I try not to dwell on the past. I’m not a big go-back-and-try-to-relive-your-past kinda person.
I never wanted to come off as self-important.
I think that taking night trains or meeting someone on the road is pretty romantic. I’ve done a couple of things like that. I’ve surprised someone in Paris. And hopefully, when you surprise someone, they’re happy to see you.
Kitsch is more dangerous than it looks when taken to the extreme.
In the future, there is no future.
I’m not making any plans. I’m just going to let the universe surprise me.
I’m a paranoid schizophrenic. I am my own entourage!
The Sugar Frosted Nutsack is dizzyingly brilliant. Mark Leyner is a hyperkinetic shaman, who flies the banner of rum and candy and writes like a one-eyed feral bandit. His new book is supremely original, delirious and synapse-shattering.
I don’t tend to think in terms of a moral authority – be a good boy, do good things – more in terms of what feels right.
My dad had a commercial film company, so he had a videotape player before anyone. So he got Mel Brooks movies or Citizen Kane or some classic old movies. And every summer the revival house in Evanston would show the great films from the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s.
I have a good friend who’s a Texas girl; Texas girls are a whole different breed.
My point was that it’s hard to make good films, but I’m not under any illusion that you do all the time.
Roy, the guy I play in ‘The Grifters,’ is a guy who had a very bleak life. His mother had him at 13, and then when she was 17 or 18 and he was 4 or 5, they were trapped in a small Texas town somewhere, and she was ready to do anything to get out.
Probably Lloyd in ‘Say Anything’ is the closest to me – or to who I was at the time. It was just a great love story about people in the ’80s, and we all tried to make it feel as real as possible. It was such a wonderful time. We didn’t leave anything in the gym; we put it all out there.
Poe had this curious kind of alchemical courage, where he took all the terrible things and terrors that happened in his life, all this shame and fear and pain, and turned them into great works of art. He was a complex, brilliant person who was just wired too tight.
I think being self-referential is really narcissistic. Who’s to say anybody’s even thinking of you that much? But some of these movies that I’ve done, people still recite lines to me, even 20 years later.
I just love the process of working with other actors. It’s like jamming with a musician, except it takes a little more effort to get to that place as an actor, because you have the cameras and lights and everything. But I love jamming with these people.
I grew up in Evanston and lived in Chicago for a long time, in Old Town and Wrigleyville. I did three films when I was in high school. The first was ‘Class,’ with Rob Lowe. I had a supporting role in that.
I don’t walk around talking about my life and spouting my philosophy to people I don’t know. I mean, if I get to know them, I’ll talk for hours. I guess I like a lower-key scene.
Hollywood is just a bunch of people going around in Learjets to other people asking them if they’ve got any money? Well, they might have if they didn’t spend it all on jets.