and stay curious.
I started acting when I was a kid, so
I can get disappointed,
lost.
Whenever you feel like too much of a professional,
In the subtext of that is that you watch all these
movies about famous people as if
their stories are the ones worth telling.
So that it's like because they're famous, that their story's worth telling.
And that kind of pisses you off.
So do you think there's kind of, like, a beauty in almost failure?
Like, trying to succeed
and not quite get there?
And then the fact that we haven't seen a biopic where the person didn't
end up like Lady Gaga.
If you watch any sporting event, my eye kind of
gravitates to the person who gave their all,
and it didn't go their way.
The underdog.
You know, I always—I can't help it.
My eye goes to them. How are they doing?
'Cause we're all told that if you give your all, it's gonna work out.
And it will,
but not necessarily by society's definition
of what 'work out' means.
hard work, doing something of value, is
its own reward.
Now you may be Michael Jackson,
and strike it rich.
Or you may be Emily Dickinson.
The poems [themselves] are the prize, you know?
And if that's not enough,
then you might be a little misguided, you know?
I love it. Is this the kind of lessons you try
and teach your kids as well?
I mean, we live in a culture where we just celebrate making money
24/7.
And I do have four kids
and I am trying to say,
if you play that game, you're really
limiting your options to ever
If you make those things your priority, you'll have
those things.
If you make making money your priority, you probably have it.
But you might not have the other thing, so
Have you always felt like this or is something you, kind of, learned through
being in the industry for a while?
I remember hearing a Bob Dylan song
when I was young that said, 'There's no success like failure
and failure's no success at all.'
I remember thinking, what the hell does that mean, you know?
And I watched from a very young age
some of the most successful people
I ever met be some of the least successful human beings I ever met.
Success and money changes people.
I would say that the
desire for
success and money.
If what you want success for
is to be perceived as powerful
or perceived as important,
then you've kind of lost already whether you get it or not.
I mean, my daughter is going into acting pretty
hardcore, and she's an ambitious, young woman.
She wants to be good at her profession.
But the question is:
Is it for you
or is it for the profession, you know?
If it's for art,
well then it's gonna go great.
If it's to be fabulous
and have other people, have the people who made fun of you,
be humiliated,
I've heard you describe yourself as a professional actor,
not a professional director.
So is your goal as an artist to, kind of, strive to always do something
new and make yourself feel uncomfortable?
I think it does good things to us, you know? It's—
It's so exciting to be young
and see the world and—
but it's also scary
and hard and you get hurt, and
We're living in a world where it's easier
and easier to not have to do any of the messy work
of living, you know?
You can stay a little isolated, but
I mean, it's hard, but it's the stuff of life
and so you have to force yourself to be uncomfortable, I think, sometimes.