I remember being fascinated by the graduated sizes and perspective on the sets [of Star Wars]. And how they put shorter people and kids in the uniforms and placed them in the distance to give the idea that these sets had more depth than they really did.

So many people aren't ready for Hollywood - professionally or practically.

In L.A., though, people get off busses calling themselves actors, so many are really not professionals.

Maybe, I got a sense when [Star Wars] came out, and there were always these lines around the block. We didn't understand the popularity of Cheers until maybe five years into the series.

This isn't the Democratic party of our fathers and grandfathers. This is the party of Woodstock hippies. I was at Woodstock--I built the stage. And when everything fell apart, and people were fighting for peanut butter sandwiches, it was the National Guard who came in and saved the same people who were protesting them. So when Hillary Clinton a few years ago wanted to build a Woodstock memorial, I said it should be a statue of a National Guardsman feeding a crying hippie.

All over the US, there is a need to teach young people to, really, get them out in the backyard, building treehouses, fixing bicycles, because you become a better, more well-rounded, Renaissance personality if you actually know how to do things with your hands. If you can fix the screen door or replace your old garbage disposal, even change the tire on a car, a lot of people don't even know how to do that. We're literally running out of people who know how to do those things, the essential things like plumbing, carpentry, stone masonry, we're literally running out of them.

I was a carpenter in Northern Vermont and got this tax refund check that just about covered a one-way airfare to London. So this I saw as a sign from God. So I went over to see Ray [Hussett] for a couple of weeks and ended up staying 10 years. I got work as a stage carpenter at the Oval House in Kennington, South London.