I never think about what big-name actors and filmmakers are worth. I know most of them are loaded but I don’t think about it. I’ll read an occasional Forbes article about who’s the richest or highest paid, but you know me — I try to focus on the purely creative and spiritual, what’s going on inside. At least to the extent that external aesthetic choices are often metaphors for “internal affairs,” so to speak. (Even during my battle with the now-legendary Hispanic Party Elephant, the guy who lived upstairs from my place in North Bergen in ’08 and ’09, it was essentially about sensitivity and spiritualism or rather the lack of as that guy was toxic — he was fucking nowhere.) I know that if I sense that a woman I’ve met is inordinately impressed by financial splendor, I immediately write her off. The important thing is to do what you love and then live with the rewards of that, whatever they may be. Which is what I’m doing, and I’m reasonably happy as a result. Especially since ’06 or thereabouts.
But I have to say there’s something that gets in the way of a film-watching experience when you’ve just read about the salaries and net worth of the actors and filmmakers involved. I’m not saying that knowing this or that actor has an ample income is alienating or off-putting. To me, at least. It’s entirely okay for actors to live well and drive nice cars. But when you’re watching a film about middle-class characters who have jobs and bills to pay and are struggling to some extent without investments or trust funds to lean on, you have to imagine or presume that the actors are drawing from some kind of real-deal, hard-knocks, rough-and-tumble experience to make their performances seem real. Even if the story they’re enacting has little directly to do with money, you still want to imagine that they understand what it’s like to live the life that you and your friends and your parents live. Obviously the vast majority of actors and directors and screenwriters manage to convey that. But knowing that they’re worth $20 or $40 million or $75 million…sorry, but that knowledge becomes part of the absorption process. It colors things a bit.