Red sus. Red suus. I said red, sus, hahahahaha. Why arent you laughing? I just made a reference to the popular video game “Among Us”! How can you not laugh at it? Emergency meeting! Guys, this here guy doesnt laugh at my funny Among Us memes! Lets beat him to death! Dead body reported! Skip! Skip! Vote blue! Blue was not an impostor. Among us in a nutshell hahaha. What?! You Are still not laughing your ass off? I made SEVERAL funny references to Among Us and YOU STILL ARENT LAUGHING??!!! Bruh. Ya hear that? Wo00000osh. Whats woooosh? Oh, nothing. Just the sound of a joke flying over your head. Whats that? You think im annoying? Kinda sus, bro. Hahahaha! Anyway, yea, gotta go do tasks. Hahahaha! Lets just go do it together. Oh, yeah. I got this one. I heard you think this is funny. I’m here just in case I got in a relationship with a woman before. But yeah, we’ll do it later. What are you talking about? No, I’m talking about this. It’s a funny meme, bro. That’s great. So, so you wanna meet me? Alrighty. Hey. Are you guys going to hang out? Sure! Thanks for taking the time to meet us at this moment. Oh, you didn’t think that’d happen? Well. I think you’re going to love it. Ok? Ok. Now, if that is your choice.. Ok. Well. Here we go. Ok. Here we go. Alright. I could ask her out when I’m thirty like she asked me out before. We’re done. Just like that. We went home. I’m a big fan of your work. Well, you know how I’m gonna feel when I find out I’m dating someone… She has such a mean temper, and she comes back to me with… Well, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because she just doesn’t get it, or maybe it’s because you’re just… Well. I dunno. I don’t know. Just keep telling me how important you are. So. What do you wanna do? You’re not even going to put anything up on the Internet? I mean, that’s not even worth doing. But you know what I mean? Anyway, do you wanna see me? You want to check it out? Okay. Here we go. Ok. So I get on the elevator up here, and I’m like “I want to go out” and I’m thinking that, uh, so we’d see each other, and he’s like, “well, we’ve done some stuff, but now…” So I’m going up to this elevator, and he goes in, and so when I get in, I’m in this weird sort of… it’s like a… like an ice cube tray. It was sort of plastic, that had kind of been pressed into there… I’m standing at the bottom of it like, “what the hell?” That’s me, and he’s sort of sitting next to me like, “Oh. Yeah. Ok.” Then he slides the tray over here, and it’s kinda, I mean, like… the place was kind of pretty… like it kinda looked like a big glass container of ice cold water, right? There was a couple of… like, maybe you can look at it, and maybe I don’t look at it at all, but like, this is what I’ve always known, I guess, it’s like a big glass cup, I guess, of ice cold water… like really cold, the sort of ice cube tray kind of thing. And uh… and then he takes the tray out, and it’s like a weird sort of… you know, there’s something on the tray, the one I actually looked at. Uh… and I’m like, “what the heck…” And he’s like, “no, dude, these were…” he’s like, “those! These are… uh, you guys did a show! Oh, wow. That was really cool. I really didn’t know…” He put his fingers in his mouth like, “I had just eaten like an inch of peanut butter and jelly. Wow. Wow. Awesome. Really cool!” I’m like, “uhm… are you trying to get my attention? Like, like, wow, man. Like, that’s cool. Okay, and so you’ve got like, um, like this, and…” He sort of looks at my hand, and I’m kind of looking down at it, but I’m not watching the food, so he just kinda pats my hand and he sort of looks at it… uhm, like, kind of, goes, “I’m so sorry, what’s up?” I sort of keep staring at it and uhm… and I sort of look back at him and I’m like, “I don’t get it…” And I’m like, “I’m sorry man… I’m really sorry… but really it’s just… I mean, I don’t even know what to say! I really don’t.” So I sort of think, like, “this is… kinda awkward.” He goes, “But I mean, man, this is amazing. I mean, I kind of had to give you an out of the blue but it was a really important thing, it was just a huge thing to learn, and it meant something. And yeah, I’m really really sorry for whatever it’s like but, man, you’re an artist, and you’re an interesting person to know. But you’re not going to learn everything from this!” And I’m kind of like, “what’s a… what’s a good place to start, uhm?” He’s like, “Well, uh, I know, you don’t want to know. You don’t want to know where it’s going to take you. So I can just let you know that it’s here.” He goes, “But what do you do if you don’t want to get into the actual writing? And the idea of not really knowing?” So I say, “I dunno. What if I told you it was like this crazy story, and I’m not really gonna say what I wrote it, I’m just gonna leave it out?” So then I look at his face, and I’m like, “I don’t even know what to say. I just, I don’t know what to say.” So the writing is all there, I have ideas, but now my brain is just, it’s so fucking hard. I don’t know what to say! And in that moment, I was like, well, if I can do what I said and do it that way, you know, it’s kind of like a way to stay busy. You went from one huge show to another, from the “Django Unchained” to “Sicario,” and now “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.” I did two movies, right? And then it was “Spider-Man 2” and “Django Unchained,” and I couldn’t say enough good things about that. I remember when I did that I thought it was going to be like, the worst day of my life, because this was the worst movie in my life. It’s like, you know, now I’m like, I’ve gotta be like, that movie was my best day ever. I didn’t even watch it because it sucked, but still that’s the best film I ever saw. So, you know what I mean? A lot of moviegoers are asking if there’s a certain feeling behind “Amazing Spider-Man 2.” How does that feel like? I don’t want to, I don’t have a particular feeling, but I’m just so excited that I can make something good and I’ll do it one of these weekends, and when it’s done I’m going to be like, the next thing I knew I was there, we got the deal from Paramount and that’s the best job in the world. So, I have to enjoy this right now. I know I have to do it, but I have to enjoy it because it’s like, when I look back, it was the best job I ever had and I think that’s a dream come true. I got a job I can’t put a price tag on it. You mentioned it was a dream come true, so did you feel like you’ve got another dream coming? Or was it an all-nighter? Yeah, there is going to be something in my dream that I got to do eventually. Did you also have dreams that were bigger? No, the last dream I had was the movie was one of my favorite movies ever. \[laughs\] But the dream I wanted to do the best job of was “The Godfather,” because my mother’s a really, really big film buff. And she watched that movie with me, so she knows everything about cinema. And I was like, there’s a reason why we did that movie in the first place and it’s so great, like the people are amazing, and we made a movie in one day, we don’t have to rehearse, we can do a scene, and we all are like happy to get it done and we can go. \[laughs\] And, then it’s over, it’s all done. It was that dream. And then, when “The Godfather” came out, I was like, there’s nothing really going on at all. It’s just an action movie, and that was the ultimate dream, just get it done. That was the ultimate dream. I had my own dream. \[Laughs\] The last dream that came true was being in The Godfather. It was actually the perfect movie. Now that you’ve made your movie, what do you think about the way that your career has moved forward from “Sharknado”? I don’t know what I would say about any career change. For me, it’s a big success. I think that my career has gone from being just my work and doing nothing to this big business. I think it’s really exciting. I think it’s important for anyone wanting to go in any field that they have some self-confidence and that they have a vision. The first one that sticks out on everybody’s mind is what I did at Yahoo \[before starting Yahoo\]. I don’t know if you watched the movie, but it was when I was at Yahoo. There were about 20 people that had their own private companies and were all just building business out of their own little corners. There was a bunch of people that wanted to join them and they weren’t doing anything. They were just doing Yahoo and then we would take a look and we would take a look and it was a couple of people that were there and they had just gotten it, they had built their dream up. One of them got bought out. Somebody else got sold, and that was great. So my career at Yahoo and what I’ve done since, that has given me a lot of respect. At Cannes this year, you won the best film festival’s award, but this was your best international film, which was pretty exciting because I don’t think anyone expected that kind of success for you, and so it was important to you to win, and then you also made your documentary about it, what’s that all about? There’s nothing else to say about that. It’s kind of a special thing for me. You do what you do. And because I have that sort of experience I did, I was asked what he liked and he liked that I was a part of. Now he liked that I was a part of it. At Cannes, when I said what I liked and why I did what I did, if you would have asked me that, I would have said, I like film and so I enjoy films. And that it’s important to keep doing it and I’m still doing it. I have one more film that I’m doing now that’s very cool and funny. And there’s another upcoming film, The Dark Side of the Moon, and if you watch the trailer, you can see there’s a cameo in there. It’s an interesting story and that’s something that I’m excited about. I’m still working on the movie, you know. There’s other things I do in that regard that are amazing. You know I do a lot of charity work, I’ve written a bunch of books, I’m a professor at UC Berkeley. And you mentioned that I like people to see my movies, and I’m doing other things as well, like I’m doing poetry, I’m doing something. But it’s always a very, very, very easy to get things done. The only thing that’s difficult is you don’t want to do everything right. I’m a perfectionist so that’s why I’m so good at what I do. I don’t want to get it wrong. What’s your favorite film and why are you so good at it? Logan’s in a nice, large movie that’s actually pretty big. It’s an A-rated movie that has a good amount of sex, but when you’re talking about some of the stuff that I do it’s just a lot of sex. I would be pretty disappointed in that movie. I just don’t want anybody to see something like that where everybody laughs uncontrollably because it’s funny. Do you think you could have done a better movie for Quentin Tarantino? I mean, what can you really say. What can I really say? I could have done it better. You have to do your own thing. And I wish I had done another movie at that point. I was just very, very happy with the way \[The Hateful Eight\] did, \[I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing\] that I did, \[The Hateful Eight: Part II\], even though I didn’t get to work with that great crew because of the writing. But that was a great movie. And I don’t think anybody in their right mind would complain that I didn’t get to work with that great crew again. I was very happy. Do you still have the feeling that you’re going to be a bigger actor? No. I could never do something like that again. Do you feel you’ve grown as an actor? No. I can’t compare the two. They’re very different things. This is what I love to do. My wife gets sick of my acting. “Do you know what’s funny? We’re in a movie, you have a part, and this guy is awesome.” “No we don’t. You are amazing. Stop being so terrible. He’s great!” She says, “The best thing is to make up for it later on.” That’s my philosophy, as a filmmaker. I love the art form, but then I try to have fun with it. You learn how to handle that, but then again, that is my philosophy. At the same time, my job is to just take advantage of every opportunity, or whatever it is you do, and I’m not sure if that’s what people are supposed to do with my acting. I guess it depends on how much the film comes from me and my ideas. Is directing really something you like doing? When I wrote A Beautiful Mind, I tried to be the best director I could be with those guys. I didn’t know how I was supposed to do that. I didn’t know how to work that. So I wanted to be really, really good at directing everything around him. I wanted to be doing it in a totally different way from all the film that I had produced before, and I think that was what worked for me. For me it’s always what’s fun for me to be in the film world. Then, it can go to whatever it is that I’m doing — to have a really fun time doing what I love to do, or to learn something about things that aren’t so fun. I think it’s what I do best. What film do you really look for? Some directors find that it’s easier to tell stories about things that don’t have that emotional pull. But for me it’s always what’s funnier, because I love that side of it as much as anyone. I think that makes it all the more interesting. I mean I’m totally happy when there is a funny scene, but I’m also not sure I would watch any other comedy if I saw a scary scene. It’s just too much. How do you stay current with trends? Well, the Internet — I’m always excited to have that conversation. Is there a book or a website, or something that you subscribe to? Yeah, I subscribed to Allum Bokhari’s YouTube channel and I try to watch a lot of his films on the weekends. I’m going to do some movies, like “Voyage of the Dawn Treader.” Have you ever watched what he’s done on TV? Yeah, I read a lot. I think it’s interesting to have that choice when you’re in between work, because, for me, I’m like, “What do I want to do now?” But this is what I’ve learned from everything. And I find that watching films and books has also grown my sense of what you don’t know about your industry. Do you watch television? Well, there’s more TV. But it’s not too much. If you’re like, “Oh, I like reading,” you watch more shows. But I can never watch enough TV. There are so many shows coming out, it gets boring. In fact, I think of a lot of people that have grown up on TV, their childhood was probably like, “My parents would watch more than 10 shows a year.” When people ask you how much you read, do you have to read the books you’re talking about? I do, you know. “That would have made me want to go out with you,” I’ll say. So I really do read a lot of stuff. And I don’t watch it on purpose. I try not to think too much about TV. If I find myself in a situation where I have to do an interview, like, I know that some people are going to want to ask me, and there are so many choices in what to say, “Oh, I watched that.” So I’m not very good at thinking about when I could be better, I guess, because I’m so in my comfort zone. You’ve been a huge wrestling fan all your life, so why not start a wrestling blog? It just made sense from a business perspective. What was the first book that stuck with you, or was it more of a book that you really loved? That was probably “American Psycho.” To be honest, I was very much in love with that book. I think what made it the most compelling was the way that, by its very nature, it’s very, very violent. The main character, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, he has to kill everyone and is a serial killer. It’s very well-written. You’ve appeared in a lot of TV shows over the years, including your first two seasons on “D.C.” Not every show I do in D.C. is a “Survivor.” But I’m really grateful that that’s something I’ve done. You’re a good person, you have good character traits, so I hope to be on some shows that help develop those. I think that in our age of social media, you always get what you put in your mouth. Why does that feel so right? If people watch every episode and watch every episode and then all of the people that they’re interested in they’re trying to get in their lives. You see that, like, 10 hours out. You get it. That’s what I’ve got when I try to do comedy, as opposed to the stuff that you see you do on “The Daily Show,” where I’m on a Saturday morning — or if I’ve done “Last Comic Standing” on Comedy Central and somebody like Michael Cole did, or “Community,” like, they go to all those, and I’m just like, “What?” It sounds like it’s a great thing for you. You know? I’m not going to speak ill of you and think that, like, that you’re not trying. Like, there are shows that I am trying, and some that I’m not — “30 Rock” is one of them. One thing that I never watch on TV is the show “Sophie’s Choice,” which is like an actual movie that we did where we were the kids of two parents. I was just like, “It’s all great, right?” I was like, “Sophie’s Choice is like a good movie.” But it’s a bad movie, like, I am not really into movies. Well, “Sophie’s Choice,” I do, but I watch the kids, you know, in my house, because I got three sons, and I was in the eighth grade and they were not into movies, so I go to the library. Then all of a sudden I see it and my mother is like, “What is this movie?” I’m like, “It’s not like, ‘Sophie’s Choice.’ It’s like, ‘Dirty Harry.’ ‘Bastard.'” I remember watching it and thinking, Wow, that’s funny, because I was just like, I know nothing about the script. But it’s true. I go to the library and the book is like, “Dirty Harry in all three of them.” I was like, “Wow, that is amazing.” I also love it when those parents are like, “Oh, my God, she wrote my son. That is so hard.” And people tell them that, which is totally cool. You can tell that. There are so many parents that will tell you, “Oh, my God, she wrote my son.” You were just talking about movies, right? The people that were with you when you were a child watching films can tell just from watching those movies. Do you think that they’re better for your life than books? I know. Have they improved for you? Have movies changed the way you feel as an adult? Yeah. And that, you know, maybe, it wasn’t a book at all. And you just don’t see everything in movie films anymore? You don’t see everything. It’s like, maybe you didn’t see something, or you saw it in one sense or the other. That’s just the way it goes. Do you think that movies are more like art than books? It’s both. And I think books are more specific. They’re about what’s happened to you as an individual. What would you say when someone comes up to you and says, “Dude, you are an expert on life as a child”? “Yeah, yeah, yeah” Do you think that makes people better people? Yeah. That’s probably a better statement for me than a movie about, “I had an extraordinary childhood.” No, it doesn’t, because books are so specific and so much better to put into people’s hands. And movies about the experiences that they have as kids, I mean, it’s the movies I know in my bones. Is there another book you know for people who just want to go through your childhood and they’re tired of reading? I would say I would say, “You and Your Cousin Vinny,” which is sort of a book on a girl who is very young and doesn’t like to read and then gets into this fantasy world where she’s supposed to be the next princess of England. I have never read “The Other Sister: My Life as an Other Sister.” I was just thinking that it’s a book that tells you what a wonderful experience it was to be in that world, you know. But I haven’t read it because it’s kind of like, “Oh my God, we all feel really strange about everything.” There’s another story I think, too. But, “Goddess,” is about being a young girl on the bus when you realize you don’t belong. And the next day, after people in the bus, they want to put a seat where she’s sitting, so the others can sit down. And you say, “That is all I’ll ever give you, so I’m not doing it.” But then you realize they just didn’t feel the same way, so you get on. So I just thought of those books because I’m always trying to figure out if there’s something there for someone. I have so much interest in people who are feeling strange, and when I hear those words, it makes me feel a little bit bad. What did you see when you’re walking through the library, how you go to find a book? I have so many books on the floor. Sometimes people don’t want to look, so I’ll wait, and then I’ll try to grab them out of the stacks and throw them into the bins. That makes them so busy. There are so many kinds of books, a good book might take you a couple of hours to get to. Maybe that might happen because of the large number of young people in the crowd, but I definitely wanted the kids to feel a certain way because it’s a big library. It’s like an art museum or something. And how do you look around and know you’re safe and that it’s okay for everyone? There are a lot of people there, it’s a place for young people to talk to each other. They feel safe and are just happy to be here. You mentioned your sense of community, particularly the feeling in the library is positive. Do you think in other places that that kind of community has developed? I think in Portland it’s been a long time since so many people have the same sense of community there. That’s the best way to explain it. \[This\] may not be true in Chicago or New York, but when I grew up in Portland I wasn’t allowed to eat in McDonalds or drive a car. This year you’re allowed to. People have made a big deal out of it and people like it, but it’s not a problem for the city like it is for many other cities. It’s an expression of Portland’s culture. There’s a group called Bikers for Public Spaces. They’re all pretty young, maybe twenty years old, but they definitely have a sense of community. It’s nice. That also helps me feel safe and at home. As soon as the bike comes along, everybody can see it. I also enjoy spending time with the people out in my neighborhood. In New York I can ride my bike down to Grand Central, and even on the subway I always feel so home. There’s also a lot of things in Chicago I appreciate about myself, like being able to walk all the time, even down streets at night. I guess that’s a little similar to my city, but it’s a lot better. I walk a lot because I’m tired and hungry, which I also feel at home with. For me, I love my city. Advertisement Q. What was the first day of college like? Did you know if you were leaving until or even if you knew you were leaving? Were you excited? Advertisement JF: \[Laughs.\] I mean, like any college student you’re kind of nervous when you start getting accepted. I was terrified that I was going to make such a huge commitment, but I knew that I would be a happy student. In high school there was just more socializing. My whole life I was always socializing, whether it be socializing with my friends, going to school, trying to get invited to dinner. I always thought I wanted to be like that. I think it was my dad, actually. One of the first things my dad did, when I was eight years old, he told me, “You can’t do that with me, you can’t walk through that wall.” It didn’t mean that much, but it made me realize that you’re not able to control everything. Everything is just part of a larger pattern. I had been having conversations about my body and people around me when I was in seventh grade, but I had never really heard anything about what that means, so I had this feeling. It was like that moment where you know there’s something very wrong with you and your body or how you perceive the world. It’s a place where people talk about being transgender or genderqueer and other stuff, but this is something where you’ve never really thought about before. It was kind of shocking to me. But I got used to it, because I grew up with a lot of trans people. AVC: Your mom was transgender. Could you describe what was happening to her at the time? Advertisement JF: My mom transitioned at seventeen, and she was very, very open about it. She came out to me at sixteen, and she had to put a lot of time in and dedicate her life, and she still does, to my mom, to keep it going. She’s still in her home. She’s still a teacher, so my mom, she really, really loves my mom. She still, I guess, just knows how close she is with me, and she feels like, “Wow, if I was just to have this talk, if I wasn’t always going to tell you about all of this stuff, I wouldn’t even be doing this.” But she’s still doing it. She’s just, her mind is such a way of telling you how she feels. And so I think that’s my mom’s way of saying to me, “Oh, you can do it, too, and if you want to be in my shoes, you can be in my life.” But she does that all the time. I think because I’m a little younger, in some ways, I do have that vulnerability for her. AVC: Were you always this awkward in high school? JF: No. I never, never experienced bullying. What it was like for a lot of my friends, they really experienced bullying, but the experience that was most shocking was for me, even though I wasn’t actually that good, as far as my life was concerned, in terms of being able to go out at eleven on Saturday night and really be around kids who were in the same situation I was in, and they would still be sitting there, and they’d just be watching me. I’d start to be in front of them, or in front of my family. And even then, I had a kind of fear of it, where you don’t really want to be like, “Man, if this goes on, I don’t know what’s going to happen.” But this really helped to keep me from being too self-conscious, I guess. \[Laughs.\] I had this thing where I just didn’t have enough confidence in myself and in myself to deal with the things that they had going on, which were so real and so severe. For the most part, I think it just became a relief from the stress of being the kid in the schoolyard that went to school and all these other people. When you’re like, “Oh, okay,” you’re, like, “I’ve got it. I’ve got it.” The anxiety of all that stress, and it’s a relief when you walk out and it’s like, “Oh, thank God I’m gone.” Is there any kind of specific memory in that moment, which you were able to tell us about? Not sure! I just remember being in a certain way. The only memory I can think of is of being in school one day, walking in and seeing all the kids sitting around, just like it’s all my life, and just being kind of, like, “Okay, I don’t know what I’m going to do next.” But that’s the one memory, yeah. All these other ones. So I don’t know. Is there anything else you want to tell us about your performance as “Wang”? Well, obviously it’s been two years now, and I can’t really talk about it a lot because it’s really something that I’ve felt comfortable going into after the fact, which is my goal for the movie and my goal for my performance as the character. I’ve talked to a lot of, like, amazing people and like, they were like, “Well, you know, it’s kind of your fault you’re playing this asshole.” That’s really, really important to me. That’s a really solid thing to say to people. To everyone that’s been with me since I was 12, and I have so many friends and family and friends of friends. I mean, I’m a pretty big fan of acting, because I’ve just done lots of stuff that I’ve been able to direct myself. And so for me to say, “Oh, I know you’re trying to make your movie, but this is just kind of a joke. You don’t deserve to be in this role. And now you’re making that joke. That’s not real life.” That’s really important. Do you think things have changed for Asian actors, or for white actors? No, they’re still treated worse than white actors, but I think for Asian actors, because of these casting agents and these casting directors, I think for us to make our own decisions, for us to feel good and not feel like we’re trying to put up with it. I’ve gotten a lot of emails from Asian actresses. Just talking to people like me who are so, like, really worried that, for their dreams, they might have to audition for something, they’re like, “Man, this is so unfair.” They might not feel comfortable doing an audition like that, because of this system. And so the way we work is, they ask you to come up with an idea of how you want to put together your audition, and you’re going to go into the room and they’ll watch and they’ll talk to each other. Like, I didn’t even know that. And it’s also not even written down as an actual performance. You’re not supposed to remember your audition. A lot of actresses I work with come to us with dreams, and if you remember, like, there’s a certain part of the script that we’ll read, and then sometimes we’ll sit down and we’re going to write that into something that doesn’t have to do with the character. Which is like a really good way to do it because I can imagine someone writing something and they’re going to change that in the future, and it feels kind of safe and good. And they have so much more control. Is it a problem that some of these actors need to know, even though they’ve worked with these actors before? We talked about this in our introduction. And I mentioned maybe there’s a reason why we kind of have an aversion to certain types of actors. Because if a certain actor wants to be working on a certain show, then maybe it’s the right choice to be on that show. And that’s exactly right because we love this idea that the best actors come from different worlds. So, you’ve always kind of been very comfortable going to different cities. What’s next? I’m like an actor who can jump to anything. I was on Broadway almost eight years ago, which is something I didn’t do, and my dad was like, “Well, where would you like to go to?” I said, “I want to go the world’s biggest improv show. Maybe that sounds like fun. Maybe that sounds nice.” And he went, “It can’t be fun because you have to do so much, you have to work so much.” And I went, “Fuck that, I will go to anything.” Do you feel that you’ve been influenced by this experience? We started a whole new season, we went on a long road trip, and we had time to get better at improvisation. I had a great time on “Sleeping Beauty” the last season, and I had also got very good at working without any material, like without a scene, and we shot three or four weeks of material together. So when I started to see a lot of improv stuff, I thought I could do the same shit. But it was just as much an effort for me to work with my own material as it was to be good at improv. I also found that I was more like an actor who plays two or three roles to his own material. So it was not so much that I tried to do more of that, it was just a necessity. My favorite part of that season was when you’re on a musical, like “Roses,” “The Producers,” “The Idiot.” What is it about playing with other people or seeing your actors improvise with each other that inspires you? Well, improvising with other people does inspire me, but improvising with a band is also very important. And so a great thing is that in many ways the way that we do as actors is very direct. We go to the gym, we go on the road, we just play together. When we play with our own material, I think, “Oh, this is my own material.” That is my most basic material, and my greatest thing as an actor is to really do it the way that I imagine it, but to use as much as I can the material that I have just already played with. But, when I see people I know and they play with each other I get really excited. You’ve stated that “an individual must be a great role model.” We’re at a stage now where there are so many famous people in the music business, and a lot of them, if you want to win the public’s regard as an artist, you have to do things that people see you doing to convince people to listen to you. Do you find that that can come through your own work or does it simply have to do with the way you appear? I think that in terms of people’s perceptions and how they would feel about me if I were out of the business, it kind of depends on how well I play the show. Some people might get that it’s all about me. But for myself, I look for an individual that the audience can identify with, that could bring out the best in me, that could give me a chance to have fun. I’m not one of these guys who’s trying to be perfect. I don’t want to be a super star. I’m not the only one that’s been told that I’m perfect. One of the things that I’ve noticed in your recent work is the level of emotional and physical labor you have to put into performing. Can you talk about your mindset before and after every performance, and how things have evolved for you? I’m so much happier when I play. That’s so different from when I play. For me, it’s less about the music and more about performing that is so powerful. I would never stop my show from being so powerful if I felt like I was playing a song or a song and it wasn’t, so that’s the motivation that I use. That will drive all of us to do even more work, especially when it comes to the next song.