I didn't always spell my name Bil. My parents named me Bill, but when I started drawing cartoons on the wall, they knocked the 'L' out of me.
I thought I was going to make crazy cartoons for the rest of my life. I didn't think I'd ever get paid for it, didn't think I drew well enough, but I knew it made me happy.
Minneapolis just embraced me. There are a lot of weirdos here. It's awesome, because I'm a weirdo. Thankfully, the city embraced me with open arms. A lot about Minneapolis helped carve my musicality and open my eyes. The whole town is so open-minded compared to like, you know, Texas.
What I needed to do was carve out parts for me, roles for me that weren't just the sidekick, where I got to be the lead, because that's breaking through.
Running a marathon was important to me, so I found time to train for it. Writing books is also important to me, so you know what? I carve out the time.
A lot of people say I look like a rock star or a designer punk. But I swear it's the job that has carved my face. It's the hours, the stress, and the pressure. It's not me trying to look like this.
John Dos Passos, Raymond Carver, Flaubert and William Maxwell were all very influential when I first started writing. Now, the writers I'm most interested in are the writers who are most unlike me: for example, Denis Johnson.
Cutting into color reminds me of the sculptor's direct carving.
Tom Ford, who is my all-time favourite, once said to me, 'Here's the thing about dress shirts, Rob. You need white, and you need black.' 'What about blue,' I asked. He said, 'Have you ever seen Cary Grant in a blue dress shirt?'
I did an imitation of him to make the crew laugh. To my shock, there was Cary Grant behind me. He got very angry. I was sent all the way from RKO to David Selznick's office and was told not to do it anymore. I thought to myself, 'I must have been pretty good to make him that angry.'
One of the hardest things for me to do is watch myself. The first time I see it, I am obsessed with my left ear or my right ear or some other physical attribute, or the fact that I'm 60 or whatever shallow ego thought is running through my head. I'm just destroyed that I'm not Cary Grant or whatever.
'North by Northwest' took two and a half to three months to film. When I look back, I realise I wasn't intimidated by Hitchcock and Cary Grant. They were so accepting of me.
Cary Grant and I were doing a play in New York. He had a crush on me. Whenever we went to a party, he would always sit on the floor beside me. I thought that was kind of beautiful, like that's where he wanted to be.
Cary Grant was wonderful to work with on stage. He would move downstage, so that as he looked at me the audience had to look at me, too. He knew a lot about the theater and how to move around. He was very secure.
Morocco is completely alive for me because I spent about a third of my life there. The first few times I went back to Casablanca, I walked through the streets and remembered how years earlier I had walked those same streets and prayed that a miracle would happen and I would leave and become famous.
If, by chance, you were to meet me at the Casablanca airport or on a boat sailing from Tangiers, you would think me self-confident, but I am not. Even now, at my age, I am frightened when crossing borders because I am afraid of failing to understand strangers.
Even as a teenager, my sensibility was different because my parents introduced me to some amazing films. I grew up watching films like 'Kabuliwala,' 'Casablanca,' and 'Mandi.'
I hurt my knee, and that messed up my running, and boy did that ever just have a cascade effect. I've gained about thirty pounds that my doctors have screamed at me about. I've got to get that off, and I know that.
The idea that just the basis of the game, repetitive hits, could bring on a cascade of issues later in life, that was - it changed the game for me.
Mara Casey gave me my first job. I saw something online, and it was for a part in a 'Gilmore Girls' episode, and I thought I was right for it.
