My father probably taught me everything I know, aside from dialogue, which I think I get from my mom a lot more. He certainly didn't teach me everything he knew, but you know he has got this book out called "The Spooky Art," which is essentially an advanced book on writing and it's not... You know it's not ABC, but it's for people who feel that bug and know that they're writers and are willing to put in that time alone. Pretty much the vast majority of what he taught me you can find in that book.
John Buffalo MailerThat 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.
John Buffalo MailerThere 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.
John Buffalo MailerIf you're going to go into the movie business it is so full of heartbreak and you get so close and it doesn't happen and then once in a while it works out and it is the fantasy, like it is that dream. So riding the highs and lows of it you got to have an iron constitution and you got to be able to do what David Dinkins actually one said - "Well you know some days are good, some days are bad, but anytime there is a bad day I know the next day is going to be good and vice versa, so you just can't put too much stock in that moment."
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 would say the only one person I know of who kind of combines the elements that my father brought to the table in terms of affecting the public discourse would be Oliver Stone. His combination of academic brilliance and real life experience and just understanding people I think is what makes him such a great storyteller, but also he cares. He is interested. He meets somebody and he listens to them. He has some questions. He wants to know what they're about. And as a result I think his worldview is much more complex and whole and most of the other.
John Buffalo MailerWhat's against legalization in a practical sense? A couple of college kids figured out how to take a hemp plant and turn it into newspaper and it was actually a better quality of paper. It was cheaper and if you plant hemp in a field it revitalizes the soil. You can grow food in a dirt lot if you do enough harvest of hemp. I don't pretend to know the specifics of the economics of it to say how much we'll be getting, but there is money to be made there that is not being made because it's illegal.
John Buffalo Mailer