We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a protective monastery of aesthetic truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive.
It now costs more to amuse a child than it once did to educate his father.
I don't know who can constantly afford to go and see things. A play, which has five people in it and one set and it cost you 60 quid? And you're in a theatre that really hasn't had a great deal of money spent on it in the last 50 or 60 years? It's kind of weird.
As a child, I seriously believed my family was going down the road to bankruptcy. I was denied virtually every popular trend, from heavily logoed Tommy Hilfiger windbreakers to amusement park season's passes.
In New Orleans, where I'm from, the average household income, with two working parents, two kids, a dog and a little fence is $16,000 a year, so $15,000 for a movie sounds pretty good.
I'm shocked to be saying this, but as a child, I never went to a circus. It cost too much.
When someone said, 'Let's go to a club' in New York, it often meant heels and tight dresses and money.
Theatre's still expensive compared to downloading on Netflix; that has to be addressed. It doesn't mean it has to be over-subsidised by the state, but it's something we're trying to figure out.
We didn't go to Broadway musicals when I was growing up; it was too expensive.
People bursting into song in unison and then pointing it at me is maybe the worst thing I can think of, never mind that you have to pay good money to go be yelled/danced at.
One time, a hedge fund gentleman in Connecticut brought in a bunch of professional wrestlers and myself at a very hefty price for his son's 11th birthday.
