The usual key to getting films made seems to be a producer's terrier-like determination not to let it go. Unfortunately, such producers often seem prone to sinking their claws into mediocre projects.
I don't like any one race or look or type of guy. My tastes as far as looks go are very diverse. I like guys with scruffy beards and leather jackets, but I also like a clean-cut 'GQ'-type guy, so my tastes are very ranged among somebody who laughs at my dumb jokes, too. I have plenty of them.
I could have took the easy way and just been a cowboy, looking good, trying to make my money off Hank Williams and being this clean-cut guy. But I always wanted to be myself and go against the grain.
As for money - when I have it, it's great. When I don't, I go get some. I've been a dishwasher, a gardener, a cleaner.
For every criticism of the U.S. economy, whenever people go into a panic, they look around and say, 'That's the cleanest shirt I have. So I'm putting it on.'
I never was one to go into an office and write. For one thing, I had a job. I was cleaning the ashtrays and setting up the studios at Columbia for a couple of years and working every other week down in the Gulf of Mexico flying helicopters. I didn't really get to just write songs for about five years.
I always take a shower now before I go to bed. It's so important just to cleanse everything off.
Sometimes, you might meet somebody that you love that's turning into a 'they.' My key is invite them to Miami and take them to the ocean and let them jump off the boat in the ocean, on the sand bar, and cleanse off and pray and then go take a shower, and hopefully the 'they' is out of you.
I'm guess I'm up to about 70% of normal, which is a real relief. My doctor gave me clearance to go out in public again, so I've been able to go to the store and help out a little bit around the house.
There's nothing like seeing your floor clear because you organized and cleared the space of all that clutter. That's how I feel when I go to my therapist.
Writing screenplays makes me a better musician because it clears my head. After writing a movie, I go running back to music as fast as I can.
Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister.
My father was a construction worker most of his life. My mother, when she came from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, to the United States, never had a chance to go to college either and became a clerical worker. But they did nothing but build this country.
Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them.
I wanted to do something in film. I wanted to make my own movies. Something clicked in my brain, like, 'Oh, I can physically act! I can go on open casting calls and audition for something.'
'Cuckoo's Nest' was my first film, and I had wanted to do film for some time, but somehow I had not clicked. I would go in for interviews or readings, and I never had the sense that I was anywhere near what they were looking for.
We've been called the soundtrack of people's lives. There have been lots of downs, of course but mostly ups. That EW&F is still clicking at least twenty years on and has a life of its own, that the songs have stayed alive - we're like a good book that people go back to.
Backstage, I get sleepy, and want to curl up and snooze. I never get nervous, whatever the event. I feel quite detached until I walk on stage, and then some gear inside me clicks and off I go like a wind up doll.
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
I go straight into shooting with a script that's 80 per cent complete and I wait for my characters to grow on me before I finalise the climax.
