HeNeverDiedMovie

HENRY: eyes widen

Oh, Terri's great. RuPaul and I have been friends since 1993. I went to band practice one day in New York, and a tall handsome man is in the lounge, and he said "You're Henry Rollins" and I said "yes" and he said "I'm RuPaul." But he had none of his stuff on. And then you started to recognize him. And he's this incredibly smart, funny, 100% awesome person. He's a 10. He's just AWESOME. So my bandmates come in, and I go "Gentlemen - RUPAUL!" And they're all like wow. So we became friends.

And his people tapped me a few years ago, and were like "Come be on RuPaul's Drag Race" and I was like "Are you kidding me? Done!"

And so he has another show, where you drive around with RuPaul. He has 2 GoPro cams, and you have a bunch of errands, and you do your errands. And he said "Hey, come do this show with me." So we got on the road to do the errands, and he's very worried about my love life, and he was very concerned - that I have that in my life. He wants me to have it. He's genuinely concerned about ME. He's a big hearted guy. He's like one of the coolest people I ever MET. Back in the punk rock days, he would come onstage with voodoo paint on... and so he came over to the office, and met my staff, a woman near Heidi damn near fell over... and so it's a friendship that endure to this day. And his people want me to do that car show again, and I said yeah, so we're working on the time.

So he's just one of my favorite people. And I'm glad someone mentioned RuPaul. Because RuPaul, in my opinion is not only an icon, but in this century, he's been key to helping people overcome their homophobia, the legitimacy of the LGBT world, I mean, it's reality! People are gay! Don't freak out! But RuPaul has helped a LOT of people deal with that, have some fun with that, not fear it, and not fear themselves fearing it - like "my friend's gay, am I okay?" and a year ago, that guy might not have been able to summit that idea. And now they can get to it, because of RuPaul. We will never have any idea, how many people he has helped. He gets letters like I get. We get into heavy conversations. He gets the "You helped me not kill myself, you helped me come out." ALL THE TIME. And he writes them back, and says "Stand up, stay strong." And it keeps people strong.

JASON: It shows humanity.

HENRY: That's the thing, he's a great humanitarian. When you're a six foot two gay guy with a wig on - not everyone's going to be cool with that. He's a brave, amazing person.

I thought about that.

Because I thought Beck did not deserve what he got. He made a beautiful record - like the record, don't like the record, doesn't matter, Beck won. He was voted for victory by his peers. It's not for anyone to interrupt that moment.

I have no doubt that Kanye West could drop me like a bad habit.

But I'd wake up, with a straw coming out of my nose in intensive care. No Doubt.

But if he did to me what he did to Beck - it would go a lot different than it did with Beck. And I'd invest a lot of calories, all the speed and experience I have, to make sure he never, ever forgot me. And I think Kanye West is a lot better than that conduct.

Yeah.

I came up with this idea that - like a lot of bad guys that you want to like - they're not wrong all the time. They eventually have to get thrown in the slammer, or whatever, but you can't help but agree with some of their ethic. He's too extreme, but some of the stuff he says, you think i'm onboard with this guy!

So my idea was this guy who really DOES know something, he's just really excited.

So I had my road manager take my gigmic backstage, I did the lines, I plugged it into my laptop, I auditioned with that in mind - that Zaheer comes from a high-minded concept of how the world should be - he's also very impressed with himself, I sent that in as an Mp3, and I got the part.

HENRY: Well, I was accused of calling Mr. Williams "weak and selfish." Neither of those words were used in the article, nor were they implied. I was a fan of the guy. Really sorry to see him go. In the article, I did ask a question. I said "How could ANYONE leave their kids behind?" And I also said a statement: I said "I don't understand." And I didn't.

And so people - most of the mail I got was from people who didn't read the article, but had read responses from those that had read the article. "I heard you wrote a thing man!"

So... I wrote an apology. But not to the people I angered. But to the people I hurt. Because people wrote me and said "I like you man, not as much as I used to, but what you wrote was hurtful. It hurt me." And I"m not in the business of hurting anyone. I detest that. I don't want to do that. If I make you mad, we can have a nice disagreement, but if I hurt someone, I am sorry. So I wrote 2 apologies, one for my website, and one for LA WEEKLY. One was about 1,000 words, the other was a bit more succinct. I meant it then, and I mean it now. But as far as me always choosing life over suicide, I don't think I will ever be swayed off that opinion. However, I do understand feeling so bad you wanna do it. And I did read all the letters. And I was made to understand that a suicidal impulse is much like temporary insanity, where at the moment, it feels like the only sensible thing. But with suicide, it's a mistake you can never recover from. And as soon as it was explained to me like that - when people were saying that they felt like they were TRYING to do the humanitarian thing, but they failed - I said thank you for that. And I got it. But again, to hurt someone? That is not what I'm about. So I was so sorry, you can't even imagine how sorry I was.

We're basically in a studio setting, most of the time the entire cast would be there. And you read in-order, like a live radio show, and between moments, most of the male actors are incredibly funny, and the first opportunity someone starts joking. Oh, I liked all of them! They're just the nicest bunch of people. In those situations, I'm very shy and I keep to myself. They all sit together before we go in, they're all comedians, and I sit in a corner and study my lines. I say a curt "good morning" and nod my head, and I think they all regarded me as kind of a weirdo, because I just came in and did my work.

I'm just serious when it comes to work. Because they're just fun people, and fun-ny, and they crack each other up, and I can't do that, come in and do heavy speeches that I have to do.

And no! That hasn't happened yet, hahaha!