People create a sort of prison for themselves and cut themselves off from the rest of the world. For some odd reason, we get further and further and further away from each other. I think why the movie works is it speaks to all these things. I want better. I want our world and our culture to be better. Not better in terms of bigger houses and faster cars, but better with more love, care, compassion, togetherness, community and respect for each other.
I want you to bring your gifts to the world. I want everyone out there to bring their gifts to the world. I want to bring mine to the world. I want us to celebrate each other and celebrate in a real way – value ourselves in a true way and know our worth just from being born. How do we do that? It’s not going to happen in an insanely capitalist society where it’s dog eat dog and every man for himself. Where if I want to be worth something, I have to shit on you.

I think that’s pretty indicative of Hollywood.

It can be. In any industry, there are great people working within it. Everybody is doing their best. Every single person wants the same thing. They want to be loved. They want to be valued for who they are. There’s this weird freaking psychology that has kept us caged in our own personal prisons away from each other.

It’s easy to say that Hollywood needs a do-over, a revolution of some sort, just like every system – a system based on capitalism gone insane. It’s up to us to either go along with it or ask, ‘what can I do?’ We can counter it with soul. It’s a system that doesn’t really value soul. It values popularity. It values inauthenticity. It values a certain type of physical beauty. It values a certain skin color. It values a certain sex. It values a certain heteronormative way of proceeding. It doesn’t value the diversity that we claim to value.

Everyone is needed. Somewhere we got lost and thought that only some of us are needed. It’s really sad. I feel it myself. I start to feel unworthy if I don’t have this, this and this. I don’t feel like I’m enough if I’m not driving this or if I’m not wearing that. Then I’m like, ‘I’m okay. How do I like me?’ It takes a lot of work for me.

Does it take a lot of work in Los Angeles you mean? Or your general feeling as an actor?

That heightens it. I can only speak personally, but in America, the value system is so based on temptations, money, power, and these false idols that make me feel that if I don’t have this, this or this, I’m not matching up somehow? It’s Willy Loman-ism. It’s Death of Salesman Version 2.0 in 2015. People are taking their own lives and the lives of others in the most horrendous ways. We have to change the feeling in the culture. We can’t just sit back and go ‘whoa, look at these atrocities.’

We can talk about mental illness and we can talk about sociopathy and all those things. There’s a great book about the Columbine shootings that goes into the two boys and who they were. It’s a tragic read. One was said to be a sociopath and the other was just a boy who was looking to have some meaning in his life. Well, I’m going offscript a little.

Let’s do it.

I don’t know anything.

Who really does? Along those same lines, especially with social media and there will be a tragedy of some sort. People will think, ‘well I posted about the tragedy or about the charity work you can do’ and think that’s enough.

Right, right. I don’t do social media, probably for those same reasons. It all feels thin and not deep.

And you don’t want to deal with your stalkers on Twitter?

[Laughs] That’s the other thing. If I was on there, I’d just be obsessed with who liked me. I’d get distracted from what’s real and I’d become more self-obsessed. I don’t want to become any more self-obsessed that what I am [laughs]. I actually want to think about myself less and less. There’s so much noise out there. How do you hear the thing you really need to hear when everyone’s just yelling at each other. How will you hear about your calling or destiny when everyone’s screaming mostly about bullshit. How do I bring myself to the world in an authentic way?