Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In most science-fiction pictures, the black guy is either an engineer or a radio operator, and he is the first guy killed - gone from the movie.
When I first saw Dick Gregory on television, growing up in Queens, it was startling and amazing, because nobody else was doing what he was doing.
We live in a world where racism hasn't changed at all. It's that old thing of, you know, the more things change, the more things remain the same.
We've all grown up with 'Ozzie and Harriet,' 'Father Knows Best,' 'Eight Is Enough.' White families have always represented the universal family.
Television has been really good to me in terms of the roles I've been able to get on TV as opposed to the roles I've gotten in film and in theater.
I want to put something on the screen that audiences have never seen black actors do before, roles that will widen views of who African-Americans are.
With any villain, you have to see things from their point of view and understand that they think what they're doing will make the world a better place.
Because of 'Terminator 2,' you get not pigeonholed but circled as one of those guys who can understand their way through a movie like that and hold it down.
Hollywood, it seems, recognizes black film and black filmmakers, but like a distant lover, never close enough or long enough to forge a meaningful relationship.
One, I had never worked with John Woo before and I wanted to see what that was like, and two, Ben Affleck is a friend, so it would be fun to work with him again.
I think that's what good writing is all about. You go into a genre to talk about other things. Tolkein created a whole world to talk about the world he lived in.
Part of the decision I made was to move very fluidly from one medium to the other, and so it has stayed as part of who I am. I don't know if I have a preference.
The more you know about the world, the more resources you have in terms of things that can inform your character or the circumstances that surround your character.
When I started, black people were either victims or they were the perpetrators; they were the boogie men who jumped out of the bushes and did terrible things to you.
I've played good guys for most of my career, and when I came out to California, I thought, 'I really would like to find some wonderfully intelligent bad guy to play.'
Everywhere I go, someone stops me and says, 'Oh, you're that guy from 'Terminator 2.'' So, it's something that has, you know, been around me since the movie came out.
I think it talks about the fact that there are black people in the world who have tremendous amount of talents and have no channel through which they can those talents.
I think the thing is with a movie that has this much science fiction in it; you need characters who are more science fact, if you know what I mean, than they are human.
Is it racist to prefer country music over the blues? Or is it simply a classic case of tribal antipathy toward the unfamiliar, in favor of gravitating to what you know?
I suppose I prefer kind of epic dramas like, oh, I don't know... 'Lawrence Of Arabia' or 'Apocalypse Now'; those are the movies that I have a tendency to be most fond of.
I was maybe one of two black kids in the drama department. It was, 'Well, you can't play this role because that guy has a white girlfriend or a white cousin or whatever.'
The most frightening thing about playing Dick Gregory is I've never done stand-up before, and I had to learn how to be a stand-up comedian, which was a bit of a challenge.
There are lots of stories about my culture that I think bring a whole other perspective to who we are and where we have been and how we got here that I think need to be done.
When you give your children certain life lessons, and they come and ask you for additional advice, you say to yourself, 'I've done my job,' and you'll continue to do your job.
I love doing theater. Despite the fact that out of theater, film, and TV, theater is the hardest thing to do. It's the least paid, and we all have these bills that we have to pay.
One of the beauties of working in Shondaland is that they make an effort to get to know who you are, so they're not giving you something that's going to be so far out of your comfort zone.
Proof' is going to be, in many ways, a mystery. It's not a procedural in any way. It's not a medical drama. It really is about trying to investigate whether or not there's life after death.
Accolades are there to congratulate you but also to make you understand that it's not over. You now have to continue trying to improve the craft and keep going. It's not something to rest on.
Dick Gregory used every syllable, every metaphor, every joke, every march, every incarceration, every hour of his life, to embarrass this country into providing a more perfect, perfect union.
It's a very different thing when you're creating the world as opposed to when you're just part of the world. I love the detail of it, the problem-solving of it, and I love working with actors.
The advice that I usually give to young actors is that if you can create a character for the stage and keep that character fresh for at least 6 months that means you're doing the show eight times a week.
Even if you have something that you can contribute to society, very often society doesn't view you that way. Because when you are The Other, the first response by the mainstream, if you will, is to ostracize.
I have lots of hopes for black actors in general, whether they be on TV or on stage or in movies, and that is that we move beyond the tokenism of what it means to be black in a particular set of circumstances.
I actually went to the university as a psychology major, and at orientation, they took us around the campus and took us to the theater for a skit. At the end of the skit, I literally could not get up out of my seat.
Film and television is just a different technique in terms of how to approach the camera but basically the job is the same; but what you learn as a craft in theater, you can then learn to translate that into any mediums.
It's important to know, whether you're pro or anti the current president and what he's doing, that he's doing what he thinks is for the betterment of the country because his interest is to make this country a better place.
Dick Gregory will be greatly missed. Humbly, and in his stead, 'Turn Me Loose' carries on to be his voice and his inspiration for all who wish to laugh at the absurdity of racism and be enlightened by his spirit of justice.
Republicans in the South... are trying to find ways, not so much to block black and brown people from voting, but to block black and brown people from getting people they want elected, which is a far more subtle thing to do.
If you want someone who is sort of still, has a bit of an edge, is older, you get Morgan Freeman. If you want someone who can carry a gun and still play a father, you get Danny Glover. My category is 'that guy who happens to be black.'
In my opinion, it would be a lot better for the culture - meaning the culture of America - if there was more diversity in terms of storyline. In terms of the kind of content that you see about Americans of African descent on the screen.
My father was in the service. His job was to integrate the Armed Forces overseas. So that meant we showed up at military bases in Okinawa or Germany, racially unannounced. That made me, in that particular society if you will, the outsider.
When I was growing up, all these superheroes were white. On some level, you put that out of your mind... but as you get older, you realize it's a very one-sided affair. So I'm very glad to see that these movies are becoming more diversified.
'Breaking Bad' - when I started watching that show, I thought it was terrific. I love the way it was shot. I love the writing. I love the arc of Bryan Cranston's character. I just thought that was just really, really a wonderful, wonderful show.
Perhaps, despite my objections, the success of films like: 'The Help,' 'Django,' 'The Butler,' or '12 Years a Slave,' will further persuade Hollywood to widen its view and edit its erroneous perception of what a commercial black film can look like.
I make it a habit of never trying to judge what an audience might think, only because all points of view are too close, because we're doing it every day, I think that the actor's point of view is sometimes too close to what the material actually is.
If you can keep a character fresh and alive for, let's say, six months, working eight nights a week, then you can do anything. You have honed your technique and your skills to such a degree by that point that you are ready to take on all kinds of challenges.
You want to be challenged, so you feel like you want to get up and wrestle with the character or enjoy the character - especially with a TV show, because you know you could be doing it for a long time, so you want to make sure it's something you really enjoy.
'Black film,' unless it's lucky enough or creative enough, or timely enough to build a life of its own, hangs subjacent to 'white film' on Hollywood's financial score board... aided and abetted by the supposition that so-called black film has no foreign market.
When I first came into New York City, what I did was, I didn't have very much money, and I couldn't afford pictures or a resume, so what I used to do is I would tear off the back of a matchbook, and I'd write my name and telephone number on the back of the matchbook.
Yes, I would love to play one of the leads in one these movies and have all those challenges and deal with all those complications, but the business being what it is, there is a slot for me in these kinds of films, so I enjoy them, and I enjoy the people that I work with.