In the hip-hop world, Eazy-E was the personification of evil. He paid my hospital bill, about $60,000, but he made me pay him back, which is cool, except that I later found out that he paid the bill out of my share of a publishing deal he made for me.
The way that Lucasfilm used ILM was George never restricted his thinking to things that he knew could be executed with the tools at the time. He would write what he thought would be cool and what he wanted from a storytelling standpoint with the assumption that, ‘Well, they’ll figure it out!’
I have a personal relationship with Dizzee Rascal – I know him, he’s cool – so this is no disrespect to him or any other British rappers who tried to make it in America, like Wiley and Tinie Tempah, but the type of music they were making to be accepted over there – it doesn’t translate.
On a lot of shows that I’ve done, we had the same directors, which was cool. But then, it’s also great to do shows where the director changes every week, because you get to see all these different personalities and see what you like dealing with better, as an actor.
You show up in Paris, and on the drive from the airport to the hotel you’re like, ‘This is so cool! I want to see something! I want to go to the Eiffel Tower!’ And then you leave the next morning. You think, Oh, I didn’t get to do anything. I tell people: I’ve been just about everywhere, but I’ve seen nothing.
The nightlife in Baltimore is very mixed. Any gay people I know go to the hipster bars; they don’t go to the gay bars. Start your night at the Club Charles, and then you can meet people to go other places. The Charles has been Baltimore’s favourite cool hipster bar forever.
I think when people let their inhibitions go, they’re so fun and so free. I think we all have it within us, but the world, your job, responsibilities, stupid stuff you have to do as a grownup, Instagram, makes you feel like you always have to be cool, and I like any opportunity where you don’t have to always be cool.
I worked with Tyler before on ‘Daddy’s Little Girls’. He couldn’t be smarter or more laid back and cool. He’s always throwing out lines and is funny as hell. And he was shining his light on ‘Peeples’, too, lending his name to showcase Tina as a first-time director, and me as a first-time lead.
Mysterious can be cool, if you’re in Hollywood and everyone’s happy. But it can be really bad if people perceive that the financial interests are adversarial, that there’s money versus people. A lot of Goldman Sachs people went into government, so at a time when there’s a distrust of institutions, some of that reflects on us.
I think it’s our responsibility as artists to not only fight for our art but fight for the communities that are the reason we’re able to continue making art, especially since, in Brooklyn’s case, we as artists somehow made it ‘cool’ enough for the bigger money-making industries to start taking over.
I think the reality is that, for me, real fur is extraordinarily old fashioned. I think you look old. Even if you’re 20, and you’ve got a real fur coat, you just look like an old, unaware, unconscious being on the planet. It’s not relevant, it’s not sexy, it’s not fashionable, and it’s not cool.
The plus size movement is not just about fashion; it’s about body image, and if we’re doing a shoot, they won’t retouch us at all. That’s the cool thing: there’s no retouching at all because we want to give girls the truth, not a fabrication.
It doesn’t sound that cool to say it, but I still get nervous for any show. But it’s different degrees – playing a small basement of a club versus playing a festival like Firefly or Bonnaroo. The feeling is, ‘Crap, I’m about to be blasted in the face,’ and once you get started, then it’s like, ‘OK, I’ve done this before. I know what I’m doing.’
Usually I get asked to do stuff that’s cool, and if I ever can’t do something, it’s usually, because of logistics, I don’t have the time for it. Rarely do I get ask to do something that I’d rather not do. I usually do it if I feel that it’s something I can do.
I don’t follow other fashion blogs, but I do follow other fashionistas on Instagram. Many of them are my friends; it’s really cool: they can inspire me, and they’re also my friends. I also look for inspiration in the street; there are so many fashionable women walking around.
I always thought it’d be cool to portray these certain things, make people feel a certain way. I was kind of fascinated with that, but I wasn’t the type to do acting school or theater. I didn’t have the best views of Hollywood, so it wasn’t something that I was going to try and pursue.
‘Lose My Cool’ is the second track on my EP dedicated to a stage in the grieving process. This track represents anger. I really bottled a lot up after my mother passed, and one day, I couldn’t handle it anymore and just exploded on all of my friends and family. It was a very passive way of dealing with things, not very healthy.
It’s just insane because, as a longtime WWE fan, I still have all of my action figures in storage. Now to have my own, and to see my nephews play with them, to see kids tweet me pictures with them, and to see people are actually going out of their way searching all of these stores trying to find them, it’s really cool and humbling.
In my background in sports, I am huge believer in statistics and I think that’s one area where in wrestling we’ve seen some cool stuff get over. To me, I think there’s real opportunities to do some interesting things just in terms of building up athletes the way UFC has as legitimate competition.
This mum comes up, she’s got a five-year-old kid and she says, ‘Can he have your autograph, you are his favourite person in the whole world.’ I thought, ‘How cool is that? I’ve got five-year-old fans,’ and as I’m signing this autograph, the mum goes, ‘Yeah, yeah, you’re by far the best Wiggle.’
Jada, Styles P, the LOX, period. You throw on one of their joints… I’m in the whip; I try to keep my cool in the whip. I don’t like bouncing around, getting my crazy on, but it’s certain joints you gotta wild out. Roll the window down, blast the joints, let it be heard. That’s one of them groups that bang it out.
Hopefully everybody in the audience thinks, ‘That’s cool. I could do that.’ I don’t like the thought that they say, ‘I saw the Beastie Boys last night, and they’re mega-stars.’ I’m a lot happier when the kids who come backstage or to the hotel try to give us tapes of what they’ve done instead of just getting an autograph.
I was lucky enough to have an older brother who shared the splatter flicks with me, and I had parents who were cool and involved enough in my life to allow me to see them. I think my folks appreciated that I looked at these movies as a creative outlet… almost like magic shows, if you will.
I’ve always believed in good music over bad music. I believe in two sorts of musics. And the lines that separate us, I don’t believe in that. That’s for people who need to easily define what they’re hearing. Me, I’m cool with everything and anything I’m hearing that’s music. It comes under one definition for me.
So many of Spielberg’s films inspired my imagination growing up. And then there are British films like ‘The Full Monty’ and ‘Waking Ned Devine’ that took me to places I really loved, with characters I just thought were amazing. But the films of Luc Besson showed me France – a really cool side of France.
