When I worked with General Electric, again this was soon after the Second World War, you know, I was keeping up with new developments and they showed me a milling machine and this thing worked by punch cards - that's where computers were at that time, and everybody was sort of sheepish about how well this thing worked because in those days machinists were treated as though they were great musicians because they were virtuosos on these machines.
I loved her and I loved no one else and we had a lovely magic time while we were alone. I worked well and we made great trips, and I thought we were invulnerable again, and it wasn't until we were out of the mountains in late spring, and back in Paris, that the other thing started again.
I worked for Mack Altizer, who ran Bad Company Rodeo, in Del Rio. Those guys, even though they were cowboys, were all hippies. We were always the black sheep of the rodeo world. From there I went on to Paris, France, where I worked in this Wild West show.
We had some rough times in TNA. We had some pay issues, and this and that, they were some other issues. But at that time, we were working harder than we ever worked. Even though, you know, we were being paid late and all, we worked harder than we worked before.
The craziest thing I've ever done to get a guy's attention? I admit I stalked someone. I showed up at a restaurant where I knew the guy worked, and we were actually good friends and had lost touch, and I pretended that I didn't know he worked there.
They were not friends, Comdrade Pillai and Inspector Thomas Matthew, and they didn't trust each other. But they understood each other perfectly. They were both men whom childhood had abandoned without a trace. Men without curiosity. Without doubt. Both in their own way truly, terrifyingly, adult. They looked out into the world and never wondered how it worked, because they knew. They worked it. They were mechanics who serviced different parts of the same machine.
What you need to know to direct a movie is [of] such great variety. I've worked with people who were maestros, who know everything. I've worked with people who were empty and lost, who had no clue what they were doing. You wouldn't hire them to paint your apartment. And then there's everything in-between. There's no list of skills you have to have to sit in that chair.
After the war, photography came alive, in part because everybody started to use the 35mm camera, and worked on the street instead of in a studio, and that made an enormous difference in not only how photographs looked, but what they were about.
I wanted to be an actor ever since I was five. My grandparents - my mom's parents in New York - were stage actors. I think indirectly I wanted to do it because of them. My grandfather would tell me stories about Tennessee Williams and actors he worked with in New York. He had such a respect for acting and such a love for storytelling about that world. I grew up hearing him tell tales of it.They were never encouraging me or discouraging me to take part. They were always feeding me with theater.
Sometimes people have sympathized with me because long years of my life were spent in jail and in exile. Well, those years ... were a mixed experience. I hated them because they separated me from the dearest thing in the world-the struggle of my people for rebirth. At the same time, they were a blessing because I had what is so rare in this world-the opportunity of thinking about basic issues, the opportunity of examining afresh the beliefs I held.
My dad worked nights mostly and while we were growing up, and my mother also worked, so there were times where, when it was just the two of us at home, and, you know, they gave us a pretty long leash, actually.
Though my parents were professionals and expected me to go to college, they were immigrants from India with no idea about how the admissions process worked in the United States or the importance of standardized tests.
The great thing about Watergate is, is that the system worked. The American system worked. The press did its job. We did what we were supposed to do.
World War Z was a great zombie film because those were zombie performances. It wasn't just a bunch of people walking around slow. They did close-ups on zombies who were performing, as a mindless dead thing. They were creepy and scary.
Studios were just run differently. There really was a head of a studio. There were people who loved their studios. Who worked for their studios and were loaned out to other people and everybody sort of got a piece. Well now there's a handful now.
I came from an educated, upper middle-class family. My mother was a Persian and history teacher at a large high school for girls. Many of the women in my extended family and in our circle of friends were professionals. In those days, women were a vital part of the economy in Kabul. They worked as lawyers, physicians, college professors, etc., which makes the tragedy of how they were treated by the Taliban that much more painful.
There were a lot of people who were willing to write a letter for me. Not because I was academically inclined, but because I worked hard.