It is impossible to remain indifferent to Japanese culture. It is a different civilisation where all you have learnt must be forgotten. It is a great intellectual challenge and a gorgeous sensual experience.
One thing I've never said in my whole life is, 'Let's have dinner at a Japanese restaurant.'
And $18 million in three Japanese banks, completely false. That I have two factories in Panama, also completely false. This is part of the counter campaign of some people.
I watched Japanese style wrestling, European style wrestling, and WCW.
Two words guided the making of 'Babel' for me: 'dignity' and 'compassion.' These things are normally forgotten in the making of a lot of films. Normally there is not dignity because the poor and dispossessed in a place like Morocco are portrayed as mere victims, or the Japanese are portrayed as cartoon figures with no humanity.
I dreamed of having a Gibson. I had a cheap Kent - you know, a Japanese guitar - and then a Kanora, a Japanese guitar. I borrowed a friend's Harmony for years. To have a Gibson was really, really my dream as a kid.
When I was trying to figure out how the government might go about creating the camps in 'The Darkest Minds,' I researched the Japanese internment camps here in the United States, specifically propaganda the government used, and how they capitalized on people's fears.
I'm constantly not on the right side of history. I sympathize with the soldiers in the enemy's camp. For example in WWII, we know the Nazis and the Japanese were wrong. But I sympathize with the individual story of a soldier who was drafted into that.
I read mostly Irish, African, Japanese, South American, and African writers. You can count on Scandinavian literature for a certain kind of darkness, a modern mythic style.
My father fought behind Japanese lines in the second world war and it traumatised him. Everybody who knew him from before said he was the life and soul of the party - fun to be with - but after the war he was different.
