Quotable quotes from an ex-cop

For reasons I don't fully remember, I recently stumbled upon this (see also below, assuming the embedding works).

(And speaking of stumbling upon, how cool is stumbleupon?)

Anyway, the subject matter here is interesting enough (though I've never seen the film under discussion), but partly I'm just curious to try out the Internet Archive's video posting interface, which I have never used.



And the promised quotes (yes, I watched the whole damned thing):

We did indulge in occasional gratuitous emotional violence, mostly out of boredom.

Film composing is not art, it's craft. [...] Playing in a rock band, that's art. [...] It's your own collaborative artistic vision. So you're an artist. But when I'm scoring a film, there's only one artist, and that's the director.

(Interesting. At the risk of wandering too far from the point here, I feel compelled to cut in briefly and say that "craft" is always what I thought the Police were about. I don't mean that as a critique, necessarily -- I know they had great songs, that they were great musicians, and so on. I was never a huge fan, but I was an appreciative observer of Police-mania, which hit as I was entering high school. But despite my respect for them, the group always reminded me of the real policemen I have known -- more upstanding than artsy.)

[Advice for an aspiring musician:] Get on the mic... cuz the drummer works for the singer. Even when the drummer is the singer.

The Sex Pistols invented this cool thing called punk. And we stole it.

In our day we'd go from radio station to radio station, city to city, and we would meet the local guys, we'd shmooze them, we'd press records into their hands -- and other things -- you know, just a little payola, and you could do it. [...] Breaking in [today], I don't know how you do it anymore.

Q: "You mentioned that you were the can of beans. So why the gym shorts, tee-shirt?"

A: "The short shorts [...] That's what everybody wore back then [...] If I wore those publicly today I'd make some new friends.

Rock and roll is basically the mating dance of the human being. [...] It's human plumage. The purpose of music is to... it's a sex dance. The way we display our wares. Did you ever notice how when music plays people start to shake their hips? They thrust their pudenda at each other? In a way that would be otherwise socially unacceptable? It's all about sex.