Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You have to not let yourself believe you can't. Do what you can do within the framework of what you have, and don't look outside - look inside.
No one - black, white, or any different - walks away from a three-picture deal with a studio. That's every filmmaker's dream. But it wasn't mine.
I used to be the third person in the secret jets we had - they were secret at the time - a jet bomber that flew at immense heights carrying atomic bombs.
There's something on Wall Street called PIG - panic, ignorance, and greed. Those are the big sins. I'm not greedy, I knew I was ignorant, and I didn't panic.
When I was a kid, from 10 years old, I worked every day for my dad, huh? Never played basketball. I never played tennis - never did. We worked so that we could eat.
I graduated from college when I was 20. To get enough money to finish college, I went into the ROTC, and I was an officer in the Air Force before I could buy a drink.
With 'Sweetback,' I just put it together a little bit at a time. I didn't do it on anybody's grant. I did it like any other young executive - by cheating and stealing!
Before I made 'Sweetback,' I had a three-picture deal with Columbia and enough juice, if I was real clever with it, to proclaim that I wanted to do an independent film.
I said to my kids, 'Learn the business of America if you want to be an artist in America. The rest of that stuff, the art part, you could pick up in an hour and a half.'
Normally, if I'm being acknowledged it is for something in front of the camera. This puts the spotlight on the fact that there are opportunities other than just being an actor.
I have no illusions about running. I hate running. If I could feel as good as I felt at 30 without running, I wouldn't do it, but that's not the way it works! So - no pain, no gain.
When we talk about 'Sweetback,' yes, it stars the whole black movement, but it's also the first time an independent film made that kind of money and was that successful and taken seriously.
As a navigator, I started studying astronomy because sometimes you're not able to use the equipment, so you'd have to do it the old-fashioned way, figuring out what you were seeing in the sky.
I was getting my Ph.D. in Holland - I speak Dutch - for a number of years before I moved to France because I had one of those offers you couldn't turn down. They offered me to come and do my films.
When I got to Paris, they welcomed me and showed my films. It was August of 1960, and I didn't have a penny in my pocket. But they had done something very dangerous: They had given me encouragement.
I can't read or write music. When I want to remember something, I try to remember all the keys on the piano. Which is what I still do. I put the numbers on the keys. And that's got to become music again.
When I was in the Air Force, if I walked into a restaurant, in about eight or nine minutes the M.P.'s would show up and drag me out because someone had called saying that someone was impersonating an officer.
What happened when 'Sweetback' made all that money, the studios were in a very difficult position. They wanted the money, but they didn't the message. This marked the advent of the caricatures which became known as blaxploitation.
The key to empowerment is no more complicated than what Jesse Jackson said, 'We are somebody.' But the 'We are somebody' I would like to be in the larger sense: not just the urban African-American but homo sapiens in general - We are somebody.
Many times, I get young people asking, 'What do you think about black movies?' And I say, 'What are you talking about? You mean Hollywood movies that have black people in them?' It's gone back to that, and that's not the same thing as a black movie.
I'm not a cinematic cinematic person. I go to the movies like I did back when I was a kid. I go to the movies and I sit down. If the music works, hmm. If it doesn't work, hmm. The whole concept of the thing, not as one piece here or there. For me, music is a large part.
You've got to really check on what you're doing: check and recheck it seven other times to be prepared. Sometimes, people get carried away with the artistic-ness of the endeavor and don't quite have their game face on when the time comes. It's always a pretty costly mistake.
No film is made without the people behind the lens. Of course, most people, even I, tend to look at films in the most simplistic way, and say, "Wow, so-and-so is in this film." We talk about who's in it, as opposed to who got it made. But there are financial and technical aspects which go along with it, that should be addressed and acknowledged, including those minorities who are doing excellent work as well.