Remember, MTV would only show white videos for a long time. Can you imagine that? That was the '80s when that happened. It's hard to even think of that now, you know?
I wouldn't say that I was ever a fan of MTV. I was a guy on MTV. I don't think I was ever in the demographic of people who watch MTV. I never really watched MTV, so I'm definitely not a fan of 'Jersey Shore' or anything.
I spent the '80s in the Soviet Union and when I came to America it was '89 and I was in an immigrant bubble and we didn't have MTV or cable, so I kind of discovered the '80s when I was already older, maybe in college. And I continued to have this romantic obsession with all those films and there's this sound I hear in my head and it's kind of this bittersweet romantic, dark sound.
Thank God for FaceTime. I can't imagine wrestlers from the '80s being on the road all the time without cell phones and stuff like that.
With MTV in the '80s, you made your album but then you needed to use any money you made to create a video - instead of being able to use that money to pay for you and your band to live on while you wrote new songs. So MTV upped the ante of looking for one hit. Conceptual bands who didn't have a hit were going to lose.
I love MTV. I watched 'Beavis and Butthead,' 'Wayne's World,' 'Yo! MTV Raps.' And they used to have music videos on there. When I got the chance to be on MTV, I took the first opportunity.
I can't imagine childhood without 'Planet of the Apes.' I was nine or ten when the first one came out.
Until MTV, television had not been a huge influence on music. To compete with MTV, the country music moguls felt they had to appeal to the same young audience and do it the way MTV did.
I can't imagine my life without books. My father was an electrical engineer, and my mother was a public school teacher. Books were an integral part of my childhood.
I can't imagine doing anything without being an improviser. I can't imagine trying to write or act or direct without what improvising offers you.
To imagine the world without gods and religion is reasonable enough; to imagine mankind without them is an entirely different matter.
In the '80s, I was the only game in town, I was the only one getting that kind of exposure in any rotation on MTV. Now with internet culture it seems like everyone is doing music parodies. And they're not all good!
One of my favorite eras is the '80s. I'm an '80s baby to the world, love everything about the '80s.
When I start a film, I can sort of shut my eyes, sit somewhere quiet and imagine the movie finished. I can imagine the camera angles, I can even imagine the type of music. Without knowing the tune, I can imagine the type of music it needs to be.
'Family Ties,' to me, was strictly '80s. It was from the beginning of the '80s until the end of the '80s, and it was very specific to that time. Ronald Reagan was president.
The '80s was wild compared to my real small childhood, which was late '70s.