My father, Norman Mailer, expected a lot from us and he really pushed us and you know one of his favorite lines was, "If you think I'm being hard on you, wait until life hits you because life is a hell of a lot tougher than I am." And I took everything he said to heart. He taught me how to write, which was scary and intimidating and hard, but ultimately one of the biggest gifts I could have ever asked for.

Whatever the reasons, 2008 it felt as though the combination of distribution models starting to tighten and the publishing and film and music industries having to revolutionize themselves to catch up, and understand how this is going to work in the new millennium has made it a lot easier to pursue multi-platform careers. It's much easier to hire one person who can do three or four different things than one specialist in that field.

What it means to be a man is to take on all the emotional pain and work through what you got to work through with the people you love while at the same time getting your business done. And it's tough. I think that most children when they grow up they kind of realize that the things they didn't like about their parents or didn't understand about them they get now and that you know every year you get more responsibilities. You get more overhead. You get more things you got to take care off.

Writing and acting are almost diametrically opposed in terms of being an actor it's in your interest to be in shape and to be healthy and to have a strong voice and to be flexible. As a writer you're sitting in this position for hours on end. You get up and you can't put your shoulder down. It's not a healthy existence so to speak and it's probably not healthy for the person that lives with you either, but you do the best you can.

There were so many different factions and that's I think what my father was taking issue with was the idea of, look, you can't go from male dominance to female dominance and expect anything to be better. We're all shits, ultimately, and we've got to do the best we can together.

Having a mother who has had cancer and fought through it and at times used cannabis to you know fight off nausea and whatnot. I mean it's not really her thing, but there were times when she needed it and the idea that you can't have it because it's an illegal drug, but OxyContin is legal. That's you know that's just insane to a level that I think most people understand.

That was my dad's sense of, you know, laughing at himself, laughing at existence, the universe, all of it and not being too serious about what we do with because at the end of the day if you're here it's a blessing. It's you know life is hard. Life is hard for everybody at some point, but it's those who are able to laugh at it and laugh with it and roll with it that ultimately I think live the fulfilling lives that we're all trying to do. You know, and big step there is to not take yourself too seriously from the start.