you talkin’ to me?
Film quotes pose as questions. Film stars try to cope.
You talkin’ to me?
There’s dust and smoke everywhere [due to LA forest fires at time of interview], and I’ve got a terrible cough because of it. Other than that, everything’s fine.
Do you feel lucky punk?
Oh, I have been a little bit of a punk in the past. So I am a lucky punk. Right now, I’m lucky.
You talk the talk, do you walk the walk?
I’ve got a great walk. I’ve worked hard on my walk. And my talk? I’ve had to compensate for my talk and my thick New Zealand accent. And I’ve got to say, I’ve got a great stride, a very confident technique. The rhythm of my walk is, I’d say, akin to a cat of prey – which is basically a cat, because all cats are predatory animals. Basically, I walk like a cat. I’m a bit of a cat on two legs.
Do you like what you do for a living, these things you see?
I’m waiting for someone to discover that my job is not an actual job, and to take it away. And then they’ll say, “Hey, hang on, you don’t actually do anything. You just tell jokes and hang out with people.” I’m waiting for that day, where they make me get an actual ‘job’ job. Because this is definitely not a job. This is massive amounts of fun all the time.
You either surf or fight…
I’m going to fight because with surfing, you’ll never win. There has to be a winner. The ocean is the winner. People try to tame those waves, but they never will. They’ll never win. Whereas with a fight, I do fancy my chances. And even if I don’t win a fight, I know there’s an end to it, when one of us dies.
What’s the last thing that you do remember?
The last thing that I do remember is answering a question about surfing and fighting, and regretting the choice that I made, to choose fighting over surfing, and realising that my entire life has been a huge mistake, and I should have learned to surf. It would have balanced out a lot of emotions, and I wouldn’t be seeking out all of this fighting that I’ve been looking for. Things would be completely different. I probably wouldn’t be a successful filmmaker, but I’d be a less violent filmmaker.
Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?
I have, though the devil took the form of a woman. And she seduced me and stole my heart. She literally took my heart out of my chest. I was on mushrooms at the time, so there’s obviously these piecemeal memories here, and yeah, it was quite an intense experience. And then I woke up, and all my clothes were on backwards. It wasn’t the pale moonlight at all. It was broad daylight. It was one in the afternoon in the piping hot sun, and I was doing breaststroke across the grass in Hyde Park.
Why so serious?
Well, because we live in a very serious world in very serious times, and comedy has absolutely no place in this world. It doesn’t help anything, it doesn’t help anyone to have lightness, to have any light in the world or in our lives. What positive has laughing given anyone? That’s why I’m so serious, because there’s a battle against comedy. Comedy is the silent killer. The big C. That’s what everyone keeps talking about. They talk about the other big C.
No, there’s an even bigger C – that’s comedy, and it’s even more of a silent killer. We’ve got to eradicate this plague.
What’s in California
[coughs] What? Sorry, I’m coughing. What is in California? Wow. Fire, smog, dust, broken dreams, sadness. That’s what this place is.
What would you do if you knew you had less than one minute to live?
Check my watch.
I tried to start a revolution, but didn’t print enough pamphlets, so hardly anyone turned up.
[Back in my theatre days] I’d try to get people to come see our plays. I’d be on the streets with my little flyers, trying to get people to see some theatre. And, of course, no one did. Their loss! They had the chance to be around greatness before it was great. So their loss. MM
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