Smoking

Is stupid. I’ve been doing it in every scene we’ve shot so far, and it’s just awful. Why would anyone do it?

I found out that one of my favourite people in the world does it, and something really upset me about it. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s knowing that in order to be so wreckless with your body shows a disconcern with living?

In a martial arts, physical context, not looking after yourself is suicide. If you’re not at your peak, why bother?

It makes me sad, but then again, so does everything these days.

That’s why my character has to smoke so much. It’s exactly who he is, someone who doesn’t really want to live anyway, and doesn’t even think that they can achieve the higher levels of martial arts, so doesn’t even bother. He’s someone that loves to fail on purpose, because it’s so much easier to deal with than failing by accident.

There’s something more depressing about being passively suicidal than actively suicidal, don’t you think? It’s everywhere though, it’s in smoking, drinking, carelessness – it’s even in the things that distract our thought process’s like television, religion, or just plain old not-trying.

So when people ask if it’s really necessary for my character to smoke so much – well, it is and it isn’t. The whole beauty of it, is that it isn’t necessary at all. That it could just not happen do easily, but somewhere in him he gives up enough to smoke. It’s the best way to show what kind of person he is.