It was very serious and I wanted to do something really different so there was this comedy called TOP SECRET.
It`s always been the same for me. I`ve always enjoyed acting, and I really love good actors; they`re such unique characters. I wish I could tell stories well, or tell a joke. Any time someone can do that it`s so satisfying. Sean Penn, for instance, is a really good actor, and he can tell a good joke or story. But it`s hard to do. Most actors have special talents that make them attractive, but they`re often odd characters.
There was no one around called 'Val' when I was young, so I wanted to be John or Bill. Now I like it.
The Secret Service is a strange group. They don't really have a leader. It's not set up like a military. Each one is supposed to be able to act like a leader when something comes up.
News is something that happens that matters to you, which is not most of what we watch on television.
It's a really weird thing, modern divorce. I found out I was getting divorced on television. That was kind of weird.
A wonderful but kind of a terrible truth about acting is that you actually get to a point where you become content with an impossible task: it is really impossible to properly prepare. You kind of have to start over every time.
It's the first time that I've ever had an art show based on a film, but it's a photography collage.
Doing my first movie, I realized I could get into real bad habits. If you're the star, all you have to do is show up, and 20 people say, 'Do you want anything? What is it? Let me get it for you.' Believe me, you get spoiled very quickly. I saw some of my contemporaries allow themselves to have that fame, thinking they could handle it. It messed them up.
Unless a Western's made money - doesn't matter who made the money, doesn't matter what the subject is - if the last one didn't make any money, you can't make another one for a four-year period. Westerns more than any genre.
New Mexico is my home. It has never been anything but home. The ranch has rivers and canyon, everything imaginable. I can ride, hunt and fish. At the same time, ranching is grueling, difficult work. It`s like acting, to be successful at it, you have to work hard. I take it very seriously.
I was in love with Tina Goodman since I was three and her parents came popping out of the trash cans. I think it made a big impression on me.
There was such a relationship between the buffalo and the American Indian - the Indians would eat them, live inside their pelts, use every part of the body. There was almost no separation between the people and the animals.
Postman is a media analyst and his theory is that television doesn't influence our culture, but that it is our culture and the presidency and anything that relies on television.
Jim Thompson understood something about the serial killer before the psychology caught up to it, which is that they are detached to it and they do want to get caught.
One out of 100 citizens of the U.S. is going to prison, and it's not that the system is making criminals, it's that it's making criminals better criminals. We're breeding them like rats and it has to change.
The first play I saw was a Samuel Beckett play which was great.
