I'm compared to Kerouac, I suppose, because he traveled and rejected middle-class values, but the similarities end there.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Jack Kerouac influenced me quite a bit as a writer... in the Arab sense that the enemy of my enemy was my friend.
Living this life in the same sorta way that Kerouac lived, you get to hang out at shows and drink and you're able to not really face reality and adulthood the way most of my friends are.
I tend to see the similarities in people and not the differences.
I really reject that kind of comparison that says, Oh, he is the best. This is the second best. There is no such thing.
Scorsese and De Niro taught me to bring out the natural side of myself. And they taught me to think of myself as the average guy. Sometimes the average guy belongs in a role more than your matinee idol-type of person. We have to have people we can relate to.
Books and people are hard to compare.
I brought what I could of myself to this thing, because between Henry Warnimont and I - not a hell of a lot of difference.
The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like the potato - the best part under ground.
I've always said, since I got to know him and wrote about him, that he's the generation he least appeals to is his own and I think in many ways he was born middle-aged and that's become apparent in recent years.
How would you compare Polanski or Kubrick? I try not to do any comparisons.