When I was in Philadelphia during the Depression in 1930 or '31, I got a very sad job as a night watchman in a garage. The cars in the garage had been abandoned by their owners, since they had lost their jobs and couldn't keep up the payments.
My job remains the same, regardless of who is on the other side of the garage.
I'm one of those guys who likes to piddle around in the garage and fix stuff.
Anyone driving a 1992 Cutlass, take it back, because I built it.
I used to do stop motion in my own garage and Claymation and all that stuff. That led to doing backgrounds and matte paintings. I started doing matte paintings professionally back before the computer, sort of painting on glass.
All kids love to get dirty, but if I wandered into the garage, my father would say: 'Son, you're not going to have filthy hands like mine. You're going into show business.'
When you're trying to recruit a senior product manager from Hewlett-Packard, he doesn't want to work in a garage.
I'm a pretty intense person at the racetrack, but when I'm not thinking about my race car or in the garage doing my job, I'm pretty laid back, and I like to be organized and do normal things.
I’d been raised to be practical and keep my emotions in check, but I loved cars. That was one of the few legacies I’d picked up from my mom. She was a mechanic, and some of my best childhood memories were of working in the garage with her.
My dad was a big car guy. If you wanted to spend time with my dad, he was working on the car.
