America is immature as a nation, and part of the reason why 'Hung' is a hit show is because it deals with that immature side of the male brain where we are kind of comparing ourselves to the rest of the world.
— Thomas Jane
Places where prostitution is legal, you find much better health care, fewer cases of disease and illegal abortions. There's really nothing to be gained by keeping prostitution illegal.
You grow up as an artist in a big city. As James Dean said, you're going to have one arm tied behind your back if you don't accept people's sexual flavors. You know, when I was a kid out here in L.A., I was homeless; I didn't have any money, and I was living in my car. I was 18.
You want to please society. You want to be happy. You want to be well liked. You want to be held in high esteem and be respected. These are real things. You want respect from your peers, respect from your loved ones; you want to be looked up to for your achievements and your accomplishments. All of this requires conformity in some form or another.
That's what I think is the neat thing about TV: how alive it is and how the writers respond to the stimulus that they're getting from the actual actors. Whereas a movie is more hermetically sealed.
Some days are more intense and quiet, and then other days, you feel more relaxed and are able to open up on set. It just depends on what you're doing that day. I like to imagine that all the choices you make during the day that you're doing a particular scene are going to feed into the creation of that scene.
Sharing the same vision for what's on the page is always a good idea. The director's job is to establish what that is and make sure that everyone sticks to it when it comes down to actually executing it. Establishing what the vision is and being able to stick to it is the job, and everyone should be on the same page going in.
I'm of the mind that life is a risk, every time you leave your house it's a risk, and I see no reason to go through life with my hands tied behind my back for any reason. I'd be foolish to let something stop me from doing what I love to do.
I want to make movies that I want to see, and what I miss and I'm not seeing.
Earlier on in my career I felt that I had to hide behind a lot of different masks, and showboat ways of performing. Now, that's a lie. The less I have to hide, the less I have to act.
I spent a lot of years just learning my craft and falling down in front of the camera.
It's kind of true that they just start making the same movie over and over again. It's also true that the times dictate what kind of movies get made and what kind are not. So I'm always looking for something that's a little fresh and something that I haven't seen before.
I think what makes us human - is our interconnectedness among people. It's our ability to form and maintain relationships. It's the barometer by which we call ourselves human.
I just have a respect for my audience. That seems to be pretty logical.
I loved 'Boogie Nights.' That was a great movie, and I had a lot of fun doing that.
No, real men don't watch 'Deuce Bigelow.'
A buddy of mine is doing a documentary on decisions, and they're not based on a ton of logic. It's mostly how you relate to them emotionally.
Conformity is painful. You know, it's too tight. Conformity leads to rebellion. So a desire for happiness is in direct conflict with a desire for freedom.
That's the great part about television: It's alive, and it changes and evolves with the way the characters evolve. Stuff that happens to you in your life when you're shooting a TV show, you have to be careful, because it might end up in the show.
We're in the doing business, or acting business and creating business. We're not in the results business, so we don't have any control over what the result is. My reward comes in the doing of it.
To me, it's the kiss of death when you start winking at the audience as an actor. I just never liked it. I don't like it when we do monologues, looking into the character.
I'm interested in people that don't always do the right thing, its much more akin to what I know about life.
I can't stand to see myself act. It just makes me cringe.
Harrison Ford - one of my favorite actors - has a wonderful sense of character and depth and uniqueness to him, yet he's able to just deliver the lines without putting any English on it.
Most of my career up until the last couple of years has basically been a training ground for me. Actors that came up in the '50s and '60s, they had the theater, and television was in its infancy.
It's not that the film is violent, it's that people have an issue with violence right now.
I'm interested in the impact my movies have on people and how it affects them, and what they like and what they don't like - and what they take away from it. What leaves an impression, you know?
It would be a sign of society changing if we did finally legalize prostitution. Once it's legal, it doesn't mean your daughter's going to run out and be a ho. The more we sort of bring these things into the light, you bring these hidden vices into the light, the less power they have over our society. You make it legal, it tends to go away.
I'll tell you what - it's not a choice until you're open enough to experience both male and female sexuality. Until you've tasted the food, you don't know whether you'll like it or not, as my mom always said.
There's no socially acceptable middle age.
Terry Malick offered me three parts in 'The Thin Red Line.' I was busy shooting other movies while he asked me the first two.
I think all good drama is funny. All the best drama is ultimately very funny. Life is funny. You can't have any honest treatise on life without bumping into some humor.
Great directors turn in mediocre work, and first-time directors turn in exceptional work. No matter how good a person can talk about what he wants, you never know. You just have to go with a good story and a script that you like and people that you like to work with.
I still collect comics. I still have a great love and respect for the genre.
My dad was an entrepreneurial businessman, and maybe I got some of his ability.
I'm a really huge fan of the old romantic comedies from the '30s and '40s... Huge fan. I love all that stuff.
Some of the supporting roles that I've done as an actor, I took them because I knew that I would get to watch some of the leading guys in the movies, and also I'd get to work with them.
To stand there and do nothing on film is probably the hardest thing to do.
People lose people, we lose things in our life as we're constantly growing and changing. That's what life is is change, and a lot of that is loss. It's what you gain from that loss that makes life.
If I stay alert, then I can challenge myself, and by challenging myself, that helps me to stay alive and to hopefully take something away from the experience.
