When not deeply engaged in creative activities, or numbed out by the TV, I felt empty. My heart hurt. I often felt hollow or as if I were some sort of wispy ghost, barely existing.
I did not see myself as a leading lady. I thought I was really funny-looking and I would never be the lead, and I certainly would never do film or television. I wanted to do theater. I wanted to be the grand dame of the American stage.
If you swap it about, do television, theatre, film, you can go on surprising yourself. The problem is you get employed to do something you've already done. They want something from that sheep pen of performances they've seen you do.
You're a professional. You don't need for me to break a film down for you. If you want to stop the guy you're playing, they pay you millions of dollars. You get you a TV and break the player down yourself.
I hate these reality TV shows where people walk off Big Brother and think they're A-list celebrities when they've done nothing in their lives, it really does my head in.
My style can't be held within a pixel medium. Like, it needs to be performed in a living, breathing space. People need to have all their senses ready to take on my comedy, and unfortunately, TV alienates at least their sense of touch, taste, smell.
I joke that I learned the essentials of storytelling from Hanna-Barbera, but I pretty much did. That kind of television is what enamored me as a kid, and that's what really got me hooked. You could say that's where it all began.
Here we are in the 70's when everything really is horrible and it really stinks. The mass media, everything on television everything everywhere is just rotten. You know it's just really boring and really evil, ugly and worse.
I don't even see it as cable TV anymore. I've been called 'Larry the Cable Guy' for so long, I don't even think about it being about cable. I don't know anything about cable.
I just go at my own pace and I like control of the TV and I like to decide when I take a shower and wash the dishes and stuff like that. So I don't know who would want to live with me to be honest!
I never understood who all those people are behind the actors! When you see them on the red carpet on TV, you go, 'Why does that person need such a large entourage?' And then you realize that every single person there has a role to play.
I can't do anything I want to. I mean, I can't have my own TV show. I can't have my own movie. But within my little world, nobody tells me what to put on the albums.
When our video of 'Smooth Criminal' came out, suddenly we started getting all kinds of offers. We were getting calls from TV shows like 'Ellen DeGeneres' and from record labels.
TV and the press have always functioned according to the same sets of rules and technical standards. But the Internet is based on software. And anybody can write a new piece of software on the Internet that years later a billion people are using.
Sometimes, occasionally, people will make out in the audience, completely not aware that there's a human being onstage just yards away from them, who can see them. Sometimes people think that you're on television while you're onstage, so you're not e...
When I was coming up with the Hal Hartley films, I was cast as a no one. I had no name visibility. I was working at a downtown post-performance-art, avant garde theater company and doing a couple things on television. But I was a total unknown.
I've conducted an experiment on my kids. Instead of denying them access to media, I've encouraged it. They read comic books, play Nintendo and watch way too much TV.
My instinct is to absolutely recoil when talking about writing in a mechanistic way. Nothing could be dumber than writing a film or TV script based on prescriptions, on other peoples' ideas of what character should be.
I've always felt a bit of an outsider. It used to worry me that, in terms of TV, I did not look like 'the girlfriend' or 'the daughter'. That pushed me to write my own stuff, as I thought no one else was going to write me a lead in the sitcom.
I have some close friends I keep in touch with. I knit. I watch a little too much TV. I ski, if the weather's right for that. If I can find a group of buddies, I go rock climbing.
I never eat standing up, I never eat in front of the refrigerator. I treat myself very formally with meals. I don't watch TV or read. It's a little bit of a ritual, and it's more enjoyable.
