If you watch any John Hughes film of the eighties, that was my childhood experience.
I think I draw most inspiration from writers like Richelle Mead and filmmakers like John Hughes. They both really understand the experience of being a teenager and how insistent and intense everything feels, but they're also smart, savvy, and fun.
My family sits around and tells all these amazing stories of pirates and the wa. Then one day I'm having a beer after shooting an episode of 'Thank God You're Here,' and started telling Dave Hughes some stories, and he said, 'You've gotta turn this into a book.'
I did know Ted Hughes and I partly wrote the book to explain to myself and others the complexities of a marriage that was for six years wonderfully productive of poetry and then ended in tragedy.
In the years since I worked with John Hughes, there were many years where I literally had hundred of doors slammed in my face because I wasn't that kid anymore, and I wasn't a character actor, and I wasn't a leading man, and I wasn't whatever Hollywood was looking for.
It's funny, like 15 years ago when I was a kid doing all the John Hughes movies, I remember Bruce Willis was the only guy who was transitioning from television into film.
I have respected every manager I have played under, but if you can't learn from someone like Mark Hughes, it is going to be hard for you.
All black art is always judged to illuminate our experience and prove that our stories and our history and our lives matter. And that goes back to Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston - take your pick.
I thought the first Welsh team I played in was the golden generation, with Neville Southall, Mark Hughes, Ian Rush, Dean Saunders, Gary Speed, and Ryan Giggs.
It seems like the studios are either making giant blockbusters, or really super-small indies. And the mid-level films I grew up on, like 'Back to the Future' and all those John Hughes movies, the studios aren't doing. It's hard to get them on their feet.
