I think of poets as outlaw visionaries in a way.
Ghost Dog: In the words of the ancients, one should make his decision within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break through to the other side.
A lot of poets too live on the margins of social acceptance, they certainly aren’t in it for the money. William Blake – only his first book was legitimately published.
I love rehearsing because in rehearsals there are no mistakes, nothing is wrong, some things apply or lead you to focus on the character and the things that don’t apply are equally valuable because they lead you to towards what does.
I’m like a navigator and I try to encourage our collaboration and find the best way that will produce fruit. I like fruit. I like cherries, I like bananas.
If you go into a bar in most places in America and even say the word poetry, you’ll probably get beaten up. But poetry is a really strong, beautiful form to me, and a lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.
I’ve always loved films, always. I studied literature and I went to Columbia in New York and I went to Paris for part of one year and ended up staying there.
Life has no plot, why must films or fiction?
No mistakes can be make during rehearsals, only progress toward what works best.
I like to rehearse with the actors scenes that are not in the script and will not be in the film because what we’re really doing is trying to establish their character, and good acting to me is about reacting.
I have to tell everyone that when I finish a film and it goes out and is released, I never look at my films again. I don’t like looking back. I don’t even like talking about ’em! So I’m really digging back in my memory because I don’t like to sit and look at my films again.
I start with actors that I know personally or I know their work, and there are things about their work or their presence or their own personality that make a character, that exaggerates some qualities and suppresses other qualities. It’s always a real collaboration for me.
Specific music starts feeding my imagination and gives me a landscape that corresponds somehow, in some abstract way, to the world I’m just starting to imagine.
I started working with friends of mine and that, to some degree, continues.
I don’t like American football. I think it’s boring and ridiculous and predictable. But baseball is very beautiful. It’s played on a diamond.
It’s a sad and beautiful world.
I didn’t get my degree at NYU; I got it later, they gave me an honourary one.
A lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.
Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent.
I think I feel not at home in America, but not necessarily at home outside of America.
But what I like most to do is lie down in the early evening, just for half an hour anywhere I am, and listen to all the sounds I can hear. As if I were listening to music. And being attentive to things very far and very present, and when you hear voices and they’re speaking a language you don’t understand, it’s really beautiful. I love that.