I have always been a HUGE Star Wars fan since I was like 5 years old. Most of us in the writers room at Family Guy were big nerds growing up and could recite almost any scene from Star Wars.
I also thought the music was a huge contribution, in terms of creating the scale of that. And, I was impressed with just how natural and fluid the world looks. The world is so artificial and it requires so much work to make all the different pieces add up together, but when it comes together, it just looks effortless. It's amazing.
Of course, we're so lucky to be in a time where that's not our reality anymore. I just thought it was very interesting to go back to that time now, and to look at all of these issues that are still relevant today, but just in such a different way, and to see how we approach them and try to overcome them. Yeah, we've come a long way with medicine and women's health in the Western world, but in a lot of parts of the rest of the world, that's still a huge issue.
I am fascinated by religion. (That's a completely different thing from believing in it!) It has had such an incalculably huge effect on human affairs. What is it? What does it represent? Why have we invented it? How does it keep going? What will become of it? I love to keep poking and prodding at it. I've thought about it so much over the years that that fascination is bound to spill over into my writing.
What we want for the Iranian people is control over their own government, which they don't have now. So you would do it through supplying resources and support from the outside to the indigenous people who are already quite unhappy. The mullahs have made hash of the economy since 1979, there's a huge amount of economic dissatisfaction. The young people, who are pretty well educated and sophisticated, know they could have a better life than this strict Islamic law.
There are two kinds of comments that I get. One is, oh, you're such a natural up there, and the other one is, you're working hard up there. And the ones who say I'm working hard are teachers, they're the educators; they're the people who are the performers. It's a huge investment of my psycho-emotional energy to pull that off and to make it look smooth.
I grew up in Texas, obviously a huge football state
Once in a while a good opportunity would come along, like the first 'Playhouse 90 ever to air - working in television afforded me my best opportunities. The (film) industry was going through such turmoil at the time - studios didn't know where to go anymore, they were falling apart, television was there. They didn't know what kind of films people wanted. The European films were making a huge impact because those films wanted real people in real situations.
Derivatives are a huge, complex issue.
I'm a huge Kevin Youkilis fan.
There's this huge number of desperate people.
My votes against the education bill and my votes against the Medicare bill got huge play at home.
In fashion, there's a lack of strong male images. And there's a huge lack of strong African American images. I noticed over the past thirteen years, Ralph and those guys have used guys that looked similar to me. And I was happy for those guys, but eventually I said, 'Enough is enough, I'm just going to go in and take my job back. '
The iPhone brand is in worse shape than I thought was even possible. And the implications of that are huge. . . . The iPhone is in deep trouble.
I'm going to put a museum on my ranch and people keep saying, "That's a huge idea. " Yeah, it's big, but not bigger than the average big movie. A hundred million dollars in the art world is a substantial amount of cash to do anything. That's maybe a big gallery's total sales for a given year.
I'm a huge fan of women; I think we're great.
I have never had one moment of stage fright and performing has always been a huge thrill and source of enjoyment for me. It's part of my personality.
We're foolish if we think we're going to end mass incarceration unless we are willing to deal with the reality that huge percentages of poor people are going to remain jobless, locked out of the mainstream economy, unless and until they have a quality education that prepares them well for the new economy. There has got to be much more collaboration between the two movements and a greater appreciation for the work of the advocates in each community. It's got to be a movement that's about education, not incarceration - about jobs, not jails.
I've worked with a lot great directors who have huge resumes, but I'm really trying to be active in my career in supporting the new generation of cinema. I like taking some time to try to support and be a part of that.
Fast food may appear to be cheap food and, in the literal sense it often is, but that is because huge social and environmental costs are being excluded from the calculations.