Actually, about four years ago I was working in London and someone broke into the house that I was living in and stole my prized Rolleiflex.
But it's a different language and rather than try to make it into film, let it be digital, let it be what it is.
Did you know that I went out and played with Cal Ripken and the Iron Birds? When I read the script and Honus' information, I thought I better get in baseball shape, get my swing and start running the bases.
Everything is so convenient in New York.
For example, Michael Mann's film Collateral - there is certain kinds of stories that lend themselves to digital photography. Some things are very raw stories that digital photography kind of lends itself to.
I always knew I would do something special with my memories of working with Stanley.
I always thought that it was kind of silly that a baseball card could be worth so much money.
I bought all the stuff, but nothing was as satisfying to me as using the Rolleiflex because it was one shot.
I don't think that digital photography is romantic yet. It's not sympathetic the way that film is.
I never set out to be rich and famous. I wanted to follow my own path.
I played Little League and in high school. I played more over the years whenever there was a pick-up game... usually softball.
I've worked with Robert Altman a couple of times too.
If you take 2001: A Space Odyssey as an example of somebody who creates a new language in film by what he was able to accomplish with art direction, photography, lighting, etc., it is still a gold standard for science fiction.
It was the baseball fantasy of a lifetime - to be able to sit on the bench with all those professional athletes. I got to take my son along because I wasn't sure I would be able to play with them.
My diary is a kind of heart-of-darkness story, both (his character) Private Joker's story and my story - of a young man leaving his home and his country and going to meet this very unexpected experience.
My father taught me to paint when I was young with watercolors and so I learned at a very young age the essential elements of the value of light and composition.
My interest in photography really began with the tremendous generosity of my friend Joe Kelly giving me the Rolleiflex to take with me on my trip to London to work with Stanley Kubrick.
Photography is about light and what it does and how it is captured on a piece of negative.
So the thing that's beautiful about the Rolleiflex is that I open the camera up from the top and put my face in and that the camera's all about composition and all about light.
Stanley didn't shy away from true humanity or from the ugliness that all people are capable of.
The experience of using a Rolleiflex camera is very different than using a SLR.
The fact that I happen to be a celebrity who takes pictures is inconsequential to me.
There's a discipline. When you take someone's portrait, you don't have to take 50 photographs, just find that one so that when you release the shutter, that's the image that you took.
They don't have the news media set up in Africa that we do in the United States, where televisions are so accessible and newspapers and magazines are able to educate people.
Think of Frank Capra and Preston Sturges. They used the same actors over and over again.
We should all aspire in life to do a multitude of things well - to be a great father, to be a good husband, to be a good lover, you know, to try to do things the best you can is very important to me.
You hope and pray that you'll get involved with a director that you understand and who has the same sensibility as you do and knows how to push you and bring out the best in you.
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