Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I tend to be collaborative, and I want to hear other people's ideas. Especially with actors, I want them to feel like they can breathe life into their characters. "

Justin Simien

People

Breathe

Feel

Related Quotes:

" America is a different country, and it will forever be a different country after the election of Donald Trump. "

" There is an obsession with black tragedy. If you see a black movie, it's typically historical, and it tends to deal with our pain. And listen, there have been some excellent films made in that vein, and there are some painful parts of black history that should be explored, but it is kind of weird that only those films bubble up to the surface. "

" Everyone at a performing arts schools is weird. The weirder you were, the better. If you weren't weird in some way, they'd look at you and be like, 'Who's that square?' "

" I think I'll always be making movies that intend to say something new. "

" I saw 'Beauty and the Beast' at eight years old in theatres and spent hours trying to recreate the majestic imagery of that story in a drawing notepad at home. "

" I see racism as institutional: the rules are different for me because I'm black. It's not necessarily someone's specific attitude against me; it's just the fact that I, as a black man, have a much harder time making an art-house movie and getting it released than a white person does about their very white point of view. That's racism. "

" Satire and comedy are really the only film mediums where you can get into ideas and have people leave the theater without being moralized. "

" Black people are experiencing a systemic disadvantage, and it goes back to slavery, which was not that long ago. "

" There are a plethora of ways of being black, just like there's many ways to being white. "

" It is a fine line between making fun of the right thing and making fun of the wrong thing. And the language oftentimes is the same. "

" There can't be reverse racism against a group that is not at a disadvantage. "

" Any time a black person has the audacity to tell everybody else that they're also human beings, they are confronted with all kinds of malice and violence and ill will. It's been that way since black people were brought to this country. "

" Racism is systemic: It's oppression that's built into the laws, legislation, into the way neighborhoods are policed, and into job opportunities and health care and education. "

" I never liked 'Donnie Darko' quite as much as my film school peers. "

" We get caught in our little silos and end up working against ourselves. And I think social media culture really encourages that, because you're really just shouting into a void hoping someone picks up on what you're saying. "

" Usually, with 'Star Trek,' you always trust the captain. The captains are always going to pull us through; the captain's always going to win. "

" It's called 'Dear White People,' but really, it's about these black characters and how they are involved or not involved in a racial scandal in ways that might surprise them and others, right? "

" The further away you get from being a straight white man, the less freedoms you have to figure out who you are and negotiate what you mean to society. "

" I never quite lived up to the image of the black man as I saw it growing up. I was never listening to the right music at the right time or wearing the right clothes at the right time. I was still listening to Michael Jackson, and everyone had sort of moved on to gangster rap. Alanis Morissette when everyone else was listening to En Vogue. "

" It is frustrating having to walk through America having to bob and weave people's impressions of me because they see a tall black guy walking down the street. That is frustrating. "

" There was a time when a studio executive would really love something and have no proof at all that it would work and just do it because they believed in it. That's how 'Star Wars' happened. "

" I don't doubt that straight white men have identity issues and identity complexes and struggle with defining themselves. "

" I went to a school called Chapman University, which is a wonderful film school. It was a great program, but it was very white, and it was a culture shock for me because I grew up in Houston, Texas, and I went through what they call magnet schools, so my friends were like a Benetton ad. "

Justin Simien

Friends

School

" For whatever reason, gay characters, or characters that deal with sexuality issues, who are black, in 'black films'... are typically not dealt with with any sort of complexity. They're exoticized: their being gay is sort of the point. "

" For me it's just, I have too many ideas, man. It's a problem, actually. "

Justin Simien

Man

Many

" The downside of doing a multi-protagonist movie is that you don't get to service each character as you would if they were the central protagonist of the movie. "

" I think great movies do promote conversation, great movies are honest, and great movies are sometimes polarizing. "

" As much as I'd love to believe that we are 'post-racial' - an idea that really gained traction after the election of Barack Obama in 2008 - I can never escape the fact that in the world I am perceived as a 'black man' and, in certain parts of the world, as a 'black gay man.' "

" There is a difference between being offended and being prejudiced and even being bigoted against. There's a difference between that and racism. "

" If I just wanted to put clean, perfect images of black people on the screen for an hour and a half, first of all, there are other people already doing that, and they're making a lot of money doing it. "