The funniest thing in the world to me is the idea of a white guy in his thirties going, 'Wait - I'm going to go into hip-hop.'

Ali was the African-American who exulted in saying exactly what he was capable of, and the bouncing-boy braggadocio of hip-hop is impossible to imagine without him. So it makes sense that one of his spiritual children, the sunny-dispositioned rapper turned actor Will Smith, would play him.

One of the funniest things about Mr. Kaufman is that all of his filmed scripts - 'Being John Malkovich,' 'Human Nature,' 'Adaptation' and now 'Sunshine' - sound like titles from REM's 'Reckoning.'

Well, hip-hop is what makes the world go around.

The thing that's good about Hip Hop is that it has experimented with a lot of different sounds and music.

I dress well. I travel; I seem to be relatively glamorous for a film guy - which, to me, is like being the fastest midget in the circus.