Even though I never really had to pound the pavement as an actor, I always worked really hard. But, at the same time, I always felt like people thought that I didn't have to struggle even though I was struggling.
I think you're lucky if you discover what you really love at a young age. College wasn't something I was going to do. I wanted to keep acting, and I didn't want to go to New York or California and pound the pavement.
I had, before I went to college, I had taken a few years off after high school and really had, I guess in those days, I had no intentions of going to college.
The main reason we didn't break up is because we weren't really a college band. We were just, two dudes who were messing around with music. We never played off-campus except for once or twice. We never had any ambitions to make it as a band after college, or anything like that. So that probably worked in our favor. We never took anything seriously, we still don't!
With Pavement, we had no managers and never had a lawyer. We got lucky with not signing any bad deals.
Everybody had to go to some college or other. A business college, a junior college, a state college, a secretarial college, an Ivy League college, a pig farmer's college. The book first, then the work.
The saving of empty beer and liquor bottles is a strange college phenomenon. I bet most of you college students reading this right now have some empties on a shelf in your room. Everyone knows how much college kids like to drink, do we really need to display it? It's a good thing, though, that this trend stops after college. Wouldn't it be weird if your parents had empty wine bottles up on their bedroom wall?
I had a full college experience. I kind of learned how to be a good student at Bard. I had never really cared about academics, but in college I learned the power of - I don't want to say the power of knowledge, but the power of curiosity.
I kind of had that Parma, Ohio, mentality that after high school, you go to college. Then after college, you get a job; then you get a family. And after that, you just stick around Parma.
I actually didn't really go to college. I enrolled and never showed up. Being on a college campus where we shot some of the scenes in 'The Goodwin Games'... it did make me wish that was an experience that I had.
I had never gone to college, I left school at a really early age, and all of a sudden I've got six really great friends hanging out with me every night. And we were a really tight group, and we just had an absolute blast.
I never really had the classic struggle. I had faith.
In Russia, as I sat there day after day wearing headphones, listening to the interpreter struggle to make our words relevant, I wondered if we could establish meaningful rapport with a nation that had never seen raisins dance in dark glasses on TV...never had a garage sale.
A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together.
Before I myself went to college I had never seen but one college woman. I had heard that such a woman was staying at the house of an acquaintance. I went to see her with fear. Even if she had appeared in hoofs and horns I was determined to go to college all the same. But it was a relief to find this Vassar graduate tall and handsome and dressed like other women.
Back when we won the 170-pound title, I knew we were going to go back and get the 155-pound title but the 145-pound title wasn't even a thought in the mind. We would have had that title already if it was around.