cynicism is always going to try to get you and it's your job to navigate around that cynicism
because they're like nipping dogs at your feet they're not important cynicism is valueless
in my book i have no time for it i will be patient with it to a degree and then i have
no patience for it some parent that doesn't want their kid to play violin
okay and they're antagonistic you know you've got to be an accountant you've got to be an accountant
you go okay dad i love you but if i become an accountant i'm becoming what you want me to be
and i have a good chance of having a not so happy life even if i fail at being a violinist
at least i failed on my own terms and i failed doing something i loved so you got to let up on me
dad or brother or just or whoever that character is that has a counter intention to you you have to
get with them and get real and say look it's my life it's not your life and this is how i
need to do it whether someone wants to be a baseball player but their parents want them
to be a football player it doesn't even matter if it's the wrong sport you see it's not your sport
you know and i've watched people do this my whole life i've watched them
you know wow you got to be a professional football player for six months why didn't that work out
because i never liked i wanted to be a baseball player well what what happened they said well my
dad wanted me to become a football player and i was really going on his wishes so if you had to
redo history you'd say would i have told dad at that time look you know you i'm just enjoying
this more than that can you let up on me so there's all these interesting increments of
how you give yourself permission and navigate around people that are counter your intentions
you know my parents would sit there he had a cigar my mother had a cigarette glass of wine and they
would watch me for three hours lip sync records and improvise and imitate people and whatever and
they would look he's something isn't he both you know he look i can you believe how they
made me feel like i was god's gift to the arts so it's like really dad you you encouraged all
this love of my performing and now i want to do it he just wanted me to be protected by a diploma all
he cared about was that i could survive in life and he wasn't sure without a diploma that i could
and i was saying in my mind i'm not a scholar so therefore i'm going to do luggage handling
at laguardia or i'm going to become what i do best act sing and dance so dad let me get
i'm 16 i'm chomping at the bit let me out of the stable he was more you know he's six kids
working class he wanted to make sure i was gonna be okay so his was much more pragmatic mine was
much more no i want to put my bets on my abilities if you always do good work from your standards
whether you're in a project that fails or succeeds you can live with that but if you're doing things
on other people's criteria standards and you fail you feel terrible there's nothing worse than
failing on somebody else's idea fail on your idea it hurts so much less suddenly you can go away
with pride that you was a job well done and you you maybe made a difference in a lot of people's
lives were you valuable to someone you can't forget that life is an art it's why oprah and
i connected immediately because you know we did a whole episode one time on enlightening people
that didn't have money on how they can live art i said very easy i said can the average fellow
go to walmart and afford it it's like a tray yes it might be three dollars can you afford a cup
instead of a paper cup might be a dollar that's right now can you put your favorite coffee in that
cup can you can you go to a market or something and get a nice blueberry muffin can you make that
look pretty put a flower on that tray now can you go give it to your husband or your wife they'll
think they're at the five or four seasons getting room service and you have minimal money it's how
you approach it you know it's the art of life if you want to look a certain way it doesn't take
money i i remember i had a couple of friends that weren't applying they needed a suit for a wedding
they didn't have one i said let's go so i get you a suit for 46 it's going to look great and it did
because the designer of the walmart thing had a better tailoring than some of the top designers
and everybody complimented him out the way man yeah you look great you look great never
told them it was from walmart 46 dollars but he upstaged everybody with all their designer suits
i did that with my sister's ones i never told her i wasn't used to buying them expensive clothes
i went to mom bought a cocktail dress for one sister and a kind of other type of popular
they wore them out they loved them so much and i never told them how much they cost 19 each and i
never told them where i got it from because i did not want it to influence them but i wanted to show
that you can experience life if you're clever with money and still be as artful i think it's simple
to some degree in that i've never done anything that i wasn't truly interested in or
enthusiastic about so i was honorable to my own feelings about any subject matter
whether it be acting singing dancing or flying aircraft i was just very true to my own
feelings about those things in order to get what i wanted i was willing to sacrifice
suffering through being patient for what was the right thing to do well i don't mean patience in
a bad way i mean i mean we all should be on it and ready to to make things move but what
i meant was sometimes your integrity is more important than uh just doing the next thing so
you know i when you first start out you need a team to kind of share your dreams with
and you hope that that team has the kind of integrity that you have in your heart
and soul not just for me to make a living as an actor but he he had a 10x dream for me
you see and uh and he once said to me only the big top people in the world are going to respond
to you he said the mike nichols of the world the hal ashbys were big directors at the time
he said they're the ones that will like you and respond to your particular ability
and the mediocre people might not and so he gave me patience to wait out the mediocracy and and
to trust that the top people would tune into my station there's a joy of creating and that's free
whether you write or play music or at you that's free the joy and you can splurge on that joy
everybody can you just have to give yourself permission you want to be valuable you know
otherwise you're kind of wasting your time i want it to have been valuable that i was
here for people that i actually they're glad i was alive that i helped somehow whether it got
them through a day a week a year a month my legacy was that i made a difference
you