When I was coming up with the Hal Hartley films, I was cast as a no one. I had no name visibility. I was working at a downtown post-performance-art, avant garde theater company and doing a couple things on television. But I was a total unknown.
It's hard to absorb and to allow all that attention and accolades for 'Rent' because the rest of the country doesn't know who we are. Once I walk out of the door of 'Rent,' and I'm on the subway, it doesn't matter. It's an exaggerated sense of fame.
I'm officially near-famous. If you've got four year old kids and you've got cable, then you've got no choice but to know who I am. But if you're one of my peers - a 26-year old guy who lives in Manhattan - you have no idea who I am. I'm only famous if you're four.
People of my generation who became photographers in the late fifties, early sixties, there were no rewards in photography. There were no museum shows. Maybe MOMA would show something, or Chicago. There were no galleries. Nobody bought photographs.
I did my gospel record, but there was nothing really of it. Maybe a hundred people bought it. But it's one of those things on the internet that people find and they make into a big deal.
There are some people who only know me for cornflakes ads, and that's fine. I have a charmed life.
In 1983 I was still playing small to middling parts.
I'm not a household name; I'm just a household name to guitar freaks.
Being famous as a writer is like being famous in a village. It's not really any very heady fame.
I am not in England; I live in the Caribbean. So I am not hungover by prizes and awards because it does not happen very often.
I'm a micro-celebrity, about as small a celebrity as you can be.
It is a good lesson - though it may often be a hard one - for a man... to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.
How big can you be if just the underground niggas know you? You can't buy your mom a house when you just an underground celebrity.
The problem is that mainly the metal press has an interest in Burzum, and the rest of the world... probably hardly even know Burzum exists, and those who do shy away due to my fairly (:-))
Fame is also won at the expense of others. Even the well-deserved honors of the scientist or man of learning are unfair to many persons of equal achievements who get none. When one man gets a place in the sun, the others are put in a denser shade. From the point of view of the whole group there's no gain whatsoever, and perhaps a loss.
To be successful for a moment because of one movie doesn't mean anything.
In France, you can sell a lot, but nobody outside of France ever hears of it.
I am not so famous. I'm known in a few countries like Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and around the Alps. Some climbers in Beijing know my name, and some in America, but I am not really famous. It's very relative, my fame.
It is not possible to be regarded with tenderness, except by a few. That merit which gives greatness and renown diffuses its influence to a wide compass, but acts weakly on every single breast; it is placed at a distance from common spectators, and shines like one of the remote stars, of which the light reaches us, but not the heat.
