I always loved movies, but I never thought I would presume to be a screenwriter and definitely not a director. I spent a lot of time for no money trying to teach myself how to write a script. It always felt like everybody was looking the other way and sneaking that script through the system, but it did well later on video and got another chance.

I remember that, before John Lennon died, everyone was saying that Rolling Stone couldn't do good reporting anymore. But when he died, they wrote this amazing issue, as they should have about Lennon. They did that when Elvis died, too.

People dance and we have a lot of music and... this might be the closet I get for a while.

The current state of music journalism is not bad, but it's not great at all. Some of the hip-hop stuff people get into is exciting, because there's a passion and there's something to explain to a more mainstream audience, so you get these passionate writers who want to express their love for rap and hip-hop, which is cool. But there are too many magazines, and the access has been diminished, so the quality of profiles has gone way down. Internet stuff can be really good, though. I like the dialogue between fans on the Internet. I think that's the best rock writing that's going on right now.

The power of music is still with me, every day. It's one of the most inspiring things available in the world. I write with music. I write scenes in movies that hopefully can earn the use of some songs that are powerful to me. But, I think it just came from being affected by strong, personal art.

I write with music. I write scenes in movies that hopefully can earn the use of some songs that are powerful to me.

I used to see a lot of cocaine. There were journalists who used cocaine and didn't write about it and I didn't write about it. I would never do drugs, so I would always get the same response from people: "Smart kid, more for me." Whether it was a joke or sincere or both, but I was just happy not to be in there partying with the band like some of these other journalists.