You talkin’ to me?
Film quotes pose as questions. Film stars try to cope.
Are you talking to me?
Yes, I am definitely talking to you and at this particular moment about the movie that started it all for me. I was 13 and my aunt had a VHS cassette that she had rented from the video store. She had no business showing me that movie, but I wouldn’t be here talking to you today if she hadn’t been such an outlaw.
Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?
Yes. His name was Steve, he was a crack addict and he was sitting in the passenger seat of my 1976 Buick LeSabre. So if you ever meet the devil in the pale moonlight, go, “Steve? Is that you? Keegan says ‘hi’.” No, actually, “Keegan says you owe him twenty bucks.”
I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you?
Funny how? My hope would be, in my dreams, that someone would say “like Peter Sellers”. That’s what I would want someone to say to me. What’s funny is a person living completely in a character and simply existing in the given circumstances of whatever project they’re in, so that they’re not telling jokes per se, but their sheer existence is just intrinsically funny.
Judge me by my size, do you?
I certainly hope not. I would like to think that inside of this frame of mine there’s a bodybuilder waiting to get out. Of course, I’m speaking figuratively here. If you feel so inclined to judge me by my size, that’s on you, but six feet and one inch is pretty respectable. If you need me to put something on the top shelf, I’m your guy.
Are you a rusher or are you a dragger?
I am a rusher. As a person who’s learned the skill of improvisation, that comes in handy. As a person who wants to make an informed decision, it’s not always. Sometimes, I could stand to use a little more intellectual rigour, but there’s a charm to being impulsive. I’m trying to think of an example of when I’ve rushed something. Maybe this is the example. I’ve rushed the answer to this question.
How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?
If you’ve never been in a fight, you actually can’t know anything about yourself, is my feeling. You also aren’t learning much if you win every fight. If you get the shit kicked out of you, you learn a lot. And trust me, I am a genius. I can’t even tell you the volumes I learned between 1982 and 1986.
If you could change something in your life, anything at all, what would it be?
If I could teleport, that would be fantastic, because I would be able to help more people. I could just disappear and reappear and say, “Oh, you need a Band-Aid?” or, “Here, let me whisk that for you.” Small menial things that could mean a lot to someone. “Sir, you dropped this rupee.”
What’s your favourite scary movie?
I remember that the day I saw The Shining, I asked my brother if he would go to the video store and return the tape with me, because I didn’t want to drive there by myself. And I watched it in the afternoon, in the brightness of day. I just didn’t want to look in the rear-view mirror and see the twins.
Do you have an off switch?
I do have an off switch. I just discovered it four weeks ago and now I use it constantly. I just used it right there, hold on one second… [goes silent for a moment]… there, I just found the on switch again. I just took a little minivacation for myself. That’s the fastest meditation I’ve ever done.
Can you fly this plane and land it?
I can. With Google and YouTube, you can pretty much learn anything in about 15 minutes. So if the pilot had a heart attack, I’m more than happy to. My Google-Fu is pretty strong. I’d just type in “How to fly a Boeing 747-300 series” and there we go. Get me in the cockpit.
What about ‘winner winner chicken dinner’?
When you make it through an entire day without comparing yourself to someone else, that would be a ‘winner winner chicken dinner’ for me. There’s a great old quote that goes “comparison is the thief of joy”. Yes, this is exactly what Ducky was talking about in Toy Story 4. It was a lesson of selfempowerment!
ETA | 26 DECEMBER / PLAYING WITH FIRE OPENS THIS CHRISTMAS.
‘if you get the crap KicKed out of you, you learn a lot. trust Me, i aM a genius’