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" Both grandfathers fought in different wars. My mother's father fought in World War II, and then my father's father fought in Korea. And they're both these country boys, one from rural Tennessee and one from rural Louisiana - and they never went back home. "

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" Creatively, I just like interesting characters. So straight, gay, or whatever - like, whatever, wherever the characters are coming from or their lifestyle. "

Dee Rees

Lifestyle

Gay

Interesting

" For me, Sundance always felt big. It's not the only way to make your way, but for me, it was definitely that critical link between struggling artist, kind of working on my own, to actually working professionally and being connected and being seen. "

" My dad was a cop, you know, and I grew up three houses down from people who used Confederate flags as curtains. "

" I'm always excited about stories that allow me to explore a character and create interesting stories and worlds that we haven't seen before. "

Dee Rees

Interesting

Character

" I can't put anything out that's not me. "

Dee Rees

Out

Anything

" I remember one summer I played, like, with the granddaughter of this known Klan member. Like, all summer we caught cicadas. And we had grown close, and so it was, like, time for her birthday party and I said 'Oh, like, what time do I come for your party?' And she's like 'Oh, no, you can't come to my house 'cause my parents don't like black people.' "

" I had originally written 'Pariah' as a feature, and we shot the first act as a short film, and then we used the short as a marketing tool to fundraise for the feature. "

" With friendship, it's hard sometimes - you don't outgrow your friends, but you do question how people are friends to you in different ways and how it's okay to cultivate other relationships outside of that. "

" I grew up listening to Mary J. Blige's music. When I initially met her, it was like, 'Oh, wow. I'm meeting this woman whose music was the soundtrack of my college years.' "

" I'm not a writer that writes every day. I just kind of have ideas. I jot them down when I have them, and when I have enough, I just start. And for me, I start more around noon, and I'm all about feeling. Once there's a theme, I can't not write. "

" I'd go to lesbian parties. I felt like I wasn't hard enough to be butch, but I wasn't wearing heels and a skirt - I wasn't femme - so I felt like I was sort of invisible. "

Dee Rees

Hard

Heels

" Art makes you see people as individual, unique human beings. Art, in that way, allows us to see each other in particulate, as opposed to in aggregate. "

" I thought I'd get an MBA, and then I could be anything. And I'd write on the side. That was the idea. "

" Coming-of-age stories, people roll their eyes. "

" I think Charlottesville was shocking for some, but it wasn't for me or for my family, I mean, because I grew up in 1980s Nashville. "

Dee Rees

Family

Think

" My first job was at Proctor and Gamble in Cincinnati, my second job was at a pharmaceutical company in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. My third job was at Palmolive. And I realized, three jobs in three years, maybe it wasn't the job. It had to be me. "

" For me, 'Pariah' is very much about that inner churn. It's about this person's emotional inner life, and that's really what I wanted to bring to 'Bessie.' "

" A producer has to want you. And if the producer trusts you and asks for your vision, it frees you up so much, not having to explain or fight for every decision. You're allowed to create. "

" I just want to tell stories that are meaningful and have inspiration to them; people can watch it and take away something, or maybe they'll just think about themselves differently or think about the world differently. I just want to create characters that live on. "

" Contemporarily, we struggle with people worried about representation sometimes. It's a burden, as artists, that we take on that limits the work. It limits the characters people play. It limits the roles they want to do. "

" For me, like, obviously, I want to see myself onscreen. "

Dee Rees

Myself

" I feel a lot of folks, like teenagers, can feel like outcasts. "

Dee Rees

Lot

Feel

" It's okay to be yourself and to love and accept yourself however you are. "

Dee Rees

You

Be Yourself

" I'm interested in telling stories about characters that are interesting and who are challenging in some way, one that will make you think about them afterwards. "

" Having to stake out your identity and have people question whether or not you're being yourself was a tension that I could relate to. "

" I want people to get from 'Pariah' that it's okay to be you and not to check a box as a parent or child. "

" Our country is pathologically violent. "

" For me, books were my source of affirmation. Alice Walker, Audrey Lord - it was these authors who wrote about their experiences. It was this weird thing where I was censored in terms of what I could watch but not in terms of what I could read. "

" For 'Pariah,' people were surprised Kim Wayans was there, but comedians have a dark streak; they're comedians for a reason. "

" New York offers people the anonymity to be themselves without judgment. "