He was good in Red Riding 1974 too.

Tyrone Slothrop and the Rocket of Secrets

Steven Soderbergh should direct.

I've always envisioned Hamlet as a case of arrested development— a precocious youth who is nearing 30 without ever having accomplished anything.  Basically a Tenenbaum.

If Shakespeare hadn't wanted Pepsi One to appear in Hamlet, he wouldn't have written that scene.

Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian, action! HUNCHBACK! WAS EVER WOMAN IN THIS HUMOUR WOOED!  Cut!  Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian…

I like Olivier's Henry V a lot, but I'm surprised to hear he's still fashionable among the academics.

Murray makes Polonius's lines sound like something Bill Murray would say, which is actually quite an achievement.

She looks far better in person.  I don't mean we're friends or anything, but I have seen her in the flesh and she's really quite striking.

"Jez, every man has his price, and I judge yours to be 530 pounds.  That is my… indecent proposal."

I can picture Johnson mentoring somebody, just really horribly.  It would all just be verbal slapdowns.

I appreciate that.

Re the video: Neat!

I must have read the Cosmos book twenty times through as a kid.  It's amazing I don't know more science than I do, but what I do know, I think I largely got from that book/series.

I was told that he's gone to some sort of farm.

When the trailer for the Simpsons movie came out, the team who made it included the Spider-pig joke.  When the moviemakers objected, saying it would spoil the surprise of the gag, they were told, "We can leave it out and you'll get a huge laugh in the theater.  Or we can leave it in and you'll make $20 million more at…

…if on a winter's night is really lovely.  It's a great tease, because of course you want to read all the books and you never get to do more than start them.  I love the way Calvino puts books together— the Tarot reading of Castle of Crossed Destinies for example.  It was very liberating to discover those books, as…

There's a Disneyland ride?  I've never been, if you can believe it.

I discovered it about the same time, thanks to one very important college class.  We were actually assigned Cosmicomics, which I still love as well, but Invisible Cities was the first one I sought out myself.  So it has a personal significance I suppose.  There's something very haunting about the way the book is…

It surprises me how often some echo of that book's language, or some hint of a phrase, will show up in my own writing (or even just my own life).