INTERVIEWER: You seem very much aware of the world around you. PHOENIX: I’m quite in love with the human race and this planet that we live on and I see life as fresh and beautiful, not because “I have the world in my hands,” but because it’s just my reality. I also get very frustrated with the pace of life and the way the world goes. I want so badly for people to communicate with each other. With all this technology, is this the best we can do? It’s depressing. But there’s also an optimistic side of me that believes that we live in an incredible time and that if we all come together on the important issues and stand up for our rights, as Bob Marley said, we could really accomplish a lot.
INTERVIEWER: What would that be for you?
PHOENIX: One thing I would like to do when I have the money is buy thousands of acres in the Brazilian rain forest and make a national park, so no one can bulldoze it (in order) to put a McDonald’s there. I guess people find security in a Big Mac, but that’s our oxygen! And the mass slaughtering of animals is a chickenshit approach. I can’t understand the farmer who raises his cow and then rips it’s throat and eats it.
INTERVIEWER: You offer a positive role model for young people, not only by virtue of the ideals you espouse, but, on a different level, by the very characters you play. This will probably be more so than before because of young Indiana Jones.
PHOENIX: Yes, but it angers me that in this society we’re trained from a very young age, watching television, to swallow preconceived ideas of what is the ideal man or ideal woman. It’s prejudice, really. Many people overcome it, but so many remain oppressed if they’re not happy with their looks, if they don’t look like Robert Redford,. It’s a shame, because they shouldn’t be. When I was younger, I was worried about how others viewed me and if I was good enough. I realize now that you can’t mold an image or try to be something that you are not. As far as being an actor is concerned, your work really speaks for itself.
If you have a compassionate heart, if you can feel the pain of the lonely, of the rejected, of the animals, then you will have friends. People will come and warm themselves by the fire.
—Sereno Sky, author of the Hippie novels “Lonely Traveller 1 and 2 (via hippieseurope)
‘Hilda’ was a popular plus-size calendar girl in the 1950s. Illustrator Duane Bryers wanted to draw a ‘plumpy gal pinup’ but wasn’t sure how to sell a plus-size lady, so he portrayed her as a charming, playful, clumsy, barely-dressed redhead. The Hilda calendar series was successful for over three decades, and she’s now resurfaced as a social media icon. Source
