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Quotes
 I'm
an actor. And I guess I've done so many movies I've achieved some high
visibility. But a star? I guess I still think of myself as kind of a
worker ant.
Sometimes
though, people will start a movie knowing they don't have a lot of money
and hoping they'll get some. Or, people get caught up in the momentum of
a film getting made, because they can get it made. They don't
spend the time to really work on the script. A lot of times it's about
money, which imposes a window of time, or set of actors, or a
script.
It's
really a mess sometimes. I've never been on a movie, where the person
thought, "I'm going to make a bad movie." But I've watched
people make films where they're going through motions, or doing it for
some other reason, like, it's a stepping stone (which I think is a
mistake), or, "I need to make the money, so I'll direct this
film." There are much better and more important reasons to make
movies.
There's
the one long sword technique, which I learned from the stunt guy; but
the other techniques, with the machete and my hands, all that stuff that
probably looks a little more flashy, is stuff I knew from studying it as
a kid.
I
kind of remembered it, which is not to say that it would be that
effectual on the street. And that was all improve on the roof: Jim just
said, let's shoot and I found a rhythm.
I understand why people say that. They're centered around female points of view. Even though Waiting to Exhale is about relationships, it's focused on four women's lives, and Hope Floats is about one woman's life. I don't have a problem with the classification of "chick flicks," or whatever it's called. I'm just trying to tell the stories, about people's feelings.
I'm not trying to defend him, the Amin I found was not a good man.
was
a chance to expand myself and deepen my connection with the universe and
with God.
When
I first decided to act Amin, I had that perception of Amin as presented
by the west.
Yeah,
they're like tribes, developing artists inside of themselves. They have
a group mentality, they want to work together -- like Busta and his
group too -- but they have to work so hard now to keep up. Before, years
ago, you could drop like one album a year, but you can't do that
anymore. I think Master P's system, last year, of putting out an album
every month almost, started to make everyone think, I gotta get my music
out three, I can't be forgotten, I gotta keep going.
Hopefully this film is going to open the doors for a lot more films like it to be made.
Me
and Jim started earlier I guess, because Jim came to me with this idea.
We had about three or four conversations and then started talking about
music and RZA's name came up. RZA really wrote the music to pictures,
or, he wrote after he saw the film; he was inspired by it.
They're
relationship issues. I don't really find it as different from myself,
the issues and the feelings, they're things I've experienced in my own
life, in some way or another, on one side or the other, and if not
personally, then through someone who was next to me.
Feeling
hurt or feeling loss, or being in relationships that are destructive, I
don't find this to be women-specific. Those kind of needs are pretty
universal. And I never found myself at a loss, or at a place where I
didn't understand what was going on with the characters, not once.
He'd
write pieces and send them over to Jim, and Jim cut it where it fit. The
album's quite unique: it's inspired by the film, including those sparse
tracks he had in there, like the opening one you hear while you see the
bird flying. And they're so different on the album than on the screen.
He
did things like other big men who did things that helped their
countries.
I
started reading the Hagekure and other books, including one called The
Code of the Samurai, and I watched a lot of films. I tried to find his
mindset more than anything. It's more like a trance-like state for this
character than it is anything else, based in the ancient book that he
follows. But I did a lot of different types of research.
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