Because the kind of nonfiction I write has a plot, the events and transactions that make up a life, nonfiction offers me a break from plotting.
Making playlists can kill a whole afternoon for me. I like building very specific playlists for new writing projects. In a strange way, choosing certain songs is part of the process of plotting the book out. I pick songs that I think with resonate with characters, their personality quirks, relationship dynamics, action scenes, and so on.
You can't compete with hip-hop. That doesn't mean I don't want to be as big as a rap star. I do - I'm always competitive. But there's this weird perception of me as someone who's sitting around plotting like a devil. It's not like that.
I do think, with people in comedy, you can have your time, as it were, and then you don't realise that it might have gone. I hope it hasn't for me. I think what I do is, I just... I just try to plough my own furrow, in a way.
Jokes apart, people are constantly asking me, 'What are you doing for the industry?' When one makes a blockbuster, you plough back money into the industry. If my film makes 100 crore, I'm not taking the entire sum home! It gets distributed between the exhibitors, distributors, producers and actors.
I live on a ranch in Utah for now, but I'm gonna move. I've got another ranch to move to, but its location is a secret. When I get there, I'm gonna plow the road in behind me.
The Brer Rabbit ploy has been quite effective for me. When a country is talking about prosecuting me, I demand to be charged and put on trial and offer to pay my own airfare. They know that I'm going to bring a lot of international media with me and put their whaling programme on trial, and they decide it's better to keep quiet and do nothing.
The Faith No More stuff isn't about me. It was a band. Maybe that's where a lot of journalists got the wrong idea. You don't just pluck a song off a tree and put vocals on it.
Everyone wants to pluck eyebrows. I thinned them out real thin once and it just didn't look like me.
My father was a great outdoorsman. From when I was about six we would spend countless hours together in the woods or on a lake. He taught me how to skin a rabbit and pluck a wild turkey. He showed me there is much more to nature than we can ever understand.
It was such a culture shock for me, being plucked from this diverse neighborhood in London into Jamaica Queens. I'm in this new environment, and I had an English accent.
A fan once asked if he could have a piece of my hair for voodoo. I said no, so he hugged me and plucked out a couple of hairs and ran off.
But there isn't any second half of myself waiting to plug in and make me whole. It's there. I'm already whole.
Those three years on 'Loving' were instrumental in helping me move through the next few years of work, where it was hit or miss. I was on series that would get canceled, then I would be a movie that wouldn't come out or do as well as I hoped. You learn that you have to just keep plugging away and never take anything for granted.
Being in bands and plugging away with not many opportunities and no money for many years really shaped me and taught me about work ethic.
I'm married. I have three children. I have a mortgage to pay. The plumbing breaks and the yard needs trimming. However, what my wife and children need most from me is my passion for them.
The goal of Asians in the arts is plurality of roles. I've always been hindered by me over-thinking what is a stereotype and what isn't.
I can really serve the audience instead of making this about me and about serving myself and my pocketbook.
Every time you choose a perfume, you are voting. And, of course, I hope you vote for me. Not only for my ego, but for my pocketbook. The more you buy, the more money I make.
A loss never bothers me after I take it. I forget it overnight. But being wrong - not taking the loss - that is what does damage to the pocketbook and to the soul.
