Michael Jackson is so unique, and I look up to him and try to imbibe as much from him and marry it to my own style.
I was contacted through MySpace to come and jam out for Michael Jackson. I thought it was a joke. I forwarded it to my manager, and it actually was legitimate, so I went the next day.
I was on tour with Michael Jackson for a while; I did the ‘Dangerous’ and ‘History’ tours. I was also on tour with Diana Ross.
As a kid, my idols were Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, and I get into crazy races with myself. Raimi was 21 when he made movies, and when I didn’t get ‘Cabin Fever’ made that fast I thought I’d failed.
I dream of collaborating with Q-Tip and Timbaland – it’s all producers. I’d really like to work with Drake and DRAM. The Weeknd would be dope. The list goes on and on. If Michael Jackson were alive, I’d love to collaborate with him.
We did a lot of fight scenes in ‘Hitman: Agent 47,’ so you have to learn repetitious movements to music; otherwise, it’s amazingly boring. Michael Jackson was our savior.
Getting somebody like Phil Jackson to come in and build the team is sort of like getting Einstein to help you with your math homework.
I know Peter Jackson a tiny-tiny bit from interviewing him about the ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies over the years. When I was visiting the set of ‘The Return of the King,’ he let me be an extra so I could see filmmaking from a different perspective. I was a Rohan soldier.
I wanted to be Michael Jackson as a kid.
The artist that had the biggest impact on me was Michael Jackson. He was my Elvis and Beatles. When I was 15, I listened to a lot of Sinatra, but my jean jacket didn’t have, ‘I love Frank’ on it, it had, ‘I love AC/DC’, ‘Guns N Roses’, ‘Pearl Jam’. I thought Eddie Vedder was the second coming.
It’s always a really great feeling when I talk to people who watched ‘Jett Jackson’ because we were the same age. We were all kids. I was 13 when I started working on that show, and that was part of my childhood.
Art morphs with what’s going on in the world. We say ‘Ferguson’; we don’t say ‘Mike Brown.’ Just like we say ‘Selma,’ not ‘Jimmie Lee Jackson.’ There is something startling about the people in a particular place, a city or a small town, rising up and taking to the streets.
When you hire Sam Jackson, he’ll figure out the character, and he’ll figure out the character’s look, and he’ll provide it to you. With Sam Jackson, you basically yell ‘action’, you go get a sandwich, and you come back and yell ‘cut.’
I’m definitely inspired by Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, James Brown, Lauryn Hill.
