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" 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. "
Dee Rees
Tension
Identity
Yourself
Related Quotes:
" I was always going to direct. I wasn't going to hand my characters over to anyone else. "
Dee Rees
Direct
Always
Going
" In an industry that's uncertain and when you're in a lot of situations that are anxiety-causing, to have someone there who has your back unconditionally and cares for you and the material and would give anything to make sure everything is OK, makes you feel so much better. It gives you a sense of security as an artist. "
Dee Rees
Feel
Security
You
" 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. "
Dee Rees
Child
Okay
Parent
" New York offers people the anonymity to be themselves without judgment. "
Dee Rees
Without
New York
New
" I kept getting offered all this young adult stuff. I don't want to keep telling teen coming-of-age stories! "
Dee Rees
Adult
Keep
Teen
" When I'm on set, I know what I want. "
Dee Rees
Set
Want
Know
" I was never physically abused, but when I came out to my parents late in life, when I was 27, they definitely had an intervention. "
Dee Rees
Never
Life
Late
" I can't put anything out that's not me. "
Dee Rees
Me
Out
Anything
" It's a failure of imagination if you can only write what you know - we have to be able to imagine different worlds. "
Dee Rees
Failure
Imagination
Imagine
" You can't be limited by your own experience. "
Dee Rees
Limited
Experience
Own
" If I can go three grandmothers back and find a slave, that means someone else can go three grandmothers back and find a slave owner. When you interrogate your histories, it forces you to rethink who you are and where you are. "
Dee Rees
Find
I Can
Three
" I had this thing where I only wanted to work on original material, no adaptations, and obviously, that changed. I really wanted to have the resources and have the space and the time to tell stories that I've really cared about. I've kind of changed my approach, but I've gotten to do that, to tell stories that I really care about. "
Dee Rees
Care
Kind
Tell
" For me, like, obviously, I want to see myself onscreen. "
Dee Rees
Me
Myself
Like
" There's a line that runs between everyone and their ancestors, and you cannot sever that. Maybe disassociate from those ideas but not how you are connected to them. But, you can realise how you've benefited and change how you raise your kids. "
Dee Rees
Ancestors
Ideas
Connected
" For kids who are struggling, who are of faith, just reconciling yourself to the fact that God loves you, accepts you for who you are, is a big step in the healing, especially when your biological family is unaccepting of you. "
Dee Rees
Family
God
Step
" 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. "
Dee Rees
Start
Enough
Feeling
" People have almost been lulled into complacency because there are no signs over the water fountains. But the signs have been in the policies. There's still housing discrimination and wage discrimination. "
Dee Rees
Water
People
Complacency
" Filmmaking in general is my second career. I thought that writing wasn't practical, so I went to business school and got an MBA, and I worked three years in grant management. "
Dee Rees
Business
Management
School
" There's a lot of power in saying no to big things that you don't want to do in order to say yes to the kind of things that really inspire you. "
Dee Rees
Saying
Inspire
Say
" You don't get to hand footnotes to the audience or explain what you were trying to do and what it's supposed to be. Everything has to be on the screen, and it has to be clear. "
Dee Rees
Audience
Trying
You
" With 'Pariah,' at the time, I had just come out. I had a coming out experience, and I was writing about it, transposing my experience as an adult: What would it have been like if I had been a teenager in Brooklyn? The funny thing was people thought I was from Brooklyn. I had to be like, 'No, I'm from Nashville.' "
Dee Rees
People
Funny
Time
" To have a simultaneous global audience as an artist is more than you could ever hope for. "
Dee Rees
You
Artist
Audience
" 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. "
Dee Rees
Weird
Books
Watch
" 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. "
Dee Rees
Play
People
Struggle
" I still want to do features, but on my own terms. "
Dee Rees
Want
Still
Own
" For each character, I try to understand what is driving them. "
Dee Rees
Try
Character
Driving
" I've always liked to write, but I never thought I could make a career out of it. "
Dee Rees
Always
Career
Write
" I'm interested in characters and relationships. "
Dee Rees
Characters
Relationships
Interested
" Our country is pathologically violent. "
Dee Rees
Violent
Our
Country
" 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. "
Dee Rees
War
Home
Father