In Japan, you have no idea what they are saying, and they can’t help you either. Nothing makes any sense. They’re very polite, but you feel like a joke is being played on you the entire time you’re there.
Back then, when a movie came out and people saw you on the street, their reaction was so supercharged that it was scary. It would frighten other people. It used to really rattle me.
When I was a little kid playing baseball, my manager called me Sleepy. And only a few people, who know me from way, way back, call me that still. I used to drift off and that’s why they made me the catcher, so I wouldn’t fall asleep. That gift I have still.
They are getting so much smoke blown, and their whole world gets so turned upside down, their responses become distorted. I give everybody a year or two to pull it together because, when it first happens, I know how it is.
I was at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards one year – they called me up when somebody canceled two days before the thing, and asked me to present some awards.
