Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm not someone who throws the towel in, although I think there are many times when I could have and should have thrown the towel in, and nobody would have thought any worse of me.
I knew I needed to make a studio film - not for any financial reason, but because, as a filmmaker, and especially as a female filmmaker, you have to break through the glass ceiling.
'Deadpool' is massively successful because they made a very unique movie. That uniqueness and originality, try to imitate that. Not, 'How about let's try to do 'Deadpool' on a train.'
I think in industries riddled with bias, you tend to hire women only if their previous work is very masculine, which is hilarious given that this is not how male directors are chosen.
Let me make something clear: There are very few things Hollywood is right about. This is a very corrupt, elitist industry that breeds favoritism and fails people up the career ladder.
When I was nominated for an Oscar and seated next to Martin Scorsese, there was nothing in my mind that made me think, 'Hey, in three years maybe I'll make another remake of 'Punisher.''
What's really amazing is that the showrunner who really got me my start in TV is Andrew Kreisberg. He brought me on to 'Arrow,' and he tracked me down because he was a fan of 'Punisher.'
Religion is all good, but we are almost back to medieval times now, where we are obsessed with going into religious wars and electing our politicians based on their religious statements.
Joel Schumacher fired me from 'Batman & Robin.' I don't think anybody knows that. I was having trouble with these contact lenses that were supposed to make your eyes glow under blacklight.
As a director, you need the Saul Zaentz type of producers. Zaentz was a guy who literally capped the storm outside of the director so that they could do their job. That's a great producer.
Foreign distribution is a major aspect of financing films. If you're flooding an entire country with cam rips DVDs before the movie is released, that will affect the bottom line eventually.
My brother took me to my first football match when I was five, and I quickly acquired a passion for it: once you've walked into a football ground, you know there's nothing comparable to it.
I am pretty sure when Kenneth Branagh came up for 'Thor,' nobody at Marvel thought, 'Yes, that Kenneth Branagh is masculine enough to do action: just look at 'Henry V' and 'The Magic Flute.''
For every IP block, DRM, and who-knows-what security feature Hollywood spends thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on, some piracy kid will undo it for free and within a couple of minutes.
Many of my colleagues are blissfully unaware of the global percentage of people who cannot EVER go to a movie theater, let alone with an entire family. I do not want to make movies for the rich.
I understand it must be hard to realize that the playing field you are collecting all your trophies from is not a level playing field, but that doesn't mean you can just make inaccurate statements.
Women are underrepresented and neglected in all aspects of the entertainment industry, so naturally, those of us who want to make a change use any opportunity to shine a light on someone when we can.
My brother and sister and I were latchkey kids, with a singer mother and no relationship with our father, and being in a firm is often about filling a void at home. For me, it was like having 50 big brothers.
My equality rants have been out there so much that people must be getting sick of it, and frankly, so am I, but if a writer wants to do another story about it, then go for it, because the cause is a good one.
If women choose guerilla style filmmaking or new media productions, etc., all power to them. But if they're there because 'Big Hollywood' won't let them in, then we're moving further and further away from equality.
When I first arrived here, after spending years as a competitive fighter and training U.S. Marines in hand-to-hand combat, Hollywood is the last place I would have expected to find such blatant bias and discrimination.
Women in Hollywood have no male allies. There are some who pretend to be on our side, but yeah, not really. They may say the right thing because, after all, they're liberals, and that's a public image they'd like to keep up.
There's a lot of talk now about the PC police, and 'why is everything bad?' It isn't. What it is, is that marginalized and oppressed people who have never had a soapbox, who have never been given a microphone, suddenly have a microphone.
I look back now and think, what was I doing, moving to Hollywood with $2,000 and a duffel bag? But there is no money in martial arts competitions, and in Hollywood, there is an outlet for those skills. And I have always been pretty fearless.
I'm a special case: I'm a former stuntwoman and former kickboxing champion, but you couldn't be more overqualified for the job. I cannot be the base level for what women have to do to be trusted with action, because the guys don't have that base level.
There was a choice of being a director who's more familiar with the technicality of doing a movie, like learning about the camera and filters and setup, or being a director who can actually talk to actors. And I always wanted to be an actor's director.
When a male stunt performer falls down a flight of stairs, he has a lot of clothes on and can wear all this padding. But because actresses never have a lot of clothes on - they are always falling in their underwear - you can't wear any padding whatsoever.
You can be Michael Moore and make 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' but that's hitting people over the head, and a lot of Americans don't like to be hit over the head. I want to make films that make people walk out and say, 'Wow, I really question if this is all right.'
Being half-Palestinian comes with its own challenges, especially after 9/11 and also, working in Hollywood. But denying my own father, the three siblings I have on my father's side, I would essentially be destroying my own essence. So I decided I'm going to be me.
People would go from village to village with their books in a time of poverty and disease. They would get people around them, and for an hour, these storytellers would change people's lives. I'd always thought I was a reincarnation of that. That's who I want to be.
I got to know the world of football fans and their pride in it, how they would find a family away from home. Most of them came from broken families. It always had a bit of romance to me, when I went to the game with all these boys that would just die for each other.
A lot of the guys that work for Warners and make these big films there all come from the same film school. Like Michael Bay, Zack Snyder, Tarsem Singh - they all went to Art Center in the College of Design. And there's a certain expectation when these guys graduate.
I always miss any kind of constant, especially now that I'm a film-maker who travels all the time. I'm always tempted to go to Catholic churches, although I despise the religion. But you want to go there just because it's the one thing in your life that's never changed.
I was pretty certain I'd stay in TV rather than returning to the feature world because the material just seems so much better in TV, especially in drama, but then 'Crossface' came my way. A heartbreaking, true story about the dark side of wrestling... I couldn't say no to that.
Almost everybody agrees that the Academy has to become more diverse. Even the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences knows this, which is why, in 2013, it announced it would extend its membership quotas in an attempt to bring more women and minorities into the organization.
When I first made 'Green Street' and I was considered a hot director, I pitched everybody, but there was always this feeling that I was being underestimated in the room. I pitch TV, and nobody underestimates me. They literally think you could be the next whoever, and that is a very cool thing.
Movies and TV are America's No. 1 export. So if our No. 1 export is all male, all white, then there's only one point of view. And I just think it's really important that as Americans - I'm a new American, but I am an American - that we don't portray ourselves to the world so one-sided and exclusive.
The criminalization of file sharing is pathetic. It's so pathetic, it's almost funny. Imagine if the radio people would have lobbied for a federal law enforcement agency to raid all homes for illegal transmissions of moving picture experiments in order to stop the invention of television. It's ludicrous.
As someone who grew up in Europe, I don't look at TV and automatically think of a primetime network series, created by a staff of writers. I think of 90-minute movies that can break talents out or a three 90-minutes-an-episode mini series that can introduce a fantastic new series like 'The Blechtley Circle.'
I have heard of 'Green Street'-dedicated birthday parties, a website dedicated only to the clothing. It has no end. If you hashtag #greenstreet or #greenstreethooligans, you cannot go a day without people saying it's their favourite movie. It's frustrating because it's a massive hit, but nobody gives it credit.
Maybe the biggest award show of the largest entertainment importer in the world needs an economic incentive to embrace diversity. Indeed, maybe we should boycott the show and pressure advertisers to do the same. Or maybe the Academy should learn the lesson of history and change because it's the right thing to do.
My hope is that digital technology will level things out more and that it will eventually eliminate favoritism. But technology cannot do it alone. The audience has to become more discriminating as well and not buy into every big tentpole movie because they have been brainwashed into thinking that's the movie to see.
In terms of writing and developing, TV is very open because TV needs stories. They need new pitches, and they need new ideas. They don't always take the risk for new ideas, but they are certainly open to it. They can't have enough people come in and pitch to them. It doesn't matter how they look or what gender they are.
The thing about TV is that it's great work for directors because the responsibility is not ours at all. In a movie, you choose a movie, and everybody points his or her finger at you afterward. It doesn't matter how much influence you had on the script, how much decision you had, or the fact that you didn't have final cut.
2015 was an interesting year for me. After finally getting back behind the camera at the end of the summer to shoot the CW's 'Arrow,' I found myself a couple of months later in a federal building in downtown Los Angeles, trying to convince half a dozen security guards to let me make my EEOC appointment despite my expired driver's license.
While I was able to pass as white as soon as I came to America, this was not really possible while I was growing up, as it was pretty obvious that I wasn't 'all German.' So my privilege was that in America, I could conveniently withhold one of my bloodlines and avoid racism and discrimination. That is not a privilege most people of color have.