Financing for 'Shotgun Stories' was initiated with money from close friends and family. This is where the money to go into production came from. After production, a company called 'Upload Films' came on board and provided post-production funds and services. In both instances, people were taking a gamble on us.
Taking employment out of the country - now that's taking away jobs. These shows employ a lot of people: production, post-production, music supervisors, camera people. A hundred people or more.
I would say that there's definitely some advantages with me being able to talk shop with some of the effects people. Because I come from a post-production world, I can speak shorthand with them. I don't think many other actors can say that and know how the process 100% works.
To people like me, educated in post-war Britain, free speech has been a firm premise of the British way of life.
When I was a campaign worker, you would meet people who would want to vote but didn't have any money for postage. It happens more often than people think.
I get a lot of fan mail from girls. It's interesting because it's not just the U.S. - you get things from people all over the world. They send these postage stamps and you're like, 'Where do you live?' It's crazy. I'll get letters from the troops, too.
The United States Postal Service has a problem. People aren't sending as much mail as they used to. That means less postage revenue and difficulty paying the bills.
If you look at the history of the letter in the novel, small changes in the British postal service became really significant because of how quickly people are suddenly able to communicate, and letters actually arrive at the intended time, and they arrive to the correct recipient. All of this is really important to a plot.
I'm always mystified by the day-to-day workings of entities like Twitter that provide framework but not content, but I suppose it could be compared to the U.S. Postal Service, which manages to keep a lot of people employed doing lots of stuff other than writing letters.
In last year's local elections in Manchester a third of those who voted did so by post. It's not just that people are choosing to get postal votes, but having one makes it much more likely that they'll vote.
Alongside my 'no email' policy, I resolve to make better use of the wonderful Royal Mail, and send letters and postcards to people. There is a huge pleasure in writing a letter, putting it in an envelope and sticking the stamp on it. And huge pleasure in receiving real letters, too.
Well, I know that I'll never forget that, but also I won't forget the hundreds of people who sent me letters, telegrams, and postcards during that World Series. There wasn't a single nasty message. Everybody tried to say something nice.
People recognize certain things, like 'D' means 'this dialogue stinks.' We're dealing with shows that are written here, shot in New York and posted back here. Accurate communication is a necessity.
The fact that there's people out there that care about what I'm eating for breakfast or care about a tweet that I posted in 2012 that they pulled up because they were searching on my Twitter and things like that - it's hard to understand, because it's just me, and I just think, 'What's so interesting about me?'
I keep telling people: Don't make me the poster boy for AA because I don't know a lot about sobriety, but I do know a lot about drinking.
How could I get up there and say, 'People, we've got to do better,' when I was the poster child for everything that was wrong? I've always believed leaders don't ask others to do what they're unwilling to do.
I am the poster boy for brick-by-brick foundation building. Play a club. Put on a good show for 35 people. Come back. Build your market. Have people talk about you.
For so many years, people have used the expression 'poster boy of British MMA,' but I've never seen myself as that; I certainly never described myself as that.
You know, people want to honor me, and on the one hand I just don't want to be a poster child; but on the other, I want to do something classy and great - something where the residuals will go to the cause.
Any time you're a poster child for the CIA, there are a lot of people that are - either have ideological or they are mentally unbalanced - that are going to try to find you and perhaps cause you harm.
