Roja,' 'Bombay' and 'Dil Se' weren't planned as political films. It was a phase India was going through and these things affected me and found their way into my work.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the United States would enter, in a formal way, what had been up to that date strictly a European conflict. Marcus Garvey's prophecy about the European scramble to maintain dominance over the whole world was now a reality.
The adult way to run a business is to run it more like a country. They have disputes, yet they've actually been able to have huge trade with each other. They're not sending bombs at each other.
When you're watching a Bond movie, if there's a violent death, there's something about cleverly chosen twists, or what props are used, or some way that he's doing something that feels like an ironic twist, that feels like it gives the audience permission to enjoy watching it and to enjoy watching something that's otherwise just brutality.
Slang has always moved this way. From Cockney rhyming slang to codes swapped among highwaymen, they're tribal badges of identity, bonding mechanisms designed to distinguish the initiated, and to keep strangers out.
The same way that I know that I'll never do a movie as good or as celebrated as 'Forrest Gump,' I know that I'll never do a movie as bad as 'Bonfire of the Vanities.'
I grew up in a small town in Alabama, and there wasn't much in the way of entertainment, so like our older siblings before us, we drove our pickup trucks out into the hayfield and lit a bonfire.
I'm not ready to be that guy who can meet with world leaders and all that. It's tremendous what Bono does. I don't know if I could do it, not the way he does. I don't think many people could.
My clients were always poor folks, working folks, people who were in trouble and couldn't afford to pay a whole lot. I found it very difficult to say no to somebody who needed help, so most of my work turned out to be pro bono. It didn't start out that way, but it turned out that way because I never got paid.
I feel like one of the things that I watched that I felt was really helpful in some way but, more than anything, is worth mentioning was this film 'Boogie Man.' It's a documentary about Lee Atwater.
I always do book signings with the same blue pen. That way, if I add a personalised message to a book I've already signed, it'll be in the same colour as my signature.
When I was a kid... if I couldn't get a ride to the comic book store, I would walk a mile and a half each way to get the latest issues of 'Batman' and 'Spider-Man' and 'X-Men.' I could not choose one over the other.
I did 13-something years of talking to wrestlers and promoters about why they did certain things and why they booked matches a certain way and what they were thinking and whether they were satisfied with the draw. And I got a lot of insight in the business.
I owe a lot to my time on 'House of Cards' because, up until I booked that show, I had been working consistently for 12 years, but I wasn't working on anything that mattered in the way 'House of Cards' did to its audience, to casting directors, to directors and producers. The show hit this sweet spot.
If we can find a way to keep floodwater in reserve and to use it when it's needed, it will be a double boon.
You don't get a standing ovation and get boos, by the way. They don't go hand in hand.
One way to boost our will power and focus is to manage our distractions instead of letting them manage us.
I saw the booster, not Sputnik, flying by, and I said, maybe this is the way we should be going, not just sitting back waiting for something to happen.
I think that Vancouver as well as Canada needs a boot camp for young entrepreneurs. We have already seen tens if not hundreds of people put their names forward to be involved in the program, and we just think this is an amazing way to accelerate what they're doing.
I know he was definitely beaten by her. I saw it many times. But we had a different way of dealing with her. He'd let her have more and more booze until she passed out.
