'I’m sure these jerks in the CIA and the FBI have me in their files'

From: F. Murray Abraham, Actor

 

So you're an actor with this incredible reputation and a body of work that speaks for itself, here you are in an Off Broadway play with a famous writer and incredible cast, and you're being paid peanuts. Has the pay scale just gotten worse and worse over the years? Yeah, it has. It's just one of those things. But working people across America have been paid less and less over the years. And while that's happening we have these heads of corporations who are destroying corporations while making billions of dollars. What's going on? Is this democracy? Something's wrong here. It's bullshit, man. It's got to stop. It's got to change. I don't know who or what that change is but we have to do something. I mean, the idea that you believe – as the God I play believes – that you are the only source of truth and integrity and reality, then that gives you the right to torture people and do any damn thing you want because you're above the law. That's what the Nazis did; they said it was there divine right. And we're behaving like Nazis. That's not America, that's not the America my two brothers died for in defense of their country. It's bullshit.

Were they in Vietnam? One brother was, the other brother died in a stupid accident in the Army. My wife's brother also died in a stupid accident in the Army. Both of us lost all our brothers. It's wrong because it accomplished nothing except more money for all the arms manufacturers. I'm talking old talk; I mean you know all this. It sounds like crap but you know it's true.

Absolutely. Do you get involved in any activism? I march, I do speeches. I'm sure these jerks in the CIA and the FBI have me in their files. How boring for them, to have to listen to my conversations. They're probably listening to this conversation. How dull! I'm against war! I mean, come on! I've got friends in the FBI too, by the way.

Is that a fact? I do. Nice people. That's not the point. The point is the powers that be have got to be kicked out on their ass. People like the God I portray in Almost an Evening have got to be given a lesson in humanity. It's not just your way, man. There are other opinions. It's hard to believe, isn't it? I go back to the Aborigines in Australia. I've spent some time there; I really like it a lot. I travel a lot. It would be a wonderful thing if everybody could travel and see how other people live. But the point is that if their culture has been there for over 20,000 years, how dare any Western religion dream that they are the true religion. That's a difficult one for people to swallow.