Trying to be a socialist and a libertarian is obviously a very difficult balancing act, which nobody has pulled off too successfully in this century.
The Internet, I'm trying to point out, is a kooks' paradise. Anybody with a keyboard and a modem can spread fear, loathing, and just plain asinine ideas among hundreds of thousands of people with the click of a button. Discouraging, but true.
Painting someone's portrait is, of course, an impossible task. What an absurd idea to try and distil a human being, the most complex organism on the planet, into flicks, washes, and blobs of paint on a two-dimensional surface.
Things are still in early stages, but one can imagine that as we build up and systematize our theories of these associations, and try to boil them down to their core, the result might point us toward the sort of fundamental principles I advocate.
Some members, like Britain and France, are ready, willing and able to take action in Libya or Mali. Others are uncomfortable with the use of military force. Let's welcome that diversity, instead of trying to snuff it out.
I think we need to just be very clear about what we're trying to do in Afghanistan. Frankly, we're not trying to create the perfect democracy. We're never going to create some ideal society. We are simply there for our own national security.
The only real failure is trying to second-guess the taste of an audience. Nothing comes out of that except a kind of inward humiliation.
Well, as far as film, either you're making a film or you're making videos. Digital capture is always trying to emulate the range and look of film. I believe personally that film has more.
I'm trying to keep my personal life personal. It's very hard for me because I'm a very honest person.
I kind of enjoy the limits. If you've got no limits, you can do absolutely anything, it's very difficult, actually. I always enjoyed working with machines like color photocopiers and letter-pressing type settings, things where the limits are very apparent. You push the machine to do something, and it tries to do its best, and it usually has wonderful qualities all of its own. Then you get a sort of dialogue going, and the limitations become qualities.
There are times when I feel like I'm a traveling minister. I'm trying to go out and get kids to pick-up yard sale instruments and change the world.
If you were to sit me down in a classroom, with fluorescent lights humming and some woman trying to teach me Italian, there's no way. But scream goes to Italy, we stay in a squat, and the only way you can ask someone where to take a piss is to do it in Italian. So I learned Italian.
What you're always trying to achieve in a creative relationship is one that is egoless... ideas belong to the collective. If you can disassociate your own ego from your idea, then, almost always, everybody will arrive at the same decision as to what is best.
With these Funny or Die videos, I do everything for them. I write them, act in them, and co-direct them with my buddy Brian McGinn, who I grew up with. We also edit them together. We're working on a small scale of Internet videos, but we're slowly trying to make them become a bigger thing.
Please try not to be such a wiener-head.
For one thing, I like to walk when I play golf. Now I don't walk the whole way, but I try not to be the driver when in a cart.
There's no downside to traveling the world and making money. I'm doing something I love. A lot of people have sucky jobs, but I have a good one, and I'm not trying to lose it any time soon.
I try to give people hope. Even though life is bleak, there's hope out there.
Murrow covered something because it needed coverage. He wasn't trying to get an audience just for the sake of it.
When you're in the position I'm in, you have two options: you can either shut yourself off from everybody, from the world, and not live a full life. Or you welcome everybody into your life and occasionally somebody will try to take advantage.
I have nothing but great respect for great scholars. But I was in grad school in the '80s and '90s, at the height of the theory craziness. It had a big part in why I ended up becoming a writer rather than a scholar, because I thought, "I just can't play these games." I was interested in literature because I loved literature, and so much of the theoretical positioning, at that moment 25 years ago, was antagonistic to literature. You know, trying to show that Jane Austen is a terrible person because she wasn't thinking about colonialism.
I had to try and find a way to express happiness without sounding corny.
I try not the count chickens, and I really do because there's no point because you go crazy. I'm very happy with the way this is working out. If they do another movie I'd love to do, and we'll fit in it.
I didn't want to do a zoo show. I didn't want to do a study of someone with mental illness. I just wanted to show someone who was trying to live their life.
I try personally not to be nostalgic.
