Elijah Wood is one of Hollywood’s absolute anomalies. He began his career as a child star in the 1990s and has blossomed into a truly talented leading man. He picks his roles carefully and almost always delivers a top notch performance. His latest film Set Fire to the Stars is based on true events and stars him and Welsh actor Celyn Jones  as poets John Brinnin and Dylan Thomas respectively. It’s a sort of buddy drama and showcases both actors’ strong acting chops. I recently sat down with the actors to discuss the film. Here’s how it went:

Have any of you ever met one of your idols, only to be let down?

Elijah Wood: Happy to say, I haven’t! I’ve not been let down. I think I have a relatively healthy amount of realistic expectations when it comes to meeting people. I don’t build people up too much and expect them to exceed or meet those expectations. I don’t know, I have a relatively realistic perspective. So yeah, no, I’ve never been disappointed terribly, and certainly not people I didn’t care for. I didn’t think I would care for them.

Celyn Jones: Yeah, then they wouldn’t be your idols!

E.W.: No, not at all, no!

C.J.: I am so disappointed with you! (laughs) But I’ve never thought of that. I’ve met some wonderful people. I’ve got a huge imagination, so I remember as a kid always being disappointed wherever I went because it always seemed better in my mind. (laughs)

So I wanted to ask you guys, did you ever have a friend who fell apart with alcohol and drugs? I mean, maybe not to that extent, but have either of you known someone like that?

C.J.: I’ve known people who have definitely had their finger on the self-destruct button, and I think Dylan’s behavior, yes, there’s booze in the equation. There’s drink in the equation, of course, but there’s also people in the equation and whoever he’s round, and that scene in the movie when Dylan says all those rude limericks in Yale, he is sober at that point. He’s been drunk, and he’ll get drunk after it, but at that point, he’s sober and sticking up for John, so his behavior wasn’t just always dictated by booze but definitely certain surroundings when there is unfairness in play or an expectation in play. I’ve known people who definitely had their finger on that pulse, where they might take it a bit too far. Yeah, I suppose I have, too.

E.W.: No one where they seemed like they were spiraling out of control, but certainly people that like to have a good time and would mix drink with a gregarious personality. It could be very entertaining until it’s not, I suppose.

There are so many child stars that fall into that trap.

E.W.: Sure.

You didn’t.

E.W.: I did not, no.

That’s good!

E.W.: Yeah, thank you! (laughs) I don’t deserve a medal or anything.

Do you have any vices at all?

E.W.: Not really.

I’ve watched a lot of interviews with you and you seem so stable and happy.  I mean, you love your mom.

E.W.: Yeah, those are all true things! (laughs)

C.J.: You sound horrible. (laughs)

E.W.: Yeah, it’s so boring. No, I’m kidding, I’m kidding.

C.J.: No, it’s the, it’s the angriest man in the room is the one that is most remembered, isn’t it?  Bad behavior sticks and all those sorts of things and that, you know.  He’s a cool, easy going guy.

E.W.: Well thanks.

C.J.: Yeah (laughs) It must be hard.  People have pressures everywhere.

Geniuses are self-destructive, I’m generalizing too much, but they can be.

E.W.: Certainly, linked to it, yeah.

So would you say your characters, both of you, was there something positive you learned from the real person? 

C.J.: Umm some positive.  I definitely come out of the process with some love for the human side of Dylan, you know, I love the way that he would be able to walk into a room and see, you know, he wouldn’t just see a waitress and two old ladies and he wouldn’t just see a drunk at the bar, he’d see hope and dreams and passion and feeling and a story and someone to listen to.  He used to say he went to the pub to talk first.  So um you know I sort of came out of it enlightened playing Dylan and the film that we made of the sort of person that he is and with genius and self-destructiveness, you know, the thing about… we all… we know that, but geniuses are well known, aren’t they, you know, but I suppose there are people working in all kinds of areas that would have those sort of traits, but is it about asking questions?  I don’t know.  Is it about looking for answers and getting closer to a personal truth that kind of creates bad behaviors?  I don’t know, it is an interesting sort of debate, but I definitely took something away from our mad ride.

E.W.: Certainly, certainly.  Our 18 days in Swansea, Wales.

C.J.: Yeah, yeah. Did you know that?

E.W.: We shot in 18 days, the film.

No, no I did not.

Tight schedule.

E.W.: Yeah, oh yeah especially when it’s all dialogue, (laughs) yeah, yeah, it was intense.

What was it like smoking all those cigarettes?

E.W.: Wow, there’s a real story there.  I’m a smoker, so Cel smokes on occasion.

Aha, vice. (laughter)

C.J.: Occasional like the table, that’s me, yeah.

E.W.: Yeah, the funny thing about shooting in Wales is by law you’re not allowed to smoke on set indoors.  So if it’s indoors it has to be an electronic cigarette, so they have this whole system where they make it look like a real cigarette but it’s an e-cigarette it’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever seen in my life. (laughs)

C.J.: If you’re outside with herbal cigarettes, they look realistic, if you’re indoors we could have a herbal that was blocked and was burning on the side…

E.W.: Oh with wax on the end.  Oh silliness.

C.J.: We did not inhale (laughter) and then we had these hybrid ones which but you would end up doing this strange sort of and turn over (makes sucking noise) and action and they go (makes blowing sound) as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

(laughter)

C.J.: We became smoking ninjas. And then they’d yell cut and we’d go for a real cigarette.

E.W.: It’s true.  Enough of this s#$%. So funny.  Yeah, it was a whole productions, quite literally dealing with all the smoking in the movie, cause it wasn’t as simple as just lighting up cigarettes it was a whole thing.  But there’s something so great, I mean that we captured a sort of the romanticism I think of black and white cinema and 1950 America, you know, everyone smokes and it catches the light in a certain way, I mean there’s something kind of iconic and romantic about that imagery and it was fun to partake in that that atmosphere.

C.J.: There’s a couple of moments where I see the movie and, like, we’re sitting on the boat and smoking and I thought “I always wanted to be in a movie like this.”

E.W.: Right!?

C.J.: Yes!  I was just taken out of myself going, “Here I am, smoking in a movie.” It’s great.

E.W.: Yes!  That’s great.  Yeah there’s a novelty to it for some funny reason.

C.J.: I know it’s hilarious.

E.W.: Yeah, to smoke on film.

C.J.: Yeah Yeah

(laughter)

E.W.: It’s very funny.

So that was definitely a challenge, are there challenges besides the smoking e-cigarettes?

E.W.: Oh, in this film?  Absolutely, I mean, again we had 18 days to shoot this, which is no time considering, you know, how many…there’s not a lot of characters, I mean you know a lot of people populate the world and come in and out of the story but it’s a lot of pieces and a lot of dialogue and trying to encapsulate that in 18 days is a real struggle.  Everyday day mattered, there wasn’t an easy day, there wasn’t a sort of, “Oh we’re only doing like pick-ups today,” or “There’s no dialogue today!” (laughs) That just didn’t exist.  It was every day, we were shooting something imperative to the storytelling.

C.J.: There’s a crucible of the story where, there’s a huge horror story, you know the story with the horror stories section and I don’t know how many pages that scenes was; 10, 12 pages…

E.W.: Something like that

C.J.: Yeah and you talking for a like a third…

Yeah, that shot’s really long.

C.J.: It’s amazing and he did it all and it’s amazing and we’re in this log cabin and it was always like there was this thing coming, you know it was like Omar Sharif coming.  You know this scene is coming, it’s going to happen, here it comes!

E.W.: It was looming on the mountain on the horizon and it was… yeah

C.J.: Yeah, and then it happened and it just worked, didn’t it?

E.W.: Yeah it did.  Well Shirley Henderson sort of started it off and she was so extraordinary that it kind of inspired everything, you know.

C.J.: Kev and Shirley just came in with this sort of energy.

E.W.: It felt like we were making another movie at that point, you know, because we were alone for quite a bit prior to them coming in and then suddenly like the characters in the film brought this energy and new life into this world and it was very much like what the characters were experiencing which was kind of wonderful.

C.J.: We were like a kind of Bergman sitcom. (laughter) We were in here, two poets in a lodge.  Here’s the episode where Shirley and Stanley come.  There’s the episode where they go to the diner.  We sort of latch onto people like driftwood, “Oh don’t go” and they’d come and…but that was for us, you know, such highlights the spotlight would kind of swing on this amazing ensemble that all came to be part of this film and Swansea is a small city in south of Wales and it is where Dylan Thomas is from and it’s, you know you don’t go to Swansea and think “hey, it’s just like Manhattan.” You know, it’s not all (laughs) but there are places in the film that Dylan used to go to, so the diner is a café that is still open 6 days a week and it’s where Dylan Thomas used to have his breakfast.  The bar where Elijah had to drink the Guinness with the raw egg in it and stuff like that, that’s the bar that Dylan used to drink in so we’ve got this Dylan Thomas fingerprints throughout the film which have added to it a sort of richness to it a sort of making a film about Dylan Thomas in Swansea set in America and now we’re in America showing this film it’s kind of… you know, it’s good so you know…

Do you know how many liberties they took, you know, writer, director, with the real story to make it work in a real movie?

C.J.: Well, we wrote it very quickly and the it was taken from John Brinn wrote a book called Dylan Thomas in America which was an account, and Elijah describes it as a sort of first kiss-and-tell kind of book, which is right. And he got a real hard time for writing that book because people just really didn’t put a book out like that at the time but this chapter, our film, spans about 7 and a half pages of that book and that’s it. But when Andy Goddard and I, Andy Goddard who directed the film and we co-wrote the script we saw the 7 pages of John bundling Dylan into a car and taking him to a log cabin and having a night with Shirley and Stanley and having and going to a diner and then getting ready for Yale, it was sort of like a boxer and a trainer, and we just thought that was so it had everything, it had the whole America John and Dylan story in that week, and we just thought that’s a film we’d really like to make.  So the liberties are taken in that we used that chapter and the things happen in the film as they happened, and I suppose we took liberties in the supporting characters we thought of the type of person that Dylan and John might have met.

How did you guys prepare for your roles? Was there a lot of research done?

C.J.: I ate a lot of cake. (laughter) And dyed my hair, since it was black and white, dyed my hair like a ginger and blonde eyebrows because if you put black and white it looks very, very dark and so like a monkey, I looked like a monkey. No but preparation was getting into the, you know, all the research and the writing and the creating and the type of film we want to make and then giving ourselves over to the process and giving ourselves over to the actors that we get to work opposite and then sort of picking up those clues that kind of you get from research and, I call them clues that Dylan left by the way he described himself so you know he called himself like an unmade bed and stuff like that and his accent was Cambridge Welsh, too Welsh for the English doing it so all these things, that was my preparation.

E.W.: Yeah and mine was kind of doing kind of research on John Malcom Brinn which turned up a lot of dead ends.  There’s not a lot of biographical information out there about the man which in itself is very telling ultimately.  A very private individual, very buttoned up, didn’t want a lot of attention.  And I think increasingly so after the release of the book and kind of the perception he received, and the negative reception that he received from having at least a book that sort of told these more tawdry tales of this man.  And you know in also reading Dylan Thomas in America you can glean a lot about who he was as it pertains to his love of Dylan.  It was kind of… it was like the clues and the blanks was where I kind of discovered who John was, funnily enough.

C.J.: Yeah, cause I remember you talking about reading that book and then asking the questions why he wrote that book and I suppose in those questions they were the clues.

E.W.: Right, totally, totally.

C.J.: Rather than that is the book because no film is a one-stop shop and no book is a one-stop shop, it’s just as we were saying earlier it’s like that William Blake “see the world in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour,” it’s about this slice of life that’s a microcosm of two men at the probably apex of their relationship and the sort of thing that, I mean, at least they were together for 3 other American trips after this movie, and John was very intrinsic…

E.W.: And John went to London as well and to Wales.

C.J.: And they were together but we think they probably weren’t as close I feel after this Yale thing John maybe protected himself maybe a little bit more from the whirlwind that sort of is Dylan and John, you say in the movie, “You’d better get that train so you can terrorize somebody else” and when we were writing the script, we felt, well, Dylan doesn’t change, it’s important that Dylan doesn’t change, Dylan is Dylan.  Dylan arrives as Dylan Thomas and he leaves as Dylan Thomas.  But John, you know not to be the man who quotes things all the time but it’s like that T.S. Elliot, “Everyman goes on a journey and when they arrive back from that journey they’ll be back where they started but they will know the place for the first time.” And for us it was like John is back where he started but he knows the place for the first time and he’s ruffled, he’s learned, he’s been beaten…

E.W.: Hmmm… his foundation has been shaken.

C.J.: And that was sort of vital for us and I think you see that in Elijah’s face at the end of the movie, you know he just looks like a man who just learned.

E.W.: And been through something?

C.J.: And been through something, heartbroken, yeah.

It is a great contrast in the opening shot of you, you are so buttoned up and so clean and so very like put-together and that last shot of you, you finally have stubble and your hair is not slicked back and you’re like… (laughter) and you’re exhausted.

E.W.: In control, out of control.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.  That’s awesome.

(laughter)

C.J.: I suppose that was the price isn’t it?  That is the price it’s like you wanna go stand close to the sun it’s going to be hot, you know, and I love that description.

E.W.: Yeah, it’s great.

C.J.: Can we change the poster?

(laughter)

So Elijah, you’ve certainly come a long way in your career since Back to the Future 2.

(laughter)

E.W.: Well, yeah

Looking back do you have a favorite role or anything that’s stands out?

E.W.: Oh they all stand out in various reasons, god, my life has been so extraordinary and all the different experiences that I’ve had and in some ways that last 10 years in my life and the last 5 years of my life have been in some ways the most gratifying and satisfying and that’s a hard one man.  Yeah, you know, working in Barcelona with Eugenio Mira on Grand Piano was a real special experience for me.  I love that film and I think Eugenio is a genius and living in Barcelona and making incredible friends on that, the creative team was really special so I have a real fondness for that experience.  You know Lord of the Rings is probably one of the greatest life experiences that I’ll ever have.  Nothing can really compare to that nor will it ever.  But I also continue to be surprised at what is around the bend in life.  I don’t, you know, the way I live life is not without… I don’t live with any planning or I don’t really look ahead too often, which makes life really exciting because I don’t have expectations I only look to have experiences and that can be a variety of different things not just specifically acting in film and as a result life tends to be very interesting because I’m sort of open to anything, you know, life experiences.

Any other art forms or mediums you want to get into?

E.W.: Well, I mean I DJ on the side and play records and that is very gratifying.  I’ve been doing that, been involved and in love with music for a long, long time but taking that more seriously and sort of traveling and growing up and that kind of thing.

C.J.: I’m looking forward to the Elijah Wood directorial debut.

E.W.: Oh, I’m very much looking forward to that as well, thank you.

C.J.: I think you’re amazing.

E.W.: Thank you, I would love to do that.

From the more commercial experiences or um blockbusters or whatever you call it what made you decide to take on this project because it’s independent?

E.W.: Yeah, well, I often don’t really draw a distinction between the two worlds even though there is a great distinction between the two worlds.  Because I’m just drawn to material so that material is in a space that is not defined by its size.  So I’m just drawn to something that just moves me and that can be something on a large scale or on a small scale and more often than not I’m drawn to stories that tend to exist in the independent sphere because those are the kinds that of stories that, you know, you can take more risk, you can make a black and white movie about Dylan Thomas and John Malcom Brinnin and not so much in a major studio space so you know it’s risk and pushing things that tend to excite me more than being playing it safe and independent films tend to take those risks so I’m more often than not drawn to that, but size has nothing to do with it, you know.  If there was a film that came along that I was moved by and it happened to be large then that is what it would be.  Whatever it is to facilitate the story and the vision whether on a small or large scale and in some ways it is very different and in some ways it’s not very different, there are financial issues on a large scale too and it is problem solving and it is a group of people running into all sorts of issues and over time and budgetary constraints and just as there are on independent films.  The thing I do like, in fact that I prefer in an independent level is that the teams tend to be smaller so people are a little bit more unified, quite largely because it’s a smaller team and because everyone is there for that reason.  No one is there to make money, there’s not a lot of money in independent cinemas so the people that are there are a great equalizer they are all kind of there as equals trying to achieve this thing ad I like the energy around that.  I find that exciting.

Can you talk about your current and upcoming projects?

E.W.: Sure, I did this film called The Trust with Nic Cage in February which is a heist movie, we play two cops, perform a heist and it was so much fun.  And I did a movie called Cooties that I also produced and that is coming out in September and it’s a horror-comedy about a virus that affects children that haven’t gone through puberty yet.  Turns them into savages, you know.  That one is written by Leigh Whannell who did Saw and Insidious and he and Ian Brennan co-wrote, or co-created Glee so it’s the minds of Saw and Glee, f$%#^%…

C.J.: There’s love child!

(laughter)

E.W.: It’s pretty awesome.  Anyway, it premiered at, not this last year, but the year prior at Sundance and it’s finally coming out this September and we love it and it’s so funny.  And a movie called The Last Witch Hunter with Vin Diesel and Michael Caine and Rose Leslie that comes out in October.

I was surprised to see that you were going to be working with Vin Diesel cause he does different kinds of movies than a lot of your movies…

E.W.: Totally

So was it this movie in his typical genre of like action guy, you know, macho?

E.W.: That’s interesting, I would say it is a hybrid of what you’re familiar with in regards to Vin totally but he’s also a huge fantasy nerd.  He talked to me at length about Tolkien and The Silmarillion and a character he wants to play in The Silmarillion.  So he’s deep, he runs deep and he loves D&D, he’s a big Dungeons and Dragons fan.  That guy is like an old-school nerd.  So the movie in some ways is, the environment of the film, it’s about witches and how they are kind of all around us and in some ways it speaks to that part of him that he probably hasn’t gotten to articulate that much.

So, Celyn what is your next projects that you are working on?

My next projects is I’m doing a couple of independent films in the UK, I’m going to be doing another movie, a bit like Night of the Hunter.

E.W.: Oh, I love Night of the Hunter.

C.J.: And I’ve got a script going to be, Kristoffer Nyholm, director of The Killing the Danish director, it’s his first feature film so I’m going to be doing that so real excited about that and then I’m adapting a novel that just came out so it’s a bit of writing, a mixture and kind of, and I think I’m doing a comedy thing as well, I mean, you know, you do some cool stuff.

E.W.: You’re doing some cool stuff. Yeah man, Jerry Lewis is in that movie with you as well.  That’s pretty awesome.  Jerry Lewis and Nicolas Cage. Jerry Lewis plays Nicolas Cage’s dad.  It’s pretty awesome.

C.J.: But yeah I’ve got all kinds of things, but the beautiful thing about Set Fire to the Stars is that out of it we have, you know, the company that made it we’re making other films together.  So it’s really this kind of family atmosphere that produces absolute trust and we’re like family.

E.W.: Make movies with your friends.  I really believe in that

C.J.: Makes sense.  If you’re going to risk things, if you’re going to risk time and effort and money and really commit to something, then it’s best to do it with the people that you really care about and feel care about you, so Set Fire to the Stars has been a great opportunity for me.  I get to play the part that I have always wanted to play. I got to do the film that we wanted to make.  I got to meet Elijah Wood, just act opposite this man and you know that has been one of the great gifts of all this.  And from this, we have this sort of desire to keep making more.

E.W.: It’s really lovely, it’s been the birth of something else.

C.J.: Absolutely.

What are some ideas of films you would might wanna do together?

E.W.: Together?

What’s next for you guys?

C.J.: We’d love to do something together, you know, that would be great.

E.W.: It’d be awesome.

C.J.: I don’t know, we should do something funny.

E.W.: We should do something funny.  Something maybe without this much dialogue.  Maybe not as serious.

(laughs)

C.J.: Yeah, like a silent movie, maybe we should do like Buster Keaton and Fattie Arbuckle.

Why not Super Mario Brothers?

(laughter)

C.J.: Which one am I? (laughs)

That’d be awesome.

C.J.: I always think if you get a good thing going then you should really stick to it.  Elijah is amazing and one of the best actors I’ve ever worked with but also a great guy.  We had such good fun making it.  And I suppose when you do have such a great experience you want to have another one.  I’ll tell you what blew my daughters mind, is she came to the cinema in the UK, the film had just been out in the UK, and there were three posters outside on the cinema and it was, we were in the middle of Set Fire to the Stars, and Frozen and Big Hero 6 and she went “Daddy, Elsa, Elijah, You, Baymax… (pause) Elsa” (laughs) and that was the moment where like, her world went “this is crazy, that is crazy.”  Yeah, yeah, really kind of blew her mind.

E.W.: That’s amazing!  Wow, that’s really cool.

C.J.: But yeah, isn’t life great?

So do you and Daniel Radcliffe get confused?

C.J.: All the time!  All the time!  It was really, really weird, it was a strange thing, I mean, you get it too.

E.W.: Yeah, I get it too!

(laughter)

C.J.: Yeah, I mean I was just too heavy for the broom.  (laughter) Otherwise it could’ve been me.

E.W.: Yeah, that happens a lot, yeah.

Is it annoying?

E.W.: No, no, I find it really funny and sometimes it allows me to get away because if someone comes up to me and says, you know, are you Daniel Radcliffe?  I can say no and I can just carry on, you know, it’s great.  I answered honestly, I’m not going to correct them, cause that would feel awkward.

C.J.: That would be weird, yeah.

Have you talked to him about it?

E.W.: No, I don’t know him, I’ve met him, but I don’t… haven’t seen him in years.

C.J.: Have you signed an autograph as each other?

E.W.: He has done as me!  He has done as me.  We’ve both independently talked about this phenomena, because he gets me as well.  Which is just very strange.  I mean I see it and I don’t see it.  It’s a funny one.  Cause I think we look very much like ourselves, do you know what I mean?  Seeing him there is no mistaking its Daniel Radcliffe to me, I don’t know how we’ve quite become this amorphous thing.

(laughter)

C.J.: People can’t see…

E.W.: Yeah, it’s like face blindness.

C.J.: Yeah they are like, “You’ve both got eyes.”

E.W.: A little facial hair.  Right.  We were in fantasy pictures, you know, funny.  Yeah.

Make a Face-Off 2?

E.W.: Right right or we can do a buddy comedy together or something, it would be hilarious.  Finally!  After decades!

C.J.: Together at last!

E.W.: Oh god, that sounds like a Funny or Die sketch waiting to happen.

C.J.: Yeah, it’d be like mistaken identity, but neither of you look the same.

(laughter)

E.W.: He was Frodo, he was Harry, they’ve been confused for each other and now they are in a film together!  Minds are going to be blown.

C.J.: You go back home and try to live his life and his girlfriends is going, “But you’re not him.”

E.W.: It is literally a remake of Trading Places.  Or it’s Freaky Friday.  Oh my god, I can see it now.

I think you’ve just written the entire sketch, just call Will, I’m sure it will be fine.  Here’s your next project. You’ll play the butler.

C.J.: Yeah, I’ll be the butler.

(laughter)

E.W.: Radcliffe, Wood, Which is Which?

(laughter)

Which is Which?

(laughter)

The Which Switch, there you go.  It’s rubbish.

Or is it brilliant?

C.J.: Who knows, who knows, we can get there.  That would be funny, a mistaken identity film about people who don’t look alike.

E.W.: Yeah, but that’s sort of akin to like Twins, you know.

Yeah, I know.

They’re making a sequel to that, Eddie Murphy is the triplet.

(groans)

Somethings should just never be touched.

E.W.: I feel like that’s something I hear on a daily basis, they’re making a sequel to that, they are doing a remake to that, I wish that would please stop.

What do you think about the TV shows that are happening right now like where they… Hannibal, True Detective, have you seen these shows where they…

E.W.: True Detective is great.

They are like movies now.  Do you have any favorites?

E.W.: Game of Thrones, True Detective was brilliant, I loved The Killing, yeah, TV is incredible, it’s an exciting landscape because there is great story tellers, great actors, great directors, great writers that are moving to that space and just doing really interesting things and The Killing is a good example as is True Detective, True Detective specifically because it’s really taking a story and telling one story over the course of 8 or 9 episodes and letting it just be that and then switching it up and telling a different story, which is wonderful.  Long-form storytelling that you couldn’t encapsulate into a film but it doesn’t necessarily feel like a TV series either it’s like a long form film, it’s wonderful.

C.J.: More recently something really brilliant.  I loved Mad Men.

E.W.: Same.

C.J.: I loved it and I was with it right to the end and there was just there were these things that would happen in that show and you would go, “Wow Peggy and Pete are in the same room, and we all know something that everyone else doesn’t know.”  You feel like a curtain twitching gossip.  It’s like you were in on all the stuff and I felt like that was a really cool experience and Americans change the game for television, they really have, it’s like if there was a problem it’s just that there is just so many amazing shows out there.

E.W.: Almost too much content now.

C.J.: You have to quit work and just watch TV because it’s all so…

E.W.: That’s what you have to do to catch up.

C.J.: I know, I know, you watch it and go, oh I got eight episodes of that I have got to do because it’s brilliant, it’s consistently brilliant TV and storytelling.

E.W.: Twin Peaks is coming back.

C.J.: Is it?

E.W.: Yeah, David Lynch is back on as director, thank god they sorted that the f$%# out.

Yeah, I was really worried.

E.W.: That was unbelievable.

Don’t do it if it is not him because you can’t…

E.W.: Yeah they wouldn’t have.

Because it’s so iconic.

E.W.: They wouldn’t do that.  And X-Files is coming back for one more season.

They just started filming.

E.W.: Yeah, I just saw a photo on set.  Looks great.  So exciting.

Do you connect with fans on Twitter, Facebook…?

E.W.: I’m on Twitter, yeah yeah.  It’s great, I love Twitter.  I was actually adverse to it for a real long time and I was on Facebook with a private account and I was, I don’t need to be on this, um, medium for which everything that I say can be viewed by other people and I just, I don’t know I just sort of social medium shyness I suppose, and then I realized that it kind of is brilliant.  I’ve totally fallen in love with Twitter, I prefer Twitter to everything.  And I don’t really use it to write about things, like I don’t write tweets, I don’t write about my life or share anything personal, more than anything I use it as a platform to support things that I think are great, you know.  Kickstarter campaigns, films that I think people should see, music that I love, you know, some mild political things that I believe in and it’s fantastic for that and the other thing that is brilliant about Twitter is that it cuts out the middle man so it’s a great place for artists to meet other artists and communicate and this has happened to me so many times where I’ve literally been a part of a creative endeavor as part of meeting on Twitter.  You know I was in a Flying Lotus video, and Flying Lotus asked me to do it via Twitter and I ended up, I had never spoken to anyone on the phone, it was all email and Twitter communication, and they were like, I hope that he shows up to the shoot.  Cause no one had actually spoken to me, I just said I was in, and we ended up shooting this really beautiful video.

C.J.: In 21 characters?

(laughs)

E.W.: But honestly, it’s great in that regard too, it’s a coming together of people sharing ideas.

C.J.: Do you find it, I find it more of a positive space than a negative space.  Twitter, yeah?

E.W.: I think so, I don’t see it.  I find Facebook to be more negative honestly.  People complaining and ranting about their grievances.

C.J.: Yeah, of tiny grievances.

E.W.: Ridiculous grievances.  It’s either that or just all the videos like check this out Buzzfeed f%$ it another f$%^#&@ video to check out.  Facebook is just irritating.