A Quote by James Mercer

For some reason, it seems like pop writers, it's like they just get worse or something over time. And then you're really jealous of movie directors whose careers seem to grow and they'll be 70 years old and still doing these incredible jobs. I'm going to reverse that, I hope.
You hear a lot of people, they turn 40 and it really bugs them and they get depressed or whatever. I don't know - I just don't feel that way. I feel 19 years old all the time. I mean, it's not a lie. I could easily say, God, I feel 70. Or maybe I seem like I'm 70 or 200 or something to other people, I don't know. My brain feels 19 all the time. And that's a good spot.
Am I doing the movie because I'm really excited about it and want to do it, or am I doing it because it seems like it's a big budget or something like that? It would still have to be the right thing, because my lifestyle's really cheap and I'm able to exist doing smaller movies, so if I'm able to do that, I'm happy to do that. But if something bigger came along that seems really cool, then that would be great.
I want the pleasures of the real exploitation movie, and exploitation has changed so much in 40 years. Plenty of people grow up with this fantasy of, "We're going to do it like Roger Corman did it," as that sounds so fun. If you make something small, goofy and exploitative, it's nowhere near the guaranteed moneymaker it might have been 40 years ago. If you look at the way the world works now and money is made, it doesn't seem that fun. Maybe that's just a mental block I have and I need to get over that and find that corner where you can make money and still have a good movie.
To see someone 70 years old with dyed black hair, you're like, 'Hmmm, I dunno. Is that a wrinkled teenager? What is that?' So at some point, I'm going to have to stop doing this. It's gonna look ridiculous. I don't wanna look like Elvis Presley at 60 years old.
When I'd get out of school in the afternoon, I would go to the golf course, and I just picked the game up. And when I was 13 years old, I could shoot 70 - even-par 71, one over par and then something like that. I just took a liking to the game.
Going to the office of some stranger and waiting in a line, in a hallway, with five other guys who look just like you, waiting your turn to go in and embarrass yourself, and then waiting around for feedback, which never comes. I really like that. For a young artist, it seems like the perfect thing to be doing, humiliation, over and over and over and over. Which I'm sure can't be the way that some people look at it, but I thought that was so great. The point of it is if you make your own stuff you don't have to deal with other people's bullshit.
..few writers like other writers' works. The only time they like them is when they are dead or if they have been for a long time. Writers only like to sniff their own turds. I am one of those. I don't even like to talk to writers, look at them or worse, listen to them. And the worst is to drink with them, they slobber all over themselves, really look piteous, look like they are searching for the wing of the mother. I'd rather think about death than about other writers. Far more pleasant.
Gosh, for me, when I was 15 or 16 years old, I was just starting to understand ideas and film and things like that. And then, you go see a movie like 'The Matrix' that absolutely blows your mind. It's not just trying to entertain you, but it's also trying to explore something about human nature and ask some really deep questions.
I still feel like the person who shouldn't be doing this and everyone is acting around me as if I'm a badass all the time. And this still feels like a stretch. I realize this is something that is incredible. I get to do this and I get wonderful teachers to help me and it's amazing.
I was on Stealing Beauty in 1996 and then I started feeling acting was something I wanted to do forever. It made me feel like I'll still be looking for parts when I'm 70 years old.
It seems like journalism over here in UK, in general, is at a higher level: not overrun by all these teeny little blogs. There's more of a historical context for it or something. It seems like people review something or take a listen to something and they really do their homework. That's just what it seems like.
I have great admiration and respect for the editors, writers, and artists of the comic books. They're turning out, I don't know, maybe 100 Batman stories a year, and the character turns 70 years old in May. It's incredible: for 70 years, on a weekly basis, every Wednesday, there is some Batman story coming out, if not a bunch of Batman stories coming out.
I'm very comfortable with what I do, but it just seems like yesterday that I just started, at 19, and it's been like a whirlwind ever since. I've gotten to travel all over the world and meet all kinds of people and do all kinds of great things, so it's, like, surreal. It just lets you know how time flies, especially when you're having fun. It seems like time keeps going by faster as I get older.
I would love to see what's going to happen with science fiction with peoples' heads, because we still have people running around in the year 2050 or 2100 or 2200 and they have incredible technology and you see the effects: laser beams and rays and beaming down and beaming up. Incredible technical things happening, but everybody is still running around jealous, fighting, whacking, cheating. There's got to be something going on! Some kind of change. I'd like to see something starting to happen in that area, with the psychology of the human being and how that changed.
I'd love to work on something that gets some type of critical respect. This business is sometimes so brutal - you work on something for months and really feel like the project is good and you're doing the best work you can, and then it just gets hammered by critics. It's such a bummer sometimes, because everything seems to build up to the release and a couple of bad reviews can make it seem like it was all a waste, which you know it wasn't.
People just like the thrill of anything. Dangerous things and dark things are exciting. Like as a kid, I knew I wasn't going to get killed if I went into the Haunted House but you kind of feel like you are. And when it comes out the track the other side, it's like, "we're still alive"! And I find it really funny when adults get really scared because I've not been really scared since I saw Jaws when I was a little kid. I just think people like the thrill of it, they like to feel like they accomplished something, that they survived the movie.
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