There's this old Frank Sinatra song: 'If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere'... that song was about New York, but it applies to America. People know that if you make it in America, you can make it anywhere, and that is both in terms of sophistication and customer satisfaction.
There's no disputing that for pols, the Internet is a great way to connect with people and raise some cash and post 'Sopranos' parodies or play your opponent's macaca moments. But in a 'net root' sense, it's pretty useless for getting someone elected.
It's people politics, people dynamics that make a show really good, whether it's 'Desperate Housewives' or 'Lost' or 'The Sopranos.' It's the people we've grown to love or otherwise.
Very few people took sordid things and made comedies out of them.
'Sordid' is rather unique. That's why so many gay fans are comfortable to share 'Sordid Lives' with their families. It's not really a gay story. It's just much more a family story that happens to have gay members, which most people do.
Through the years, I have been overwhelmed by the number of people who have shared how much they relate to my 'Sordid Lives' family, and how many gay men and women used it to come out to their conservative families through the humor of the film.
People where we come from hear so many lies that the truth stands out like a sore thumb.
I think that's one of the biggest problems in rock is people thinking too much, putting too much emphasis on getting things perfect or completely sorted out. Sometimes that sound of not having everything sorted out is kind of cool.
The web and physical world is plagued with abundance - people need help sorting through all the good and bad stuff out there. The tyranny of choice is causing major psychic pain and frustration for people.
The idea of finding your soul mate, whether it's online or not, is what people want.
Soul music is about longevity and reaching and touching people on a human level - and that's never going to get lost.
People have this perception of soul music of somebody shouting.
People want an easy sound bite.
I find it quite hard to sum up my relationship in a sound bite. I feel that it trivializes it for other people's pleasure. It's an adventure.
I didn't respond to people thrusting microphones at me and asking me questions that were unanswerable in a sound bite.
The problem with modern politics is everybody is doing sound bite stuff. In my stump speech, I give 20 minutes on why I think we're off track. And I think people do really want to engage in a serious high-level discussion on how to get the country back on track because people care about their own country.
I do not knock 'Poppins' or 'The Sound of Music.' They gave me pleasure, and I know they've given a lot of people enormous pleasure.
When 'The Sound of Music' aired live on NBC, 18 million people were talking about theater the next day. That's incredible. 'Grease' felt like a chance for me to participate in that landscape.
One lady told me that before she saw 'Sounder' she didn't believe black people could love each other, have deep relationships in the same way as white people.
Soundgarden was incredibly democratic, and I was really proud of that. I felt like we got along better than most bands we toured with and most people we knew. And at the same time, when you're that democratic and concerned with each other's opinions, you're always concerned with what the other people think.
