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" 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. "

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" Creatively, most of my influences come from the literary world: Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara. Writers are my heroes. "

Dee Rees

Creatively

Most

Come

" 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.' "

" I still want to do features, but on my own terms. "

" I started out at Procter & Gamble marketing panty liners, so basically selling women insecurity. I thought there must be more to life than this. Then I was on set for a Dr. Scholl's commercial, and I asked one of the execs, 'How do you get a job behind the camera?' and he said, 'Film school.' So I quit and applied to NYU. "

" 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

" 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. "

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

" Going into a room and saying, 'I'm a black lesbian' - it's a strike against you. "

" There's a dearth of media around young black women and certainly a dearth of LGBT media for people of color. "

" 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. "

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

" Our statement's on the screen. Awards won't make it better, and a lack of awards won't make it worse. "

" I was going to study business administration at Florida A&M, at the height of Reaganomics. "

" I kept getting offered all this young adult stuff. I don't want to keep telling teen coming-of-age stories! "

" The only advice I can give is to surround yourself with people who are friends and people who believe in you and your material and who are going to help you take it to the next level. It doesn't mean you don't listen to criticism, but you listen to it and edit it, and you figure out what you can take. "

" 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. "

" When I first started going out to lesbian clubs, I felt a very binary recreation of hetero culture. There are butches and femmes, and I felt like I was neither of those things. I'm in a turtleneck and jeans and just learning to be comfortable in that space. I realized I don't have to be a certain way. "

" Growing up, I was very aware that there weren't many people like me on the screen. "

Dee Rees

People

" You're your own person, and it's about you. I'm my own person, and it's about me. Everyone has their own life. "

Dee Rees

Person

You

" 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. "

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

" I definitely felt the desire to, like - I definitely knew there was an elsewhere. I definitely knew that, like, if I were going to be free, I needed to be away from, kind of, like, Nashville and kind of get out of the South and get out of the country. "

" 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. "

" My ultimate dream was just to be an auteur. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" To me, if you can do the Wicked Witch live, you can play anybody. "

Dee Rees

You

Play

" The enemy is the system. And the system is made up of people, and we have a choice in that. "

Dee Rees

Enemy

System

" 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. "