By Oliver Wang
APA talks to Watchmen screenwriter Alex Tse about his upbringing, his career, and his breakthrough, and finds why for Tse, the glass may be half empty, but that's perfectly fine.
Of the major players in the filmmaking process, the screenwriter is perhaps the least understood. The most common assumption is that they're responsible for writing dialogue -- think of Diablo Cody's snappy repartees for Juno or the stream of neuroses that seem so much a part of Woody Allen's scripts. Dialogue is certainly an important dimension to screenwriting but at the heart of the profession, there are storytellers, tasked with communicating to the audience, hopefully as efficiently and coherently as possible, how A gets to B and then C...or how boy-meets-then-loses-then-regains-girl...or, how in Transformers 2, Megatron gets...actually, forget that last example.
Screenwriting can be a thankless task, especially since scripts are often tweaked and altered beyond recognition. It certainly lacks the glamour of other parts of the movie business -- the "best known" screenwriters in Hollywood, such as Joe Eszterhas (Basic Instinct) or Shane Black (Lethal Weapon) are more notorious for their personal excesses than their creative output. However, screenwriting can also be a richly satisfying challenge to master, especially in film, where you only have somewhere between 90-150 minutes to weave together an intelligible and compelling story that may juggle multiple characters, locations, surprises, and all that aforementioned snappy scenery-chewing.
Over the course of the last five years, writer Alex Tse has been taking on these -- and other challenges -- all whilst becoming one of Hollywood's most sought-after scribes. He first came to public attention in 2004, when, as a relative unknown, he wrote the script for Sucker Free City, a Spike Lee-directed, multi-ethnic gang drama set in Tse's native San Francisco; HBO had flirted with turning the film into a series but even though it didn't pan out, SFC boosted Tse's profile and for the next few years, he was busy behind the scenes, often times taking on rewriting assignments with no public credit (and many times, thankfully so). This past year was the huge breakout though, when Tse was tapped as one of the writers given what was once considered the most impossible adaptation tasks: bringing The Watchmen comic book to cinematic life. In the last few months, he's taken on several other high-profile adaptations, including one of Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man and Paul Pope's upcoming graphic novel, Battling Boy.
Asia Pacific Arts caught up with Tse in Long Beach and talked about the art of storytelling, the wonder of Pulp Fiction, the challenges of adaptations, and growing up on age-inappropriate films.
Asia Pacific Arts: When you walk into a project with the level of anticipation -- and scrutiny -- as Watchmen, you must have some expectations of what public response may be. Now that the movie is out and that project is done, was the experience what you anticipated?
Alex Tse: In terms of the attention of the film itself, it was pretty much what I thought it would be. But I always go in thinking the absolute worse, in almost every scenario. So for instance, when I did Sucker Free City, I told myself to prepare for the worst harassment and thought that I was going to get shit because I'm Chinese and writing about Hunter's Point. And I had the choice, before I even pitched it. I just said, "Okay, if this goes forward, I have to know I'm going to get this much shit. Is it going to be worth it to me?" And once I proceed I will lose all rights to complain, because I know what I'm getting into. So I don't think that any kind of attention that a comic book fan boy would give, even though extreme, could possibly be any worse than someone from HP saying, "I'ma fuck you up." It's just different. If some guy rushes at me in a costume, you know, I'm going to be okay with that [laughs].
APA: The critical response to Watchmen was on the whole positive, but still mixed.
AT: I don't think on the whole they were positive. I think they were much more mixed and very divergently so. It's interesting because I don't think there's a ton of middle ground. People either really loved it or hated it. And it's weird because there are people who love the graphic novel that love the movie, and there are people who love the graphic novel and fucking hate the movie. There are people that never read the graphic novel that hate the movie, and people who never read the graphic novel and love the movie. My manager, who is terrific and will not hold back any punches, I thought was going to not like the movie at all. Just not her thing. And she loved it.
My take on reviews is consistent with how I try to approach everything. You expect the absolute worst things that can happen. And getting in this business it was the same thing. It's like, listen, it's going to be tough, it's going to be competitive, and you are constantly judged. If you're not prepared mentally to take the criticism and any kind of exposure to the spotlight, then it's not the right business to be in.
APA: Is that philosophy always something that has been an inherent part of your personality, or is that something you've learned to develop over time since you got into this business?
AT: I don't know. You get people that know me that say it's inherent. I don't agree with that. Because certainly I would have taken things personally. Maybe I would have internalized it more. But I think it started in film school. That, and coming out here and seeing the actual business part of it. You definitely start seeing the pitfalls and just know that these are coming. For Sucker Free City, everyone was like, "They're gonna pick it up. They're gonna pick it up." And I was literally the only one in my circle going "Ehhh, I don't know" [laughs].
APA: You grew up in San Francisco, you attended Lowell High School, you came from an upwardly mobile family -- under other circumstances, you probably could have groomed yourself for business or law or science, etc. When did you realize you had a real drive to do something creative as a career?
AT: When I went to college, because I always wrote and did it for fun, I thought I was going to be a journalist. It was practical. Because really early on, my parents knew I had said I wanted to be a writer. And it was consistent, because they always checked with me. It was like okay, so he's really fucking serious about this.
APA: And how early on was that?
AT: Elementary school. I don't remember what the assignment really was, but it was to write a short story or something. So I wrote a Sherlock Holmes story. When I got it back I got an A on it and I was so happy. But after class the teacher asked me to see her after class. Basically, she asked me if I had plagiarized it. I was like, "what?" I was so shocked. She was like, "No, I just wasn't sure, because there are some specific details here." Really, she just thought a kid wouldn't come up with those things. I was like, "oh, well it must be alright then if she's accusing me of taking it from a real writer." So that was the one time I thought that maybe I was okay at this.
APA: You said that originally, you thought you'd go into journalism.
AT: When [my parents] saw that I was serious [about writing], they were like, "okay, well get a job at a newspaper because that's a real job and blah blah blah." So I went to journalism camp but I was always like, "it would just be so much better if I could just make it up" [laughs]. You know, if I could put my own quote in there that would be cooler. I applied to all the good journalism schools -- University of Missouri, Syracuse, and UCLA. And those schools were so die hard journalist, you know, and God bless them for being so die hard. I was just like, "dude, I don't know man. I just don't know if I'm like that." And then I went to visit Emerson and they encouraged you to do these other things and to try these other things.
APA: You briefly flirted with the idea of going into radio journalism, right?
AT: I had a radio show. And I was fucking terrible, and I knew it. And so I knew I didn't want to do that. And then I was surrounded by film students who said they wanted to be film directors when they grew up. And when you're surrounded by that you think, "okay, alright I can do that." And then I saw Pulp Fiction and it changed my life.
APA: What was it about Pulp Fiction that clicked for you?
AT: First of all, I had never seen anything like it, in terms of narrative structure, characters, the character's point of view, all the pop culture references and humor. It seemed like it was coming from my own sensibility. You get movies that sort of connect with you emotionally, but -- how do I say this without sounding fucking ridiculous -- but it even though the world of Pulp Fiction is so fantastic and obviously not my world, it felt like these were characters who were speaking from the perspective of people in your world. And I don't know that a movie has done that since. That was one of the last movies that really kind of bitch-slapped cinema and changed cinema -- that actually altered it. So it was significant in that way and significant for me. That was when I said I am willing to suffer for this, which I think is a decision everyone should make to get into this business.
APA: Did you grow up as a movie head?
AT: Yeah, my parents were. They took me to a lot of fucked up movies [laughs]. But no, they did. They really did. Because I look back and say "You know, you took me to some really fucked up movies!" I was born in 1976. I think Altered States came out in 1980, 1981? Yeah, they took me to see that movie. My mom took me to see Heavy Metal, because she thought it was a cartoon. And next thing you know, I'm five years old, drawing naked women with swords, and she's like "Oh my god". She denies some of these movies. And I'm like…you took me to see Prom Night. I'm like, "well, how do I know then?" Maybe that's why I hate horror movies now.
APA: What did your parents do?
AT: My dad was a banker. He passed away. And my mom, ironically, is the Vice Principal of Lowell, but she was always a teacher.
APA: And you would think that in that capacity, she might've known better in terms of age appropriate films!
AT: They really liked movies. My dad was the type of guy who would stay up until four in the morning watching all the kung-fu movies. And he knew a lot about movies. The Godfather was his favorite movie. He loved gangster movies. They loved movies, so they weren't going to be like "No, we're not gonna let this motherfucker stop us from seeing movies." So there would just be those parts when they would tell me to close my eyes [laughs]. I remember on Christmas we would always watch two movies. One of those movies was To Live and Die in LA. And I remember every five seconds was like, "ooooh, close your eyes."
On breaking in
APA: After you graduated Emerson, you moved to Los Angeles and then took on one of the most serendipitous career routes I've ever heard. Let's start with your time spent in the world of rap videos.
AT: I had a friend, Jacob Rosenberg, who had directed a bunch of different, popular skateboarding videos. He introduced Hieroglyphics music to the skateboard community, which was a big part of their audience. They were coming out with Third Eye Vision. They were going to do the video for the first single "You Never Knew." It was going to be directed by Michael Lucero, but then he died in a car crash. At the time, I think Jake was going to serve on some capacity in the video, but when Michael died they were like, "Dude, you gotta direct the video." Then he looked at me and was like "Dude, you gotta produce the video." And I hadn't produced anything but short films. This was way beyond anything I had ever done. We did the video and I literally just called MTV and was like, "ummm, how do you submit a video?" They explained it to me and I did everything. I would call the guys and bug 'em. Basically, they put the video on MTV Raps. Other indie rappers started calling me, so simultaneously I was doing that and trying to break into Hollywood. Someone told me to start temping, so I did that for different studios.
APA: You started temping and then somehow ended up being the assistant to Peter Schneider, who was the president of Disney. How the hell did that happen?
AT: I had basically temped at Disney for two years so everyone knew me. And I didn't take a job because I would periodically go do music video work and it was better than sitting at a desk all day. At a certain point, because I was getting overtime, Disney was like "you're either going to work here, or you're not." So I worked as an assistant for at least a year, maybe over. It was crazy. I got to work with all these motherfuckers calling the shots and I'm just like some kid -- what the fuck am I doing here?
APA: ...who must have gotten to see a side of the entertainment industry that's not very transparent to the rest of us.
AT: It was good to see business done that way. The one big thing I worked on was this presentation. It was like this ten-year plan and it was all the heads of corporate. It was really fascinating that they were [predicting] "this movie is gonna make this much money." It was way before Cars came out and way before Finding Nemo. They were like, "Finding Nemo is going to be an awesome movie, but the toys won't do as well because no one's going to play with a fish."
APA: What do you think you learned from that that you bring into your current work?
AT: I think it helps temper the expectation of things, how hard it is for movies to get made. When people were like, "Oooh, Watchmen's a failure." I know the economics of it. Like, they make money off of it. Now, were they disappointed? Were they hoping for a 300-type of bonanza? Absolutely. And it's that disappointment that carries over. It's just interesting now. When we were growing up, no one gave a fuck. It was like, you watched a movie and it was a good movie. No one was like "Oooh, what movie is number one?" The other day, my mom was like "Oh, wasn't that movie number one? Didn't it make this much money?" And I'm like, "since when did you keep track of how much each movie made?" That's what it is. And it's become that.
So I think that working in the business part, that shit doesn't fuck with me. Learning all the pitfalls and all the practical reasons of why movies do or don't get made, I think that helps the process. Initially it hurt the process because I started to write for the market. I started to write with the business in mind, not the creative inspiration part. And my manager called me out on it, and it's the best thing that's ever happened to me because it's what started my career.
APA: What do you mean?
AT: I had been around Disney and Touchstone and they were saying they were looking for "this kind of movie" so I wrote a movie like that and I gave it to [my manager]. She was like, "what the fuck is this?" And then she asked me what I really wanted to write. I told her that no one was going to buy that. She said, "who gives a fuck? Why do you want to be in the business? If you're not going to write whatever the fuck it is you want, then don't be in the business." I wrote some scripts that Warner Bros. controls. My movies never get made. But that's also the job that got me Watchmen. It got me a ton of jobs.
On screenwriting
APA: I should've asked this earlier but most people who have the initial "Man, I want to make movies" feeling want to become directors. It sounds like you really wanted to write screenplays from the get-go. What gave you that particular focus?
AT: I didn't really enjoy the process of the things I directed in college. And I like sitting down writing. There are people you talk to and you know they're directors. They think of things visually, they know they're technically proficient, just the way they talk. And I was just never like that. I liked working with the actors. I liked editing. I hate being on set. It would get to the certain point, even on my own movies, where I'm like, "who the fuck wrote this? I'm not seeing it. Dude, I can't see this fifteen times. I'm outta here." The novelty wears off very fast with me. I'm impatient. It takes fucking forever. You know what I'm saying? To set a shot up -- wait for the lighting, oh god, the cloud is there, blah blah blah. I hate that. Enduring that is not something I look forward to. But I've talked to many writers who say that once you do it and it's yours, you will never be the same, and you will want to direct everything. I hear a lot of people say that. And we'll see. Maybe that's the case. But right now, I'm not looking forward to it.
APA: When you first started writing, what drew you in the most? Writing dialogue? Mapping out a story arc?
AT: Especially after watching Pulp Fiction or even Swingers, I think a lot of people have that moment where they're like "Ooh, I'm so fucking smart and witty. Me and my friends think this banter is funny, so why wouldn't anyone else?" So I think you're always going to get dialogue-happy initially. I didn't know what I was doing. I remember writing my first thing and I'm literally describing everything in the fucking room. I mean, this is not a novel. If the design of this table is irrelevant to the story, I can't sit there and describe it. And I learned that really quickly. Mostly I learned by reading other scripts. So if I go back and look at some of my first scripts, I'm sure I was heavy dialogue. A common mistake. And it's probably a lot of the basic rules like "show don't tell." And the easiest thing is to tell everything that's happening, so I had to learn not to do that.
APA: What were some of the scripts that you felt you learned the most from?
AT: There are two "a-ha" moments. One was from this magazine called Scenario and what it is was was a quarterly magazine that would publish four screenplays. Then they would have an interview with the screenwriter. So I was reading it and I read a script called Heavy by James Mangold. He used onomatopoeia; the way he wrote was different from how I wrote. And I didn't know you could do that in a screenplay because I was still kind of getting my head around the format. I was like well…okay, there are a lot of rules and I'm not sure how I can really express myself in this format and it seems very constricting. But it's very much like basketball or any other sport, right? Once you learn the rules, there's a lot of shit you can do. You know, Kobe's game is a lot different than Lamar Odom's game but they still play the same game.
Then there's another script. While I was temping at Disney -- and I never watched the movie and I didn't necessarily think that the script was great -- it was the script for Man on the Moon. The writers had this sarcasm in their narrative, as if they were commenting on it. And I had never seen that before. Those two things opened it up to where it was really like you can do whatever the fuck you want. You just kind of have to follow the format.
APA: Do you buy into the logic of the basic three-act structure?
AT: I buy that you need to know it. But look man, you can go into studio execs and then they'll be like "Ohh, the act break should be here," and it means nothing. It's semantics.
APA: In terms of your writing process, are you one of those writers who knows how you'll open or close right off the bat? Or do those things come into clarity once you're in the process?
AT: Typically, in probably 98% of everything I do, I know how it begins and I know how it ends, and I might not know what happens in between. Some people just write and they don't know. They just kind of write stuff. I've probably only done that once. I need a little more structure. I need to know where I'm going. And look, on the way, you can change it. If you feel like your story needs to change then change it, but you have to know. You know what I'm saying? I'm going North, or I'm going South, I'm going West, I'm going East. You should know that.
APA: Your two best known credits have been Sucker Free City and Watchmen but you were working on all kinds of scripts in between.
AT: Well, there's a bunch of movies that I was hired to do and they never got made. One of them was a remake of Superfly, which had nothing to do with the original and then became something called Gangland. I did a bunch of movies that did get made that I didn't want credit on, because I didn't want to be known for those things. But you know -- I'll whore myself out too. So I worked on House of Wax, I worked on both of the Step Up movies.
APA: Now, when you say "worked on," do you mean you wrote the entire script?
AT: No, they were production rewrites, which is a big deal. So production rewrite means they're making the movie. This is very typical in Hollywood. They make a movie, but they don't like the script. But they're going to make the movie. They're already building the sets because they need to have this movie. I had done a lot of work for Joel Silver, and they were making House of Wax, which is a movie that I would never see. I don't like those movies. So they were like, "would you come work on this movie?" And I was like, "no." They asked why and I said I didn't like horror movies. I know they're going to make me write a horror scene, there's no way around that. So both my manager and my agent called and they were both saying I should do this. The most important reason being that this is a hard club to get into. But once you're in, because it's a production rig so they don't trust a lot of people, you're in the club. And it's hard to break in the club, so this is why you should do it.
APA: So what do you actually rewrite?
AT: I rewrite the scene. And some of it has to do with the sets, or the locations, and sometimes the writing is for the cast. It's just that there's a higher sense of urgency on it because they're in production. Sometimes they're already shooting. I've written on stuff that they've already shot and they're going to do re-shoots. I'm a hired good. I'm not saying I don't take pride in my work. It's just that the investment is different. I'll make it the way you want to do it, because that's what you're paying me for. I don't need to argue fundamental things that I would argue for in Watchmen.
APA: This raises something I've always been curious about: once most writers sell a script, they lose all creative control over it. How do you develop a skin to handle that, especially when others start making changes to your work?
AT: Filmmaking is a collaborative process and I've been lucky to work with really cool and talented people. I've had enough experience where I have seen things come out better through collaboration. People have given me notes even on personal stuff where I'm like, "you know, they're right." [With] Sucker Free City, there are a lot of things [Spike Lee] did better than I could have. But I do feel that he shared the common purpose so regardless of how I would've done things differently, his purpose was the same as mine.
APA: I remember when the pilot was first announced. I thought it was really interesting because at that time, I really couldn't think of any examples of a film or series focusing on the Bay Area's inner city. How did you develop that idea?
AT: I had never seen the city as a character. We've never seen this world and I think beyond that fact, there's something socially significant there that would be relatable to a lot of people. You didn't see many things that were multi-ethnic then. At least I hope Sucker Free City felt organic.
APA: Part of it is that San Francisco has been this character, but a San Francisco that you saw all throughout the 70s, the 80s, the Rice-a-Roni cable cars, Golden Gate Bridge, and you're looking at a very different side of that.
AT: I didn't feel like it was a character, I just felt like it was a backdrop. Right? It wasn't a depiction. There are a lot of things in New York and sometimes it's a backdrop, but there have been a lot of things in which New York is a character of the movie. Only in that city could this story happen.
APA: You grew up in San Francisco. How "personal" of a story was SFC to you?
AT: It was personal in the way that I went to school with all different types of people, people from the projects all that kind of stuff. There's this intermingling of cultures that even in New York, which would be the next closest thing, didn't exist. I just wanted to show that.
APA: What were some of the aspects to San Francisco that were important for you to show?
AT: The gentrification would be one. I think it's different from the one I grew up in because since I left, with the dot-com boom, there's been that gentrification. But then there's also the reverse gentrification where my neighborhood has become increasingly ethnic, or even increasingly Asian. I'm trying to think what other city is like that, in which it promotes a different kind of ethnic dynamic. It's funny because when we shot it, one of the houses we shot it next to was this white lesbian couple. In the middle of the craziest fucked up gang intersection in Hunter's Point. There's this white lesbian couple and they're like "Hey, we love living here." Why do you love living here? You know, we'd scout the place one day and when we left someone got shot at that place that night and died. It just shows things in life that probably only happen in the city. That's really fascinating to me.
On comics and comic book movies
APA: Apart from films, you also got into comic books at an early age too. What kicked that off?
AT: I don't know. I don't remember where I bought my first comic book. I remember that my grandma bought a lot of them for me, probably just to occupy my time, and then I got really into them.
APA: Who were your favorites?
AT: X-Men was my absolute favorite. I got into Spider-Man, but I loved all the mutant shit. Nothing came close.
APA: I would think it's a little strange to go from reading comic books to now adapting them. On one level, you're potentially fussing with someone else's creative material that, perhaps unlike teen dance films, you hold with some reverence.
AT: I always try to look at something from a fan's standpoint, so with anything that I write, I want to make sure that this is a movie that I would see and that this is a movie that I would think is good. But I think I can balance being a fan without being a fanatic, and I think I can sort of be aware of what's appropriate for film, without losing perspective. In the case of Watchmen, it's something that really affected me as a writer because it was such an experience to read that for the first time, so I think it's just approaching it as a fan of the material: what is the movie I would want to see, what would I be heartbroken over if it didn't look this way, or if something wasn't in it, if it wasn't approached in a certain manner.
APA: This raises some interesting questions though, around when you know you are going to change something, how much of a gamble are you making there? Again, let's take something like Watchmen. The ending was changed slightly, or maybe not-so slightly, which was done for what I assume were very good, well thought-over reasons. However, at what point do you risk making that kind of diversion from the original source?
b: I didn't come up with that ending. David Hayter did, and that's not off-loading responsibility because the bottom line is when I came on it and when Zack [Snyder] came on it, we chose to keep it. When I read David's draft [with the changed ending], it was the one thing as a fan of Watchmen, that I was like "ah, that's pretty fucking brilliant." As a huge fan of it, it didn't fuck me up.
APA: Do you think that there's too much pressure that's put upon these adaptations to be sort of hyper-authentic?
AT: No, certainly not from the studio. There wouldn't be any pressure unless it was self-imposed. From my experience, I think what Zack did -- and I don't think I'm speaking out of turn -- was what he thought was right. I don't think that he felt pressure from some guy from aintitcool.com. You have to do the movie you want to do. If you start doing it because other people are telling you how it should be done or why it should be done, you're going to start getting into trouble.
APA: What, in your opinion, have been some of the better comic adaptations for cinema, and what have come up short?
AT: I think the last two Batmans were that successful. I actually felt Superman Returns was well done. I liked the second X-Men, I liked Iron Man. I don't think you have to be a slave to the source material, but if you lose the spirit of it, then you're in trouble, so if you look at the [1990s] Batmans, with the look and you put the nipples on the suit...
APA: 'Nuff said. I'm curious what you've thought of the Transformers adaptations? We can rap about this off record if you like...
AT: We can put this on the record, it's fine, I actually know the producers. I wasn't blown away by the first one. I'll go see the second one. I was a huge fan of Transformers. Huge. I had Transformers toys before there was Transformers. My mom got them for me from Japan, so that was the shit to me, and I read the comic books, the cartoons, so I was a huge fan. I found that people who were not fans liked the movie, I found that anyone who was a fan, did not really like the movie, beyond the nostalgia of "oh, it's cool to look at." I don't really give a fuck about the human [characters]. I thought Transformers were the coolest guys, not just for the spectacle, but as characters. They didn't feel so much as characters in the first movie in my opinion. I was disappointed because I didn't feel any connection to the robots, and I thought that was one of the strongest things for the material for me when I was a fan of it, when I was growing up.
APA: Is there anything that you've come across as a comic book fan that you really have felt is just incapable of being adapted?
AT: From a story or narrative standpoint, nothing is unadaptable, it's just more of a practical thing. Like Preacher...do you read comics?
APA: I do but I don't know that one
AT: So Preacher is about a guy -- he's like an alcoholic preacher. And basically an angel and a devil fuck, and they create this entity called Genesis that they think is as powerful as God and that entity goes into the body of this drunk preacher. It's profane. His best friend is a vampire, and his ex-girlfriend is an assassin, so it's bloody. There's a lot of fucking in it, and it's about God, so all of this is under the umbrella of spirituality right? Would you say that's unadaptable? That's not unadaptable from a story standpoint, it's unadaptable because who the fuck would make this movie?
APA: You're talking about the business side.
AT: If you talk to most Hollywood people, that's what they're talking about too. They're saying it's unadaptable not because of the story. It's just like no one's going to make that fucking movie.
APA: Apart from the business side though, have you ever felt that one shouldn't adapt some specific source material out of respect for that creative object. It's not a question of "can you or not?" but rather "should you or not?"
AT: It's not like we're changing the comic book -- they're two separate things. Seeing a terrible movie [adaptation] doesn't change the comic book for me. If anything, it makes me love the comic book more. I see the terrible adaptation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but it doesn't change the comic book for me. I think there's some degree of people wanting to be in the secret club, you know where everyone loves this band until they blow up and then they fucking suck. I understand that. I do get that feeling of remakes, like when someone says we're going to remake The Goonies, I'm just like, "why?" But I don't get that with comic books.
APA: Since Watchmen, have you seen an uptick in being offered scripts to work on or to develop that are also based around comic books?
AT: Oh yeah, I've basically been offered everything.
APA: From a work point of view, and also from a creative point of view, what's the upside and downside to that? It must be good to get work, but are you concerned about being typecast?
AT: No, at this point, there's enough scripts floating around in their minds that kind of prove that I can span a lot of different genres. When I wrote Sucker Free City, everyone was giving me every gangster or teen movie across the planet, which is fine. I mean, listen, man, you don't think I don't know what it's like to have no one fucking call you? So I don't not appreciate that shit. I'd rather have that problem than not.
Published: Friday, July 17, 2009