I'm pretty upfront about my love and admiration for the military. One of the perks of making movies is that you get to sort of follow your own passions and I believe quite passionately that we don't pay enough attention and respect to our veterans. Not just our wounded veterans but all veterans.
Bill Clinton sitting on Air Force One getting his hair cut while people around the country cooled their heels and waited for him became a metaphor for a populist president who had gotten drunk with the perks of his own power and was sort of you know not sensitive to what people wanted.
It can have an enormous effect because big budget movies can have big budget perks and small budget movies have no perks but what is the driving force of course is the script and your part in it.
I got the wake-up call that no one is policing our oceans. I wondered how can I do anything? What really can I do to make things better? There are some perks to being a celebrity. My job is to be funny once in a while but it's my responsibility to make good use of it.
I don't mean being famous is a perk because one knows that it's not necessarily a perk but there are certain perks to being well-known and respected in one's field. Public perks. Like I don't know general friendliness and willingness to please just to point out two.
By the way movies are like sporting events in that you're as good as the movie you're in. You can sit in a room for 20 years and go do a movie and you can just kill in it and you move to the head of the line again. By the same token you can do five movies a year and if they're dreck it's nothing.