I used to think of myself as a comedian. I've always admired comedians. Their minds, the way in which they se the world is so striking, the way they juxtapose things, the way they can see humor in people. There's a liberation in that.
Women have always had equal importance onstage, and working with them must have altered my sensibilities. I've never felt sensitive to the whole issue, because being macho has never been a problem with me.
I don't like what's going on in Iraq, naturally. I'm part of a large majority of people who don't, but I do not know the whole story. I do not believe what I see on television. I believe a percentage of it, so it's hard for me to discern. I don't like what it's doing to the world.
When I was younger, there was the sex thing. That's par for the course.When you're a movie star, it went with it. It's a kind of rite of passage, socially.
Whether he's doing great acting or not, you're seeing somebody who is in the tradition of a great actor. What he does with it, that's something else, but he's got it all. The talent, the instrument is there, that's why he has endured.
When you do these things, you sort of take the journey. The journey is all about how I can interweave the Oscar Wilde story, the story of Salome, the play itself and what it is, what it contains, and my journey as an actor, as a director, as a filmmaker, as a person struggling with whatever I'm struggling with - my own celebrity, my own life. This is semi-autobiographical in terms of my commitment to this kind of thing.
It was a compromise. There was a sense that I could write my own memoirs, and Larry [Grobel] would help me down the line, or maybe not, maybe he was too close to me.