I'm a very private person. I barely tell my friends what's going on half the time, so the idea that I should then talk to the world about what is going on seems anathema to me. People can say what they want. I'm not going to change anyone's mind.
What makes me happy is just curling up in with my mom in her bed and watching a marathon of 'CSI' and 'Grey's Anatomy' episodes with pints of ice cream.
The DVR thing has rocked my world. Being on the road, I used to not keep up with any shows. Now I got a DVR, so I'm watching everything: 'CSI: Miami,' my favorites 'Criminal Minds' and 'The Mentalist.' I like some of the HBO stuff, 'Entourage' and 'Eastbound & Down.' My wife got me into the 'Grey's Anatomy' deal, so I'm watching that.
I love Black History Month and celebrating my ancestral roots, but not just my blackness, which is so beautiful. But my Tahitian and my Italian - everything that makes me, me.
I've been trying to pinpoint what keeps drawing me back to the Gulf of Mexico, because I'm Canadian, and I can draw no ancestral ties.
Bones tell me the story of a person's life - how old they were, what their gender was, their ancestral background.
I was way into 'Voltron,' Ray Harryhausen: anything with giant monsters, I was really into. Even dinosaurs - for a while, I wanted to be a paleontologist. So it's almost like primal, ancestral mythology to me, this fascination with monsters.
People are always asking me where I come from, and they're expecting me to say India, and they're absolutely right insofar as 100 percent of my blood and ancestry does come from India. Except, I've never lived one day of my life there. I can't speak even one word of its more than 22,000 dialects.
I always understood my ancestry, like that of so many others in the Gulf Coast, to be a tangle of African slaves, free men of color, French and Spanish immigrants, British colonists, Native Americans - but in what proportion, and what might that proportion tell me about who I thought I was?
But if I were to say who influenced me most, then I'd say Franz Kafka. And his works were always anchored in the Central European region.
In Los Angeles, I had the good fortune of anchoring the news right before Johnny Carson came on, so to see him, the Hollywood stars watched me first.
When I started at the Wall Street Journal after college in 1990, there were lots of smart women around me all the time. They were writing for the paper, serving as managing editor, winning Pulitzers and anchoring the weekend show I worked on. It was so inspiring to me.
I'd watch the news with my dad, and he'd quietly mock the anchors. An anchorman might say, 'Police are searching for...' and my dad would say in the anchorman's voice, 'the man who gave me this haircut.' This was in the real Ron Burgundy '70s. And I would laugh and start doing it myself.
I'm single, footloose and fancy free, I have no responsibilities, no anchors. Work, friendship and self-improvement, that's me.
I really bristle when I get called to events and people introduce me as one of the top black anchors in the country. You know, that's very insulting. I'm striving to be one of the best anchors in the country. Handcuff me like that. What you're saying is, 'You're black. You should only expect to rise to the level of the best at being black.'
I've met and sketched most of the great athletes from the past five decades and their movement, grace and energy have kept me captivated over the years. That's what the ancient Greeks first saw and that's what caught my interest.
In 'Roma,' I wanted to get across the idea that underneath Rome today is ancient Rome. So close. I am always conscious of that, and it thrills me. Imagine being in a traffic jam at the Coliseum! Rome is the most wonderful movie set in the world... As was the case with many of my film ideas, it was inspired by a dream.
I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet, so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me.
I say over and over again that I am just standing on the shoulders of so many who have set this path for me, and they may not be seen or recognized or have been given an opportunity to have a voice, but I'm here representing all of those dancers. Dance Theatre of Harlem Virginia Johnson, Tai Jimenez, Lauren Anderson.
Sparky Anderson taught me this a long time ago: 'There's three ways you can treat a person. You can pat 'em on the butt, you can kick 'em in the butt, or you can leave 'em alone.'
