What I loved about playing Ms. Albright in ‘Love, Simon’ is that, so often, when we speak of allies in the queer community, we don’t really get to see what it means be an active ally. I love that she can step into this world with these kids and be a truth teller.
But we had a fantastic coach, Simon Clifford, who runs a British football youth game which teaches Brazilian techniques – which is what we wanted to incorporate into the film. And some of those things we eventually got in.
The thing that is so touching about – I can come right up and call him Mr. Simon. The thing that’s great about Mr. Simon is he really uses the audience as a partner, and they tell him what’s working and what’s not. So he’s always working on a play.
I love Soundgarden, I love Rage Against the Machine, Simon & Garfunkel.
I have the most eclectic music taste out there. I can be listening to an indie pop song just as easily as I could be listening to a Carly Simon song from the ’70s to a country song.
It’s movies like ‘Love, Simon’ that are so pivotal because it’s this sweet rom-com that you would watch about a straight couple, but it’s two guys. It feels natural and real and just charming. I would love to see more movies like that.
For me, Paul Simon has always been an incredible songwriter, as he writes very complicated songs that sound very simple, and he makes it look so easy when it’s not.
I love to speak to Brad Haddin, Simon Katich. All different people. Quality people with opinions I can trust.
I talk to Simon, I write to him. I never used to write a diary. But now I’m writing a diary to him. I think it’s not just me, but lots of others, family and friends, can still feel him around.
Historians turning their hands to fiction are all the rage. Since Alison Weir led the way in 2006, an ever-growing number of established non-fiction writers – Giles Milton, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Harry Sidebottom, Patrick Bishop, Ian Mortimer and myself included – have written historical novels.
A great friend and mentor, Simon de Pury, invited me to be auctioneer at Phillips de Pury, which was a great honor.
Wikipedia’s a collaborative experiment akin to Simon Winchester’s account of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary in ‘The Professor and the Madman,’ which outlines James Murray’s mission to produce the tome in the 19th century.
I think to get Simon Cowell out of his comfort zone would be rather interesting. I don’t know what I would make him do.
Paul Simon is the king!
You know there’s this really strange mystique about Simon and Garfunkel, when they use the amazing mandolin and all the percussive stuff. It sometimes sounds very global.
I studied Paul Simon’s ‘Slip Slidin’ Away’ and ‘Still Crazy After All These Years.’ I wanted to explore adult themes, portraying the hurt that’s in even a good relationship.
My dad was a huge Bob Dylan fan, so we listened to his music, Cat Stevens, Simon & Garfunkel, and all that kind of stuff.
To me, a book is a book. A novel is a novel, and you have hundreds of possibilities, options, and they may all be fine. Charles Dickens or Ingeborg Bachmann, Claude Simon or later writers. The one and only condition is that it has to be good: it has to have quality, substance, atmosphere.
The ‘X Factor’ is the biggest show on TV and the other shows are just copying us with their silly chairs. Simon Cowell is the king of TV and if he’s not involved then it’s not good.
I’ve got some news… I’m delighted to announce that Simon and I are expecting our first child together. I wanted you to hear the news direct from me, obviously we’re over the moon.
Cricket’s in the blood – my dad loves it and my brother Simon played for Middlesex before becoming a radio and TV cricket commentator.
Simon Cowell seems like a very nice guy, but I think he’s a secondhand Mickie Most to be honest.
Simon Monjack had nothing to do with ‘Factory Girl.’ He filed a frivolous lawsuit against us… making bogus claims that we had stolen his script. He held us literally to hostage and we were forced to settle with him as he held our production over a barrel.
While ‘The Wire’ feels startlingly lifelike, it is not, in fact, a naturalistic depiction of ghetto life. That kind of realism better describes an earlier miniseries of Simon’s, ‘The Corner,’ which was based on the book of the same title that he and Ed Burns wrote, set in the same Baltimore ghetto.
One of the biggest obstacles I’ve overcome in my life was thinking I didn’t deserve to be successful. Artistically I’m not as much of a heavyweight as someone like Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell, because I’m not a creator of original music, and I worried about that for years.
I felt a responsibility to Simon and to our kids to be able to live with integrity and not have some strange split psychology of ‘This is who my dad is at home, and this is who he is to the public.’
I’d asked for things like the ‘Footloose’ soundtrack and Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ for my birthdays, but I remember walking what felt like miles to this cassette shop called The Warehouse to buy Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland,’ U2’s ‘Joshua Tree’ and a Roberta Flack album. I had pretty good taste.
My look was even more solidified when I started singing in Greenwich Village with my sister Lucy. We wore matching dresses as the Simon Sisters.
I didn’t know anything about the fashion industry until I met the stylist Simon Foxton on a Tube. I was 16, on my way to Kingsway College, and then my whole world opened up. Before that, like in every African family, you are meant to be a lawyer.
First of all there was a guy named Charles Nicholas, who used to do all of the inking that Jack and Simon didn’t do. Simon used to do splashes and covers, but Charles Nicholas, after a while, did the inside of all of the stuff.
I love Paul Simon… his lyrics.
In everyday life, I’m pretty much T-shirt and jeans guy – a soft LnA shirt, cool APC jeans, Nikes or Jordans. If I’m going to an event I like to wear a suit, sometimes a three-piece. I’m into brands like Simon Spurr – I think he makes great suits – and Dior Homme.
Simon Cowell is trying to get everyone to clone their dogs, and we’ve had our dogs ‘done’ so they can’t have puppies any more. Cloning is like modern day reproducing – reproducing the bits you want.
Carly Simon abandoned the stage for seven years after collapsing from nerves before a concert in Pittsburgh in 1981. When she resumed performing, she would sometimes ask members of her band to spank her before she went onstage, to distract her from her anxiety.
I had actually sent an audition tape for Simon Pegg’s movie ‘Hot Fuzz,’ which came to nothing. Four years after the film released, out of nowhere, I got a call saying the producers of ‘Game of Thrones’ wanted me to play Hodor after they had seen that particular tape.
I’ve actually published two compilations, if only barely. Hire a private detective and possibly you’ll be able to locate them. One was called ‘Violent Screen,’ and the other ‘Now Playing at the Valencia.’ Bantam and Simon and Schuster.
David Simon is a brilliant writer, brilliant at being able to take what is ordinary and make it extraordinary.
I like songs to mean something as well as sound good, and Paul Simon is a maestro. While Art Garfunkel was a voice and moved on to other things Simon remained the genius lyricist and composer.
When I was in school, the first song I learned was of Simon and Garfunkel and The Beatles. I couldn’t even pronounce their names but I was singing ‘Hello Darkness my old friend’ and ‘Yellow Submarine.’
The rest of my family are obsessed by ‘The X Factor:’ I’m intrigued by it, although its musical values are far away from mine, like a cup of tea with 400 lumps of sugar in it. There’s something very strange about Simon Cowell’s lips, isn’t there?
My first albums as a little kid were Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,’ Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Greatest Hits’ – and ‘Workingman’s Dead.’ How many other people still listen to the music they liked at age 12?
Simon Cowell is a pretty rough guy.
My problem with both iterations of ‘Dark Phoenix’ onscreen, the original by Brett Ratner and the newer version by Simon Kinberg, is, I don’t think you can do it effectively in 90 minutes.
When I started work at Simon & Schuster in 1958, each of us got a bronze paperweight on which was written, in raised type, ‘Give the reader a break,’ Richard E. Simon.
Ringo is incredible. He’s the greatest. Simon Kirke is great as well, so is Ian Paice. All of these British drummers from the ’60s are great. They were big influences on me.
I could have a degree in music and come on the show, and Simon could still say ‘You stink’.
You see, I read reviews of people like Paul Simon, and they don’t talk about the fact that he’s looking old or whether he is fashionable; they talk about the music, which is how it should be.
I am a big PETA supporter, and their East Coast headquarters is the Sam Simon building, and their West Coast headquarters is in the Bob Barker building.
I couldn’t imagine a day without music. It relaxes and stimulates me in equal measure and I hate the sound of silence – the concept, I mean, not the track by Simon and Garfunkel.
My expectations for myself were never high. I had a very unusual way of writing songs and of thinking about music. I wasn’t at all like Bob Dylan or Simon and Garfunkel. I was completely different – I didn’t have a David Geffen at my side.
