CraveOnline: Are you writing any screenplays right now?
Donald Glover: I am, for myself. I’ve been writing a bunch of them for a while, and I’m looking at them, just like, when is a good time for this? But I just kind of leave them. I’m doing a couple.
“Eminem coming out right now would be awful. Everybody would be like, ‘What the fuck? We don’t need this.'”
How do you know when it’s a good time? Is it career-wise, or socially? Like, now is a good time for this kind of comedy?
[Laughs.] When I have the time. I kind of look at my career and myself and my art really just as… People always forget time in the equation of everything. People always forget time is a huge equation. You can do everything “right,” but it’s timing. If it comes out at the wrong time. Eminem coming out right now would be awful. [Laughs.] Everybody would be like, “What the fuck? We don’t need this. What are you talking about?” It’s timing. You have to know exactly… you don’t have to “know” but you have to factor that into the equation. So when I make a piece of art I’m always thinking about timing as well.
I’m picturing whatever you’re writing as going to explode out like Eminem right now. No one’s going to know what the fuck to do with it. It’s going to be that fucking weird.
Kind of weird? I like that kind of stuff though. I wouldn’t call it “The Eminem of Screenplays,” I wouldn’t even know why we’re using him as…
You started it.
I did. But it was a specific that I feel like… I wanted to be a visceral as possible.
I’ve only got one more minute but I’ve just gotta ask, when the Spider-Man thing dropped this month, who was the first person to call you and say, “You gotta get in there?”
[Thinks.] The first person…
Because I know there were a bunch.
My agent! [Laughs.] Who else? Who else, because my parents, they went through it the first time. But my agents were like, “So! So how’s it going…?”
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
