Hollywood is one of those places where, traditionally, money has come from - along with New York, Texas, Florida, Silicon Valley in northern California and the unions. But because of the Internet and the way campaigns are financed these days, you don't need traditional financing as much as you used to - and Barack Obama has tapped into that in a big way. But at the end of the day, people in Hollywood care more about [the presidency] than just the trappings of it and the surface type stuff. They care about the issues.

I act once in awhile if something comes up that seems fun. I like to do it - its a lot of fun because theres no responsibility. You let other people have the headaches. The director has all of the headaches.

Harry [Shearer] and I had an idea to do a movie about rock 'n' roll from the roadies' perspective, from backstage. Then Meat Loaf came out with a movie called Roadie and we thought, "Oh, we can't do that now." So we kind of discarded the idea.

As you get older, all those dumb clichés, they're all true. You only have a certain amount of time left, and you should only spend it doing the things that you want to do. It's all true.

I was certainly a child of the '60s, and I came out of that era, and as a young actor, I got cast as a lot of counterculture hippie types.

The script is like music to me. I approach it like it's a musical piece and I hear how it's supposed to sound when people say the words. There's rhythms and there's intonations and things, and so, when somebody comes in and hits the notes that I hear, I go okay. Or, they come close enough, and then I'll say "Well how about you try it like this?" and if they have a good ear and they can pick it up, then I think okay, they've got it.

With the films I've done, I've written on them, I've acted in some of them. And even ones I haven't acted in, I've acted them out just to be sure another actor can do them.