 10 minutes they become much more available for whatever it is we want to do in the class.
I'm from Texas and actually went to a regular high school, but every day after school I'd run to dance class and practice a lot and then go back the next day and stuff like that.
We used to have our own plane with the band's name on the side. It was a dream come true. You drive to a local airport. There's none of this checking in stuff; you just get on the plane.
I'm very happy that the New York Times has spoken well of my stuff; who wouldn't be? But it's not a choice I made.
Hunter can write a melody and stuff like that, but his forte is lyrics. He can write a serviceable melody to hang his lyrics on, and sometimes he comes up with something really nice.
And there's a lot of that stuff with people bringing their kids, kids bringing their parents, people bringing their grandparents - I mean, it's gotten to be really stretched out now. It was never my intention to say, this is the demographics of our a...
Like, every couple of months you read, they rewrite, you come back in, they've animated more stuff - they usually videotape you while you're reading it - so they'll incorporate some gestures and some facial expressions into it.
I worry about being a fogy and just writing for orchestras. Like, really, I should be doing more electronic stuff, I feel. Laptops as part of the orchestra, and installation sound, and speakers.
I'd always avoided stuff like 'Where are they now?' or 'Whatever happened to?' Just 'No thanks, thanks for calling.' You tell me, have you ever seen a 'Whatever happened to' where they seemed anything but pathetic?
Some of the material out there - I don't want to say that it's all bad - but there's a lot of bad stuff out there. You just continue reading scripts, and eventually you find something you connect with.
I was just absolutely exhausted. The media said I've been treated for a nervous breakdown. All that stuff I just took as people taking the opportunity when you're down to give you a kick.
