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When I Think Of My Background, If I Was Privileged On Any Level, It Was In Terms Of The Kind Of Exposure To Experience And Bohe-mian Cultural Influence That My Parents And My Uncles And My Grandfather Gave Me. On Both Sides I Come From An Extremely Eccentric, Artsy, Intellectually Intense, Activist Family.

-Edward Norton

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When I Think Of

Edward Norton

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When I Think Of My Background, If I Was Privileged On Any Level, It Was In Terms Of The Kind Of Exposure To Experience And Bohe-mian Cultural Influence That My Parents And My Uncles And My Grandfather Gave Me. On Both Sides I Come From An Extremely Eccentric, Artsy, Intellectually Intense, Activist Family.

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More From Edward Norton

No, I'm Not A Very Methodologically Pure Actor.

It's Ginned Up By The Corporate Plutocracy As A Way Of Distracting The Working-class People That It's Screwing. We Hamstring Our Own Natural Progressivism In This Country, And That's Really Stupid.

If Nick Broomfield Never Found Anyone With Affection For Courtney Love, It's Only Because He Conspicuously Avoided The Countless Friends, Colleagues And Fans Who Appreciate Her Talent And Admire Her As A Person. But Then, Why Would Broomfield Have Opened Up His Film To Those Of Us Who Work With Courtney And Are Close To Her When There Are So Many Bitter Left - Behinds And Desperate Attention - Seekers Eager To Validate His Attack On Her Character? Inquisitors In Every Age, Scared Of Forceful Women, Have Used All Kinds Of Half - Baked Testimony To Whip Up Chants Of 'burn The Witch!'

It's Better For People To Miss You Than To Have Seen Too Much Of You.

With Edward Norton You'd Never Say, "this Is The One We're Going With Whether You Like It Or Not." It Has To Be Agreed Upon.

There Is A Lot Of Interesting Product Coming To Market Already. Bags And Bottles And Cups And Such Made Of Potato Starch And Other Fully Biodegradable Materials. In Some Sense, Plastic Is More Chemically Complex. We Ought To Be Able To Simplify.

There Are Things You Do For The Fun Of Doing Them Or To Work Or To Hang With Certain People. But The Projects That I've Invested Myself In And Cared About Most Deeply Have Absolutely Been Activated By A Desire To Chase Something That I Relate To, Or That I See As Having The Potential To Speak To Someone Else Directly.

Most Of What I Know About Environmental Conservation I Learned From My Father, Who Has Been A Leader Within The Movement For Over 30 Years.

Making Really Great Music, Making Really Great Films, Writing Great Books Is An Antidote To All Of That. And, As People, As Artists, Some Of The Massive Disruption That Technology Is Causing Is So Exciting, The Way That People Can Share Creativity Now.

I Think Technology Is Having A Democratising Effect On Film.

I've Never Acted Before In A Movie I've Directed. This Felt Like The Time To Do It Just Because The " Leaves Of Grass" Movie Itself Is So Much Of A Platform For The Lead Actor. It's Really Written For An Exciting Performance And It Really Depends On The Audience Watching An Extraordinary Actor Having A Great Time Pulling Off This Feat. It Makes Sense To Me As A Director To Act In Support Of That.

Leaves Of Grass

The "environmental Movement" Is Becoming An Economic Movement, Is Joining The Social Justice Movement, Is Becoming A Sustainability Movement. It's Leaving Behind The "people's Needs Versus Nature's Needs" Conflict In Favor Of Making The Case For Environmental Health As The Essential Underpinning Of Prosperous And Stable Human Civilization.

Environmental Health

Most Of The Movies That I've Made That I Really Felt Good About And Cared About Made Very Little Money Anyway, So I'm Not Particularly Worried About People Downloading And Sharing Them.

People Wrestle Sometimes Making Movies, And I Think That Conflict Is A Very Essential Thing. I Think A Lot Of Very Happy Productions Have Produced A Lot Of Very Banal Movies.

I Tend To Have A Kind Of Tunnel Vision When I'm Looking At An Individual Piece.

If Two People Are At Completely Different Stages In Their Spiritual Life, That Can Present A Real Problem.

People Say You Can't Make Movies About Your Politics Or The Environment. And, Generally Speaking, I Completely Divide Those Sides Of My Brain.

If You Try To Make Interesting Films, You're Going To Be Disappointed Most Of The Time. I Choose Just Not To Look At It That Way.

You Dream As An Actor's Director Of Letting Moments Breathe Through Two-shots.

The Elegance Of Staying With A Moment, Without Needing To Stop And Change All The Lighting, Made [the Alternative] Seem Lazy And Indulgent.

Basically, I Think 21st Century Conservation Is Moving Toward Preserving Ecosystems By Dealing With The Needs Of People.

You Can Do Things In Twin Scenes Now You Couldn't Before. You Can Implement Actual Moving Cameras.

I Almost Forgot What It's Like To Be Proud Of My Government.

A Lot Of Why I Do Something Is Just The Novelty Of The Experience.

I've Observed Over And Over That People Seem To Get A Much Deeper Sense Of Fulfillment Out Of Something They've Done As An Act Of Service Than Out Of The Things They Do For Themselves.

I Come From A Family Of Conservation Activists, And So I've Had A Strong Connection To Nature All My Life. My Father Has Been A Leader Within The Movement For Over Thirty Years And Has Taught Most Of What I Know About Environmental Conservation. While He Would Always Take Me Hiking, Camping, And Rafting, He Also Taught Me That The Spiritual Value Of The Outdoors Alone Is Not Enough To Save Nature Against Economic Interests.

When I'm Looking For Zen And I'm Not Saying This Facetiously At All - I Would Really Rather Surf, Scuba Dive, Or Fly My Plane. And, When I Feel Tension About The Grind Of Work, It's Not Getting The Money To Make Films Versus Making Films That Constitutes The Grind, It's All This Stuff.

I Don't Tend To Say It's Time For One Of This Or That Genre. Things Flow To You In A Strange Way, And Why You Bump Into A Certain Kind Of Thing In One Moment Is...it's Hard To Explain.

Sometimes Their Oppression Of Emotion And The Weird Way It Comes Out Is More Interesting Than Painting It In Bold Primary Colors.

I Just Don't Think Most Of Us Are Aware How Much Of What We Throw Away Ends Up In The Ocean, For Starters. Plastic Bags Are Among The Worst. The Us Is Actually Falling Behind The Curve On That Score. China And Many Other Countries Have Already Banned The Production And Use Of Thin Plastic Bags.

See, I Don't Get The Sense That You Need To Direct At All. Sometimes I Get The Opposite Sensation From You, That You're Like, "i Really Should Go Do Something Else." But Then You Are Drawn Back In By A Particular Story, Like A Hangnail In The Brain.

For Me There's Always A Line Or Two In A Script, When You Hit It You Almost Decide To Do The Whole Movie Off A Line Or Two. You Almost Do It For The Fun Of Getting To Say A Line Or Two Like That. I Don't Have Any Specific Plans, You Know. I Mean, If Seth Rogen Calls With A Great Buddy Pic, I'll Be There.

Unpopular Speech Is Absolutely Vital To The Health Of Our Nation.

I Think It's A Total Fallacy For People To Say, "you Couldn't Make Those Old Movies Today." I Think There's More Ways To Get A Movie Made Today Than Ever In The History Of The Entertainment Industry. It's A Very Exciting Time To Work In Movies, If You're A Creative Person Looking To Make A Very Personal, Weird Vision.

I'd Say That, In Addition To Actually Taking My Brother And Sister And I Camping And Hiking And River Rafting All Our Lives And Introducing Us To The Power Of Natural Landscapes, His [my Father's] Biggest Impact On My Thinking Has Been To Always Argue That The "spiritual Case For Nature" Was Not Going To Outweigh The Needs Of 7 Billion People And To Insist That Law, Science And Economics Were The Critical Frameworks Through Which We Had To Defend The Value Of Nature.

But Look At Avatar (2009), One Of The Most Globally Viewed Pieces Of Entertainment To Have Ever Been Made - The Central Emotional Event Of The Whole Movie Was A Tree Being Cut Down. And The Entire Movie, Essentially, Is Saying, "if We Let The Military Industrial Complex Trash The Place That We're Living In, We Will Have Committed An Epic Crime."

The Zionist Tulsa Jew Who's Pugnacious Is A Reality. I Grew Up Around It. And I Think It's Really, Really Funny And Surprising And Unlikely.

David Fincher Is Probably The Best Comprehensive Director In Terms Of Being A Manger Of A Process That Must Drive Forward. He Has Such Confident Command Of Cinema Language And Visual Language And Script And Performance. He Knows More About F-stops Than Any Cameraman, He Knows More About Lighting Than Any Gaffer, He Is A Wonderful Writer, And He Can Give You A Good Line Reading. Under Pressure, He Is The Kind Of Guy Who You Will Just Dive In With And Trust And Follow Because His Vision Is So Intense.

I Do Subscribe To The Maxim That Generally Comedy Is Like Jazz. Either You Get It Or You Don't. You Can't Learn It And You Can't Be Taught It. I Don't Think That If You Are Not A Funny Person, You Can Fake It.

Most People Don't Relate To And Can't Generate Concern For Something They Don't Encounter Personally Or Feel Personally Affected By. People Have To Have The Palpable Negatives In Their Lives Dissected For Them In Ways That Let Them Understand The Root Causes Of Unhealthy, Unhappy Conditions In Their Lives And Then Be Allowed To Really See And Feel The Positive Alternatives.

I Remember As A Kid Having The Offer Of A Scholarship, That It Was Going To Be Like Going To Mars, And Deciding To Stay In My Public School.

Most Of Us Still Believe In The Intrinsic Value Of Nature, But I Think The First Century Of The Environmental/conservation Movement Demonstrated Pretty Clearly That This Value Cannot Compel A Civilization-wide Shift Toward Sustainable Behavior And Enterprise When Stacked Up Against The Urgent Economic And Social Needs Of 7 Billion People, Most Of Whom Are Struggling To Get Out Of Poverty.

Fame Is Very Corrosive And You Have To Guard Very Strictly Against It.

Suspension Of Disbelief And That Whole Question Is Part Of The Heart Of The 'leaves Of Grass'movie.

Leaves Of Grass

You Never Make All Things For All People And Can't Always Pander To The Broadest Denominator. I Keep An Eye Toward Doing The Themes That Interest Me. Do They Move Me? Interest Me? Make Me Think? When I Run Across Something That Is Provocative In An Unsettling Way, It Appeals To Me.

I Get Heartbroken Flying Into L.a. It's Just This Feeling Of Unspecific Loss. Can You Imagine What The San Fernando Valley Was When It Was All Wheat Fields? Can You Imagine What John Steinbeck Saw?

Screenplays Aren't Written To Be Read, They're Written To Be Made Into Movies.

Life, Like Poker Has An Element Of Risk. It Shouldn't Be Avoided. It Should Be Faced.

In A Very Philosophic Sense I Think Doing The Work Is Itself A Good Thing. But At The End Of The Day, Since We're Taking Other People's Shekels To Do It, And Their Work Is Being Able To Make A Return Out Of It, It Forces You To Consider The Fact That You're Doing It For Other People. The Whole Construct Is Built Around The Assumption That It's Going To Get Shared, And That Someone Else Is Going To Find Value In It - Entertainment, Catharsis, Enlightenment, Or Whatever.

The End Of The Day

For Keeping The Faith, I Looked At [george ] Cukor's Old Films Like The Philadelphia Story, Stuff That's Hilariously Funny And Really Smart With A Cutting Critique In The Humor, Too. With This, When I Read It, I Was Laughing A Lot.

Anybody Who Is Running A Marathon Or Doing A Walkathon, Doing A Fundraiser For Their School, Their Company, By Far It's Guaranteed The Easiest And Most Fun Way To Quickly Set Up A Fundraising Campaign And Send It Around To Your Friends And Family.

When You Have A Pipe Salesman With A Business Called Macabee Pipes, I'd Say You've Got Your Tongue Planted Firmly In Your Cheek.

I Knew Danny Devito And He Knew Me, So He Wanted Me To Try Death To Smoochy. I Loved That Stuff And Had A Great Time Doing It.

Had A Great Time

Sometimes Creativity Is A Compulsion, Not An Ambition.

I Read A Lot Of Scripts And So Many Are Clearly A Knockoff Of One Familiar Genre Or Another.

When People Come Together Too Young, They Try To Become One Person. As You Get Older, You Realize That You Don't Want To Become One Person Because Then You Lose The Person You Are.

You Always End Up Getting Involved In Things Because Of, You Know, The Strange Things Your Life Brings You Into Contact With.

In Drama, I Think, The Audience Is A Willing Participant. It's Suspending A Certain Kind Of Disbelief To Try To Get Something Out Of A Story.

All People Are Paradoxical. No One Is Easily Reducible, So I Like Characters Who Have Contradictory Impulses Or Shades Of Ambiguity. It's Fun, And It's Fun Because It's Hard.

Look, You've Got A Generation Of People Coming Along Who Are Going To Form Their Own New Relationship With The Idea Of Supporting The Causes That They Care About Or Changing The World. And These People Are Not Going To Do It The Way Our Parents Do It.

New Relationship

It's Dismaying To See The Unilateralism That The Government Is Doing.

The More You Do Your Homework, The More You're Free To Be Intuitive. But You've Got To Put The Work In.

Even My Wife And Two Of My Children Are In "leaves Of Grass". Because I Love The Source Material So Much, It Was Really Easy To Write And An Utter Delight To Get To Direct Because I Had People Like Edward [norton] Elevating The Material And Surprising Me In Their Interpretations Of All Of This Stuff That's So Close To Me.

I Never Even Considered Comedy Genre As Something To Embrace Or Move Away From.

I'm An Actor, And, Beyond That, The Thing I Do Most Compulsively Is Writing. So I Come At It Very Much From This Sense Of Character. I Get Interested In People. And I Feel Confident In My Capacity To Absorb And Manifest The Characteristics Of People. I Have A Real Auditory Hang-up For Dialogue; Re-creating The Way People Talk Really Is An Addiction In My Brain.

To Cite My Own Alma Mater, It's Shocking To Me That Yale University Can Teach What It Teaches At The Yale School Of Environmental Studies And Utterly Fail To Mirror Those Values In Any Way In Its Investment Practices.

The Best Films Of Any Kind, Narrative Or Documentary, Provoke Questions.

When You're Working On A Creative Thing, Everyone Has An Idea, And They're Pushing It. The First Time You Work With Anybody, You Have To Get Comfortable With The Way Another Person Pushes Hard For What They Want. Familiarity Breeds Contempt, People Say. But I've Found, For Creative Things, Familiarity Breeds Peace Of Mind, Because You Realize You Know Someone Better. You Trust Each Other. You Know Not To Take Things A Certain Way, Or A Wrong Way. You Get To Where You Don't Have To Waste Quite So Much Time With Diplomacy. Things Are A Little More Efficient.

This Place [usa] Is Exploding With Young People Who Are - They're Like Nietzsche's Hammer - Going To Break Everything And Make Something Better. The Creative Energy In This Country, And What People Are Coming Up With Is Very Hopeful.

If I'm Trying To Put Size On For A Role, Then I Don't Do Much Running.

I Grow Tired Of Intelligence Having Such A Limited Manifestation In Movies - "intelligence" Usually Meaning Coastal, With A Certain Level Of Formal Education.

What We Set Out To Do With This Movie [leaves Of Grass] Was To Create Something That Was Funny And Serious And Had Large Tonal Ambitions. A Movie That Could Be Poignant And Funny, And Suddenly Quite Violent. To Have A Character Utterly Sideswiped, And To Learn That Life Is About Balance.

People Are Worried About The Degree To Which Corporate Interest Is Starting To Threaten Human Interest.

Duality Is Not A Story. Duality Is Just A Complexity.

The More You Can Create That Magic Bubble, That Suspension Of Disbelief, For A While, The Better.

When I Was About 16 Or 17, I Had A Teacher Who Took A Group Of Us To The National Theater In Washington, D.c., And I Saw Ian Mckellen Do His One-man Show - I Think It Was Called Acting Shakespeare - And It Completely Bombed Me; It Put The Zap On My Brain In A Big Way.

Practiced Poorly, Tourism Can Be Extremely Negative.

As An Actor, I Don't Have Any Politics. As An Actor, I'm Driven More By An Authentic - I Would Say An Obsessive-compulsive-disorder Level-fixation On Mimicry, Tonality Of Voice, To Literally Imitate Something Until I Can Just Disappear Into It.

Obsessive Compulsive

But Work That's Got Real Substance Does Make People Feel, "there's Someone Else Out There Who Relates To My Experience, Or Who Just Helped Me Understand My Own Experience A Little Bit Better." And I Think That's Still Got Enormous Value.

I Started, With Three Friends, This Website Called Crowdrise That's Sort Of The Facebook For Personal Philanthropy, A Place Where Anybody Can Have A Permanent Microsite Of Their Own To Stage Creative Fundraising Projects For The Charities And Causes That They Care About. And We Did It With Serious Intent But Without Any Ambition.

As An Actor, If You Step To The Side And You Look At [thornton's Performance] Technically, And You Try To Imagine Doing What He Was Doing, Most People Would Panic. Most People Would Be On The Set, And They Would Be Panicking, Going, "i'm Not Doing Anything!" All The Ham Instincts In You Would Be Screaming, "you've Got To Indicate Something Here." And It's Beautiful, In A Way. And So I Appreciate, Even As An Audience Member, The Courage That It Takes To Be... Frankly, To Be Subtle.

I Think We Really Feel Like Crowdrise Could Be Something That, 20 Years From Now, People Take For Granted Because That's Just How You Do It, Like If You're Going To Raise Money For Something, That's How You Do It.

Well, I Don't Feel That I've Played So Many Bad Guys, And I'm Rot Really Drawn To Villains Per Se. I Think A Lot Of People Relate To Some Of My Characters' Inner Struggles.

Popularity Is The Slutty Little Cousin Of Prestige, My Friend.

I Thought Rounders Was A Comic Movie In Its Way. First Time I Directed A Movie, I Wanted To Do A Comedy. I Don't Like Things That Are Superficially One Thing Or Another, Mainly. My Favorite Comedies Are Really Smart, Too, And Have A Lot Of Levels To Them As Well.

I Hear About Actors Being Exterior Actors And Actors Being Instinctual Actors And I Always Think It's Crap. Anybody Who Knows Anything About It Knows That Good Actors Do Both - They Do Inside-outward And They Do Outside-inward. You Can't Not Do Both.

People Think Because I Went To Yale That That Implies Privilege, And It Is A Privilege In The Sense That It's An Incredible Opportunity.

I Studied French Forever, And When Do I Ever Speak French? I Clearly Should Have Studied Spanish. I Wish I Had Stuck With Music, Because That Would Still Be Great. I Really Wish I Had Learned To Surf Earlier In My Life.

There's A Lot Of Romanticisation Of The Intuitive Actor And Method Acting And All Kinds Of Notions About Getting Inside A Character And Coming Out From There.

Sometimes We Don't See Certain Things Until We're Ready To See Them In A Certain Way.

Obviously Plastics Have Served Very Important Purposes And Been Incredibly Convenient But As We Begin To Witness The Long-term Consequences Of The Chemical Components Leaching Into Our Water And Our Bodies, We're Going To Be Forced To Look For Alternatives To How We Package Goods And Food.

If You Feel Like Someone Just Knows What This Is About To Their Core, They're Going To Have That Special Confidence In It.you Stop Looking At The Seams And They Start Inhabiting The Same Space And Start Interacting With Each .

I Do Find Myself Drawn More To Pieces That I Feel Are Wrestling With The Way That We're Living Now, What We're All Going Through.

Remarkably, There's No Green Screen In 'leaves Of Grass' Movie. There Is Motion Control. Technically, There Were All Sorts Of Challenges, But Really The Soul Of It Is Edward Norton Talent. You Write These Characters When You Write A Movie, And All You Can Hope For Or Depend On Is That Your Actors Will Elevate The Material.

Just Because You've Made A Couple Movies, You've Done Some Good Movies, You've Been Nominated For Some Academy Awards, Whatever, Nobody's Entitled. It's A Business. If They Don't See It, I Can Think They're Wrong, But I'm Not Entitled To A $15 Million Budget To Make A Film.

My Greatest Hope Is That We Transcend The Most Fearful Thing, Which Is That We Are Rapidly Degrading The Ecological Systems On This Planet That Support Everything We Are Doing And All Life On It.

To Me, Achieving Tone, Achieving Consistency, Is Exactly The Job Of A Director. It Is To Be The Fusing, The Nexus Of A Whole Bunch Of People Contributing To The Complex Life Of A Movie. There Are Actors, There's A Cinematographer, There're Costume People, Set People, There Are All These Things, And You Somehow Have To Be The Person In The Middle Of It Who Is Making It All Synchronize Into The Same Magic Bubble.

Every Little Thing That People Know About You As A Person Impedes Your Ability To Achieve That Kind Of Terrific Suspension Of Disbelief That Happens When An Audience Goes With An Actor And Character He's Playing.

There Are So Many People Who Are Conscientious And Caring About Others. I've Spent Time Working In Countries Where I Really Noticed The Absence Of Civic Concern, Care For Other People. I've Been In Other Countries Where I Feel A Palpable, Almost Tooth-and-claw Attitude Between People - Machiavellian, Me And Mine. And You Can Take For Granted Being Here, With All The Bloviating And The Media, On A Day-to-day Level, People In This Country Are Really Pretty Concerned For Each Other.

A Lot Of People Ask, "what Do You Pull On In Your Own Life From Your Character?" In All Honesty, It's Not Something That Really Works That Way For Me. I Tend To Look At These Things As An Imaginative Process And A Challenge Of Imagination And Empathy, To Some Degree. I Get Much More Out Of Meeting People Who Have Lived These Lives Than I Do Digging Around In My Own Limited Experiences.

Identical Twins Are Endemically Alike In Many Ways.

The Thing I'm Absolutely Convinced Of, No Matter How Crazy - Technological The World Is Getting, Is That People Feel More Connected Through The Good Works. Entertainment, And The Sort Of Soporific Effect It Has On People And Their Stress, Is One Thing.

I'm Pretty Busy In My Life And I'm Very Aware Of What It Takes To Direct A Movie. It Takes A Lot Out Of You; It Takes A Lot Out Of The Rest Of Your Life, From Other People In Your Life. I Don't Lie Around Hungering For That Consumption Very Often.

Rest Of Your Life

You Know, Independent Films Have Been Institutionalized, Practically. Every Studio Has Got A Boutique Arthouse Label. There's Like, 18 Different Independent Film-financing Funds. In Fact, I Think The Children Of Those Films Are Getting Made. A More Interesting Question Is Whether Those Films Are Going To Get Seen And Appreciated.

To Me, Fight Club Was A Comedy. When [david] Fincher Sent Me The Book And I Read It, The First Thing I Asked Him Was, "this Is A Comedy, Right?" He Said, "yeah, That's The Whole Point," And I Said, "okay, I'm In." I Certainly Wasn't Imagining Myself As A Dramatic Actor When I Was Running Around In My Underwear In That Film.

I Don't Think You Should Sit Around And Wait For People To Give You An Opportunity To Express Yourself Or Do Your Work, Or Whatever. Actors Have To Be Producers And Writers Have To Be Producers.

I Always Felt That Acting Was An Escape, Like Having The Secret Key To Every Door And Permission To Go Into Any Realm And Soak It Up. I Enjoy That Free Pass.

When I Think About Directing A Film, The Thing That Stops Me Short Is Wondering If I'm A Natural At It The Way I Think You, And Pta, And Fincher Are Born Directors. Maybe Some People's Talent Is In Understanding The Ways That Film Communicates, Without Dialogue, Without Plot.

There Are Tens Of Thousands Of Charities And Hundreds Of Thousands, Getting Towards Millions, Of People Now Using It. And When I Flip Through It, I'm Just Blown Away By People.

On The Downside, To Paraphrase Thom Yorke Talking About The Music Business, We're Still Having To Deal With The Stench Of The Last Fart Of The Dying Corpse Of This Regressive Vision That America Is A White, Middle-aged, Male, Conservative Country.

I Don't Feel Insecure About Any Of This Work Anymore. Maybe I Don't Have What I Had When I Was Younger. I'm Not Really Hungry To Prove Anything To Anybody, Really. But When I Stand Outside Myself And Observe What I Think Are My Strengths And Weaknesses Going Into Directing, It's What You Just Said, An Affliction To Organize Moments.

I Don't Have Anything To Prove To Anybody, Which Is A Lovely Place To Be.

I Don't Get Much Out Of Doing A Red Carpet.

You're Always Choosing The Start Point And The End Point. And Almost By Definition, The Most Interesting Period Is Where Something Happens, As A Result Of Which Something Is Different At The End. And So To Me, The Idea That You Know Everything About A Character At The Beginning Is Sort Of Ridiculous. Something Has To Be Revealed. I Like It When The Deeper You Go With The Character, The More You See The Layers Start To Peel Away. It's More Challenging To Me, But It's Also Just Interesting. Those Are The Things I Like To Watch. I Like To Watch The Evolutions Of Something.

I've Been Friends With The Guys In Radiohead For A Lot Of Years, And I Watch The Way Those Guys Work With Incredible Envy. Because Whatever The Slings And Arrows Of Dealing With The Record Business, At The End Of The Day, They Have Total Creative Autonomy. They Don't Need A Lot To Do What They Do, And Thom [yorke] And Jonny [greenwood] And The Guys Have Their Own Joint In Their Hometown.

As We Say In The Sewer, Time And Tide Wait For No Man.

You Can't Control Everything That Comes To You.

If I Ever Have To Stop Taking The Subway, I'm Gonna Have A Heart Attack.

When I Look At The Directors That I Really Love, Who Really Develop Their Films Over Time, They're Almost Always The Ones Who Go Back Again And Again And Again At The Same Investigations. I Think That When Somebody Has A Theme They Go After, It's Fun To Service That. It's Like, "i Know You Now. I Know What You Go At." It Helps You Locate Yourself A Little Bit Quicker In Their World.

Everyone Keeps Saying The Western's Dead, But It's Not.

I've Always Thought Of Acting As More Of An Exercise In Empathy, Which Is Not To Be Confused With Sympathy. You're Trying To Get Inside A Certain Emotional Reality Or Motivational Reality And Try To Figure Out What That's About So You Can Represent It.

When I Was Very Small, I Had That First-time-you-see-a-play Experience, Which Immediately Made Me Want To Act, Because It Seemed Like This Incredible Outlet For Something I Was Already Doing Fairly Compulsively Anyway, Which Was Putting On Hats And Costumes And Doing Funny Voices. It Was A Very Natural Compulsion For Me.

I'm Not A Very Methodologically Pure Actor. Almost Every Time That I Start, I Feel Completely At Sea. Always At The Beginning I Feel Like A Fraud, Really, Because I'm Never Sure How To Get Started.

I Don't Smoke And I Don't Want To Smoke. I Am Not A Fan Of Gratuitous Smoking In Films.

Instead Of Telling The World What You're Eating For Breakfast, You Can Use Social Networking To Do Something That's Meaningful.

The Deeper You Go With The Character, The More You See The Layers Start To Peel Away. It's More Challenging To Me, But It's Also Just Interesting. Those Are The Things I Like To Watch. I Like To Watch The Evolutions Of Something.

I Never Think That A Film Should Answer Questions For You. I Think It Should Make You Ask A Lot Of Questions.

The Incentive For Business Is Not, And Cannot, Be Anything Other Than The Root Incentive For All Business: They Must Profit.

My Generation Is Having Its Midlife Crisis In Its 20s.

I Like It When The Deeper You Go With The Character, The More You See The Layers Start To Peel Away.

The Film Industry Needs To Confront The Physical Footprint Of The Way Films Get Made.

I'm A Tulsa Jew And I Have A Religious Upbringing.

At This Point In My Life I'm Not Bent On Proving Anything, Really.

I Think There Is A Serious Corruption In The Idea Sold Through Advertising That You Can Attain Spiritual Peace Through Lifestyle And The Notion Of Building Your Happiness From The Outside-in By Acquiring Things . . . Which If You Think About It, Is The Essence Of Advertising

I Grew Up On The Golden Age Of Children's Tv.

I Start To Get Fixated On A Story And A Character And An Idea, And At A Certain Point, I Really Want To Do It. It's A Compulsion To Explore A Specific Thing, As Opposed To A Compulsion To Direct, Generally Speaking.

You Know, Independent Films Have Been Institutionalized, Practically. Every Studio Has Got A Boutique Arthouse Label.

I've Always Liked The Idea Of Taking Old Dramatic Ideas And Devices And Making Them Feel Relevant Or Contemporary Or Whatever.

When You're Working On A Creative Thing, Everyone Has An Idea, And They're Pushing It. The First Time You Work With Anybody, You Have To Get Comfortable With The Way Another Person Pushes Hard For What They Want.

I Tend To Relate To A Character In Terms Of The Arc: What's Interesting Is Where He Starts Versus Where He Ends Up.

But At The Same Time, The Film Industry Just Got Torched. The Risk Tolerance For The Types Of Movies We're Talking About Is Lower, And The Reason For That Is That The Captains Of The Industry Were Asleep At The Switch When Their Core Business Was Being Disrupted. And They're Never Getting It Back. In A Way, It Makes It All The More Exciting When The Good Ones Get Through.

I Just Like Working With Smart People.

Young People Know How To Use These Social Networking Tools, And They Know How To Use Them Effectively.

If There's A Criteria That Really Gets Me Interested In A Work Besides Any Type Of Personal Interaction With The Theme, It's If I Feel Like This Is The Right Piece Of Work For That Director At That Moment In Their Career.

Any Questions I Had About Whether A Redneck From Oklahoma Could Become A Brown Classical Philosophy Professor Ended When I Met Tim [blake Nelson].

I've Already Spent A Lot Of My Life Doing What Makes Me Go. There's A Life Out There While I'm Still Young, Able To Move, Able To Just Sit At Peace In The Water - I Should Be Spending Much More Time Doing That, Rather Than Continuing To Go Through This Artistic Struggle.

We Must Realize That Nature Is Absolutely Essential For Our Survival, And We Must Act On That Premise Now.

If You Try To Make Interesting Films, You're Going To Be Disappointed Most Of The Time. I Choose Just Not To Look At It That Way. I Don't Look At American History X As A Failure, Or Fight Club As A Failure, Or 25th Hour As A Failure, Or Larry Flynt As A Failure, Or Any Of The Movies That I Care About That I've Made That Were Not Immediately Successful. I'll Stand With Those Movies Any Day Over 90 Percent Of The Movies That Came Out At The Same Time That Made A Hundred Million Dollars

When I Think Of My Background, If I Was Privileged On Any Level, It Was In Terms Of The Kind Of Exposure To Experience And Bohe-mian Cultural Influence That My Parents And My Uncles And My Grandfather Gave Me. On Both Sides I Come From An Extremely Eccentric, Artsy, Intellectually Intense, Activist Family.

I Think The Consensus Among Our Generation And People Younger Than Us Is That We Do Have A Defining Challenge In The Moment, So I Do Like Being Involved In Something Bigger Than The Finger-doodling I Do In Art. It Stimulates Your Brain In Certain Ways.

I'm Not Particularly Precious About The Theatrical Experience Any More.

Everyone Thinks That Fight Club Is A Very Important And Successful Film, But It Was A Massive Box-office Failure. Massive. It Was A Big Flop By Any Commercial-release Standard. And It's Been A Huge Hit On Dvd. Everything That Movie Has Become Has Been On Dvd. So You Can't Stake Your Sense Of Creative Success On This Whole Box-office-performance Matrix, Because If You Do, You're Going To Be Disappointed Most Of The Time.

What Has Always Been Most Interesting About Acting To Me Personally Is That It Affords You The Chance To Shift Gears, Both In Terms Of The Experiences You Get To Have Through Doing It, But Also The Different Kinds Of Things You Get To Represent.

I Have This Embedded Faith In The Process Through Which Films Of A Certain Type Get Discovered On Longer Timelines.

I Had A Huge Advantage With Edward Norton Because He's Directed A Movie Before, So One Thing He Appreciates Is How Hard My Job Is, He's Very Sensitive To That. We Actually Ended Up Finishing "leaves Of Grass" A Day Early.

Leaves Of Grass

I'm Fascinated By The Ways In Which People Express Themselves, Because Their Responses Are Often Counter To What They're Actually Feeling. Like When They're Frightened, They Tend To Freeze. When They're Angry, It Doesn't Always Come Out As Volume. There Are Wonderful Contradictions In The Way That People Express Their Emotions.

As We Say In The Sewer, If You're Not Prepared To Go All The Way, Don't Put Your Boots On In The First Place.

I Think One Of The Most Important Investments An Organization Like Tnc (the Nature Conservancy) Can Make Is In Helping Build Local Capacity - Supporting The Growth Of A Global Network Of Small Community-based Entities. Help People Who Live Within Critical Ecosystems Help Themselves And Their Neighbors To Design A Better Future Relationship Between Themselves And Their Natural Resources.

I Like To Get Into A Lot Of Things Besides Movies. I've Been Very Involved With A Few Specific Efforts. We Built This Park In New York And It's Been A Very Successful Project... I Worked On A Conservation Project In East Africa... Too Much Of This Type Of Stuff Can Get You Wrapped Up In Your Own Work And I Love It.

I Wish I Were More Musically Gifted, More Intuitive In Playing Instruments.

Playing Instruments

You Know When Somebody Really Knows What They're Drawing From And You Can Feel It When You See The Movie.

I Think That The Environmental Movement Is Wisely Moving Away From A Largely Emotion-based Argument For The Spiritual Or Intrinsic Value Of Nature With A Capital "n" And Evolving Toward A Very Hard-nosed Case For The Economic Value Of Natural Capital, Ecosystem Services, Biodiversity, Etc.

I Don't Flatter Myself - I'm Not A Scientist, I'm Not A Conservation Expert.

It Must Be Good To Be In Germany And France, Because I Have Completely Forgotten What It Is Like To Be Proud Of Your Government.

I'm A New Yorker, You Know.

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