The trick [in comedy] is always to figure out how real you're playing it and how real it's supposed to feel. That's a hard thing to figure out.
Writing a story starts out as a puzzle in your mind, of "What is it I'm fantasizing about right now that makes me think this is going to be worth years of work?" And you just keep pushing and trying to figure it out, and once you've hit on these resonances... Then as a screenwriter, it can be dangerous if you get too hooked on just finding things that resonate with each other, because then you risk getting into stuff that's too neat, and becomes stifled as storytelling. But you do feel like you're on the right track when you start to have a sense of what goes with what.
You just have to do the thing that you feel is true to your vision, and then the audience will make the decision. But as soon as you feel like you're creating a product to just cater to what you think they want, it never works. It always feels phony. And the audience can tell immediately.
Knowing you don't have much time left changes things. You get kind of philosophical. And you figure things out-more like, they figure themselves out-and everything gets real clear.
You could stand here sick with ten illnesses today, and tomorrow have no evidence of any of them. Your body has the ability to replenish itself that fast. But most of you do not have the ability to change your thoughts that fast. So the amount of time that it takes between sickness and wellness is only the amount of time that it takes for me to figure out how to let it in - for me to figure out how to feel good, when I'm looking at something that makes me feel bad.
I feel the car, but I think with me and my background of dirt racing and stuff and not having pit stops, you just kind of 'All right, this is how my car is handling, I've got to figure out how to drive it' and then you get a feel of how you want it to feel.
When I was producing the first solo album, i just wanted to convey some messages through it. The message was 'no blood will come out even if I am pinned' However, after trying out different kinds of music activities, I started to change and wanted to convey my real emotion that I have in my everyday life. I want to express the feelings that everyone has felt at least once, in music so I think people will feel/understand my songs.
I'm not trying to erase my culture or my faith, I'm trying to be the best version of myself, and it's really hard. I don't think I'm right, I don't claim to be correct, I'm just trying to figure it out and figure out a balance.
We have churches full of people who profess all kinds of stuff that they don't believe. They think that by professing it they're doing something good. Really, they're just deluding themselves.
I think "honest" sometimes gets used to describe a real depiction of real life. I don't think that's necessarily what we're doing. We created these fake characters and we're just trying to figure out what they would do in situations they enter into.
I feel like the big twist shows are now off the table. I think Westworld was probably the last one to Trojan horse this idea of the young man in black. They were doing non-linear storytelling, but disguising it. Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy have spoken openly about how they just didn't think people were going to figure it out that fast.
Phony gurus make themselves objects of adoration and worship. Real spiritual teachers aren't interested in adoration and worship. They like respect only because they realize respect will help the student.
The abuse of power manifests with phony spiritual teachers and phony gurus who tell you how to run your life and what to wear and what to eat, all that sort of stuff. They abuse. People don't realize that, listen to them and ruin their lives.
Let us think of Nature as a builder, making all that we see out of atoms of a limited number of kinds, just as the builder of a house constructs it out of so many different kinds of things: bricks, slates, planks, panes of glass, and so on.
Your real life is in the here and now. Once you figure out what kinds of experiences cause you to feel certain ways, you can change either the experiences, or when that's not possible, change your responses to them.
Kids can and will thrive in the right conditions, but it all seems to start with the teachers, and giving those teachers the resources to teach- and not just to test.