Michael Bastian Quotes

I would dream. I focused all my attention on going to America. The subculture, James Dean, the rock n' roll, the beat writers.

There's a wealth of information on James Dean, and everybody has an opinion on him. James Dean made some kind of impression on everybody.

To be honest, I've made a game out of trying to live through my James Dean, Janis Joplin, Freddie Prinze, Jim Morrison period, those demons that we all have that we're either successful or not at making work for us rather than destroy us.

The whole idea of rock and roll lifestyle is a cartoon. It's a caricature. And at times, it's made up of people emulating others; a few who actually live that lifestyle and many who claim to live that lifestyle.

I didn't go Hollywood on the outside with flashy cars, upstairs maids and mink-covered bathroom fixtures. I went Hollywood on the inside, and that's worst of all. I tried to avoid being natural. I lowered my voice. I copied the mannerisms of other stars. I struck poses.

Steve McQueen was from a time when you didn't know every little dirty thing about our public figures. He and James Dean were very mysterious, archetypal American heroes.

My advice, Be healthy, reach your own goals and don't be afraid to impersonate a SNL star.

Everyone should see Hollywood once, I think, through the eyes of a teenage girl who has just passed a screen test.

I used to skip school and paint my face with Ace Frehley Kiss make-up.

I'd say James Dean is someone that's really inspired me. Just the fact that he did only three movies before he died at such a young age, and yet everyone knows who he is. It really blows my mind.

I love Los Angeles, and it's been very good to me, but if everyone is running around telling the stories, who's living them? You don't play characters that are celebrities - you play guys who know what to do when their septic tank's blocked.

I myself am a great James Dean fan. He had this aura and enigma about him.

I don't wanna be a rock star. I don't believe in rock stars. If you really examine what goes with being a rock star, I've avoided that really well.

You can't have rock and roll without drugs, you can't have rock and roll without sex.

I was just thinking of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe and how young they were when they died. I would like to be a pop icon who survives. I would like to be a living icon.

Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.

Drugs, sex, booze, all the stuff that we wanted to do. The problem was that we didn't want to learn the top 40 'cause most of the music was awful and we had this other idea about what we wanted to do.

I was the girl in the black leather jacket with the black fingernails, picked up after school by guys with loud cars and motorcycles. I carried straight-A grades, but I had a little trouble with rules. I tended to have a bit of an authority problem.

I wanted to make an image for myself as an outlaw type. A kind of rock 'n' roll sensibility.

Ever since Marilyn Monroe was transformed from one of the prettiest girls you could ever hope to see into an icon, everyone has been trying to repeat that icon. And now the entire industry is filled with, and by and large run by, wannabes.

Ignoring fame was my rebellion, in a funny way. I was insistent on being normal and doing normal things. It probably wasn't advisable to go to college in America and room with a complete stranger. And it probably wasn't wise to share a bathroom with eight other people in a coed dorm. Looking back, that was crazy.

At one point or another, everybody gets called 'the new James Dean.'

I'm not James Dean. And no one else is, either.

I've been riding motorcycles since my early 20s, and I loved the hipness of the subculture.

What I didn't realize is, getting out to L.A., you realize how normal it is, especially if you go eat or have dinner in West Hollywood: kind of everybody is somebody out there.