When I was a kid I had a friend who worked in a radio station. Whenever we walked under a bridge, you couldn't hear what he said.
I was making a lot of 8mm home movies, since I was twelve, making little dramas and comedies with the neighborhood kids.
I'm not a great man to my children. I'm just 'Pop.' The more involved I am with my kids, it keeps my head flat on top.
I think Lincoln had a unique parenting style. He let his kids run free and wild.
I was afraid of small spaces and I was afraid of the tree outside my window, and I had all these phobias. I think many kids have those phobias, but I probably had more than most.
I have six children and I love all my kids more than anything in the world.
Every generation seems to have its members who think the world has gone to hell and a hand basket and that they need to explain a challenging world to their kids.
I sometimes think 'Gordon' must be the most bootlegged album in U.S history, since it sold only 200,000 copies in the country, yet 800,000 kids know the words to every song.
Obviously, it's designed by record company executives who want a cheap success, and they don't want to give money to anybody and they don't want to give contracts, so they've created this world of very bubbly teenagers who want to be "idols" and they think all they have to do is mime quite well and they've made it. ... But it's not the problem of the kids, it's the problem of the record companies, because it's just an inexpensive way for them to have so-called, I won't say "artists", but erm...You're nodding, you know what I mean.
As people get older, they get married, have kids. I'm not married. I don't have kids, so I'm able to focus 100 percent on this.
Just the idea that someone is married and they've got a kid, and he reports for work one morning and his boss says, "You're wife is a spy. Shoot her." In the real story, he just went back and did it, which would have been a short film. Therefore, I had to spend some time exploring what you would do.
I've always been a rule-follower. Even when I was a kid, I tried to do everything by the book.
I've been with the project for like three years: creating it, pushing it. [There] becomes a certain doubt when you're pitching this story to people. ["The Land" is] a cautionary tale. It's not the brightest or best ending to a film when you're telling a cautionary tale about four kids, kids who are killing each other, kids who are products of the streets.
The subject matter itself lends itself to the black side because the kids are drug dealers and kids that are getting shot by police and getting shot by themselves. People automatically associate that with blackness because of the news.
I started out doing improvised voices when I started working in a program where I read for kids in schools. I had some kids and they asked me if I would mind doing it. I was very happy to do it. Thats where I got my training before I went to the public. I did that for several years. It was actually the best vocal training I could have had.
Let me tell you something, planes and kids... I've got a 3 and 1 year old, I don't wish that on anybody.
You work with stand-up comedians or you work with somebody in theater, you work with somebody from Star Search or Survivor or a kid, it constantly changes how you play with people.
I heard black people sing and the emotion was overwhelming to me. The power of that with all the built in sorrow and joy was just overwhelming to me as a little kid. It was the real deal.
I had a guy who went out of way to help me get started and somehow saw something in me. I couldn't get my hands on a real guitar till I was fourteen. I always wanted one from the time I was a tiny kid. Music was bigger than life to me.
I think kids are smarter than you think.
I was big into mythology when I was a kid - Arthurian legends and Greek mythology, that was kind of my passion. I hadn't heard of the books, but I was told they were very popular amongst the kids, so I got a hold of them and read them. I totally got it!
I was a kid, 12 or something, when the Partridge Family was big on TV. I liked the curly cord running from the bass to the amps, which were real fancy. That cord looked so cool. I said, 'Wow! I gotta play something like that!'
I loved the idea of recording. The idea of sound-on-sound-recording captured me as a young kid, and once I realized what it was I had an epiphany. Before I was even playing the guitar, I would create these lists of how I would record things and overdub them, like Led Zeppelin song, 'I could put this guitar on this track...' and so on.
I've worked too hard all my life to have my kids control my life.
Kids don't come with an instruction manual. So if you're gonna make mistakes, at least make them your own way.
