Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I hate to fly. I'm deathly afraid of it.
I want us to have it all, love and career. It's a struggle sometime to achieve that, but I love the struggle.
Sports also teaches you that it's about the team, and the better your teammates are, the better they make you.
I love writing and directing because it's great therapy. Every project I've done, there's been a personal connection.
I write to music, so every script I have has its own playlist. Music just opens me up to the emotions that I'm writing.
My husband and I are writers, and I wish I could write faster. There are not a lot of movies made with black actors in mind.
A classic is a classic for a reason. Let's try to create new classics. The idea of repeating ourselves drives me a little crazy.
I write to music, and Nina Simone is always on my playlist to write to. I mean, shes inspiring. She's truthful and real and raw.
I write to music, and Nina Simone is always on my playlist to write to. I mean, she's inspiring. She's truthful and real and raw.
There are a lot of aspects of filmmaking that I love, but one of my favorites is in post, finding the right song for the right moment.
Movies have power. Power to impact society and the choices we make. I want to entertain, but I also want to say something to the world.
In film school, I knew I wanted to be a director, but I found out pretty damn quickly that nobody was just going to hand me a script to direct.
Be passionate about your [movie] material, because you're going to have to overcome a lot of "No's," and it's that passion that fuels the fight.
I love movies. And I dig a great love story: the kind that wrecks me, then builds me back up and leaves me inspired. I write what I want to see.
I was adopted by two amazing people: a Salvadoran mother and a white father who were incredibly supportive of me and my work. I am eternally grateful for them.
Some of my favorite films are musicals, like 'Walk the Line,' 'The Rose' and 'Lady Sings the Blues.' I just love the way the music and the story fuel each other.
The thing is I write to music, so every script I have has its own playlist. Music just opens me up to the emotions that I'm writing. It's just a pretty cool thing.
There are so many romantic comedies made, but very few dramas or love stories. And with a love story, you have to take time to develop three-dimensional characters.
There's a great deal of women in film school. I was not the only woman in my class at UCLA. When I went through the Sundance program, it was half women and half men.
Improv is a very big thing for me. The thing with actors is I do not understand at all how they do what they do. I'm fascinated by it, and I have such a respect for it.
As an audience member, if I go to a film, and I am watching two actors, and they're kissing, and it looks like they don't even want to be kissing, it just takes me out of the film.
I don't want people to go to a film of mine because they feel guilty, like, 'I have to support it because there's black folks in there.' I want them to go because it's a good movie.
I grew up with white parents and until after college, it was a lot of confusion, especially because I grew up in an all-white area. So I never looked around and saw anyone who looked like me.
I grew up with white parents, and until after college, it was a lot of confusion, especially because I grew up in an all-white area. So I never looked around and saw anyone who looked like me.
I was so fortunate to get the opportunity to be a writers' apprentice on A Different World. It was my favorite show. So to go from watching Dwayne and Whitley to writing for Dwayne and Whitley was incredible.
'Beyond the Lights' was my fourth film. I gained a lot of knowledge, and I'm excited to share that with young filmmakers because I know how lost I was coming out of film school with that question of 'What's next?'
I'm very shy. But as a director and especially a female director, absolutely: How I used to walk on the court is how I walk on set. And I have to - I mean, I'm controlling 150, 200 people, and everything is on me.
'Black film,' that term allows studios to just marginalize a movie and say, 'We've made our black film. We've made our film with people of color in it,' as opposed to, 'I just feel like people of color should be in every genre.'
I just remember when I came out of film school - and I loved film school - that the industry was such a mystery. How to break in, and once you are in, how to make a film; that is such a large undertaking. There are thousands of pitfalls.
Everything I've written has been personal and touched on things that I needed to deal with in my personal life. So I just feel that writing is great therapy, and the best writing comes from truth, and so I mine my life constantly for that.
What we were most hoping to achieve with Shots Fired: empathy for all of the characters and conversations about our criminal justice system, which is broken on every level, from the street all the way up to the highest level of government.
On my set, people have to respect the actor's process. I totally respect what actors do. I give them whatever time they need, and I never scream out directions from the camera. I take the time to walk up to them and talk to them personally.
I remember sitting in the theater watching 'Bridesmaids,' and I'm doubled over laughing, and then I'm crying in the same movie. It's the overwhelming feeling, as I'm looking up and seeing these women, and I'm realizing how rare it is to see that.
Twitter and social media have so changed the game for filmmakers, but especially for artists. It shrinks the world and gives chance to feel like they know you. But it's a blessing and a curse. It can help build you up, but there's also such anonymity.
If I get a note on my script or my films, what I say to a studio executive is that, 'You know, this is the film of my legacy, and I never want to be sitting in a theater looking up on the screen and seeing something that I don't believe in.' I will never do that.
Talent has no gender. People are hiring young male directors right out of film school, off of a student film or off of a film at Sundance for millions of dollars. You can do the same with a female. It's not a risk about the work if you respect the film that they made.
Films really can change a conversation and change someone's thinking and perception, especially with people of color at the center. It rarely happens. I think it's important for both the community but also the world to see people of color in all genres, especially love stories.
We think of Shots Fired as almost an autopsy of Ferguson that shows the events from every street in the house. And, in dealing with these two murders of a black victim and a white victim, we show the ways that communities and the media deal with victims differently based on race.
A Different World was run by black women, Debbie Allen and Yvette Lee Bowser. Lead writer Susie Fales-Hill was a hero of mine, because she was 28 when she was running one of the top shows on television. Going to work every day and seeing black women in charge made that normal to me.
When 'The Cosby Show' came out, and everyone was up in arms about 'The Cosby Show' and that it was reflecting a world that didn't exist - but I knew black doctors. And I knew black lawyers. And I knew families that, you know, had a mother and a father and kids that were well-behaved.
I was adopted by a Salvadorian mother and a white father. Growing up having complete identity crisis. Then my search for my mother and trying to find out why I was given up, and how could a mother give up a child, then finding out the circumstances of my birth was pretty traumatizing.
Oh my God, I love UCLA so much. Their film school is great because it's unstructured, so there's a freedom to fail in there and just tell your story, and everybody makes a film. It's so important to have that freedom in film school because that's what you're there for: to learn and make a film.
There is a perception within our community and the world that black people don't love each other. That we don't fight for each other. That perception is so dangerous. We need positive images to counter the negative portrayals we see every day. And positive doesn't mean perfect. Perfect is boring.
I want my work to always be hopeful, in the end. You're giving me two hours, and, in Shots Fired's case, 10 hours of your life. I don't want you to ever leave something I've done feeling worse than when you came in. I hope the work can be aspirational, and aspirational doesn't have to be corny at all.
'Out of Sight' is one of my favorite films ever. Love Steven Soderbergh. 'Goodfellas' was a huge influence on me in terms of the use of camera. 'Black Orpheus,' a beautiful love story that very few people actually have seen, and that was an influence on 'Beyond the Lights,' too, in terms of the look of the film.
When killings of black by policeman happen, there's the victim, there's the family, there are the police, there are the politicians, and there is the community. Everybody is affected. Everybody has a point of view. We really wanted to dig into that and get to know all these different people that are changed by it.
'Beyond the Lights' took incredible fight to get made. Four years of writing and two years of overcoming 'no.' Every studio balked. Twice. But I kept fighting. What gave me the courage was 'Love & Basketball.' Every studio turned down that film, too. But I never gave up because I believed in it with my whole heart and soul.
People often ask me if I feel discriminated against as a black female director. I don't. I'm actually offered a ton of stuff. But I only want to direct what I write. And I prefer to focus on black female characters. What's most important to me is to put characters up onscreen who are not perfect, but who are human and flawed.
Growing up the way I did, it was tough being one of only a few black people in the town and in school. What my upbringing got me is never feeling completely safe emotionally. Never knowing when something racial was going to pop off based on how I look. So that's something I've carried with me personally and is reflected in my work.
With 'Love & Basketball,' I played ball my whole life and did track at UCLA. So, I'm an athlete. And it was very important for me to get it right. I started with casting: As an athlete, there's nothing worse for me than watching a sports movie and the woman that they hire can't run or can't shoot. It sets women's sports back years.