I grew up on Lake Michigan during the PCB explosion, and I remember seeing the sick, dead fish with tumors, the weird deformed seagulls, the scum and the filth floating. We couldn't go swimming.

Trying to find the story within the story was hard. Filmmaking is such a reductive process in a strange way and you keep whittling away to what is essential.

People who are slavish to a fantasy ideology become very lonely in the world. It's very alienating and sometimes reality is very threatening to this magical way of thinking. On the other hand, if it is a politician or leader that chooses for whatever reason to remain in this state of magical thinking, then they should be called out for it strongly and repeatedly.

And my mother caught wind of this. She never had really tried to guide my career or really had any say in my life as an adult, but this was the one time she said she would never speak to me again if I quit acting.

That's what I love about music...all these banalities suddenly turn into these beautiful, effervescent pearls.

I haven't had such an overwhelmingly positive response as I have from The Normal Heart directly to me. And it's a blessing. If this is it, if I have a piano dropped on me tomorrow, then I would go down thinking, 'You know what, I did okay as far as my career goes, because that's a gift. That's rare.'

There are wonderful low-interest loans you can take out to own your own solar and cut your energy bills down drastically. You can retrofit your home to become more energy efficient with on-bill financing, where the upgrades you make pay for themselves with the energy savings you generate. Ten years ago, there were only a few electric vehicles on the market, and today there are many, many more coming, and with each year the cost of them comes down.