I had the misfortune of getting what skateboarders call hippers. It's when you fall on your hip again and again and again, just the same spot. It turns into like a blue purple bruise and it's just torture because I had to keep on doing the same move, going around in the pool again.
Well, when I was a kid and I watched 'Speed Racer,' I used to always watch it in the morning with my cereal. And when I ate the cereal, I would pour soda into the cereal because we never really had milk for some reason, I don't know.
'Brokeback Mountain' just blew me away. I'll always remember talking to Heath Ledger just after he finished that movie and he was going on about working with Ang and how incredible he was.
A lot of the stuff in 'Speed Racer' has never been done before, from it having a multi-tone, to it having a retro-cool family movie, to having the photo-realism with the CG-backgrounds and infinite focus the way they worked with these digital cameras, to even the color experimentation.
When I got a lap dance, because I was 17, they had to put a massive pillow between me and the girl when she was grinding me. It was weird, yet pleasurable.
There's something about the good-hearted guy fighting the system. I just love that. That's how 'Speed' is. He's a really focused guy with a heart of gold and the corporations are trying to crush him and use him for his skills to make them more money.
I've realized that what you think of when you make a 'big movie,' if it's actually a green screen movie, it's like doing independent New York theater because you don't have any backgrounds or props. So it's kind of like making the lowest budgeted film you could possibly imagine, plus $100 million.
I was so grateful to have made 'Into the Wild' before I made 'Speed Racer' because on 'Speed Racer' I was indoors every single day, every single scene, on a green screen. Some of the time, just to pass the time, I would think back to climbing mountains in Alaska. That really helped me.
