Given a choice between Charlie Mingus and Eric Dolphy or Joe Strummer and Lou Reed, there was no choice. I like Reed and Strummer, but it's kiddie music.
'Pitchfork' said something like, 'Michael Imperioli wrote a book that sounds like Lou Reed fan fiction,' which maybe it is. It's fiction, and I'm a fan. But it's not about me, and it's not a Lou Reed book.
Lou Reed was an ideal figure to me. He was bisexual, like me, and seemed to inhabit an ambiguous middle place on the masculine-feminine spectrum.
The Southern California arena rock, hair metal, laidback hippie garden culture - for many growing up in the '70s and '80s, none of it made us who we were like Lou Reed did.
The period right before punk rock where people like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop were really strong.
Please write music like Wagner, only louder.
I like to praise and reward loudly, to blame quietly.
My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.
Why is it so difficult to have films seeing the world from women's perspective like 'Thelma and Louise?'
When I'm abroad it's almost like I'm in a transit lounge. I'm only comfortable when I know the date of departure.
Trees Lounge is based on my own life. Both my parents like the movie. My father, of course, thinks it's a masterpiece.
Baltimore was like a small town when I got there - the Colts, the Orioles, guys like Frank Robinson, we all knew and respected each other. Everyone would cross paths at one point at Lenny Moore's Sportsman's Lounge, trading stories and having some fun.
My best efforts were some modern things that looked like very lousy Matisses. Thank God I had the sense to realize they were lousy, and leave Paris.
I like the Hotel Costes, on rue Saint Honore, a boutique hotel near the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre and the Tuileries. I love the dark, moody decor as well as the fantastic scented, candlelit pool in the basement.
Even in movies like 'Superbad,' they're all lovable kids.
Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.
I love to read about what my love life is really like.
There have been rumors and rumors and rumors about my love life. That's the one area that I really like to hold close to my heart.
And in the middle of one of those scenes, I suddenly felt my heart just open: it was overwhelming, to the point where I got teary-eyed. Never would I have thought anything like that could happen in a love scene.
I like to sing love songs.
