I had a lot of preconceived notions going in the Wall Street. It wasn't an industry that I really respected much. My feeling was kind of like look, you're not making anything. You're taking money from one place, putting it in another and taking your cut and that's just not really kind of soul-satisfying at the end of the day, but what I learned is, on a larger scale is how much the Wall Street industry funnels and fuels so many others. There is a lot of good that these guys do, and to lump all traders into a category is as insane as lumping any group of people into one category.
John Buffalo MailerI had a lot of fun with those guys from the Wall Street. The laughter is unlike most settings you'll find. The level of intensity, the adrenaline, the stakes are incredible. I mean it is addictive. I can understand why people end up spending 23 or 24 hours a day hitting it.
John Buffalo MailerNoam Chomsky is, in some ways, a victim of this new millennium we live in because you can't pull a sound bite from that guy and understand what he is talking about. You have to hear the whole paragraph. You have to hear the whole page. You've got to hear the whole conversation if you really want to understand it and that could change your life.
John Buffalo MailerI was about 20 when my mom got sick with cancer and it was bad. It was very scary and at the time I was doing my first screenplay and I was on deadline and was alone with my father in Massachusetts. I said, "Pop, you know, I don't how I'm going to work. I don't know how I can get this done. You know, I got to hand this script in and I can't think about anything but Mom." He said, "Well, you know, now is the time when you're going to learn what it means to compartmentalize." And those words really had an impact on me.
John Buffalo MailerI had a lot of preconceived notions going in the Wall Street. It wasn't an industry that I really respected much. My feeling was kind of like look, you're not making anything. You're taking money from one place, putting it in another and taking your cut and that's just not really kind of soul-satisfying at the end of the day, but what I learned is, on a larger scale is how much the Wall Street industry funnels and fuels so many others. There is a lot of good that these guys do, and to lump all traders into a category is as insane as lumping any group of people into one category.
John Buffalo MailerTen years ago when I started out I was kind of told I was insane for trying to pursue multiple fields at once because in five years everyone who just did one would have five times the resume I would if I was lucky, but I took that gamble because I just my gut told me it was the right thing to do and you know as an actor there is so much downtime you want to fill it with something else and as a writer you know sometimes you're doing a passion project, sometimes it's a paid gig, sometimes there is nothing, so you can do a journalistic piece.
John Buffalo MailerThere's a lot of forces opposed to legalization marijuana, so I don't want to put the cart before the horse. It's looking like it's going the legalization route, which, you know, a lot of people thought it needs to for a long time outside of recreational and medicinal use, just for crime reasons. We're pumping our prisons full of petty weed offenses and it's partially to feed that industry, but it's not good. It's not good for society, people go in there as a minor criminal and come out as a real criminal.
John Buffalo Mailer