Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" In the morning, I get the paper. I look in the obituary column. If I don't see myself in there, I get up. "

Melvin Van Peebles

Related Quotes:

" Me and modesty don't mix. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I do what I want to do. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" 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. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" 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. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I'm too short to play basketball and too nervous to steal. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Making 'Sweetback' took an exorbitant amount of energy and time. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Don't ask me something if you don't want to know. Because I will tell you. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" 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! "

Melvin Van Peebles

" 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. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Blacks are tired of seeing whites saying, 'I understand you.' You need a black to direct a black film. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I'm from the Southside of Chicago. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" 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. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" 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. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" What some folks find funny, other folks find tragic. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Before me, music soundtracks were sort of afterthoughts. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" My life and career is defined by the constant pursuit of new forms of culture and self-expression. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Blacks had a huge role in settling the West, but you'd never know it from Western movies. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Why not have fun, man? If I feel like doing something, I just go ahead and do it. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" A bumblebee can't fly. He's aerodynamically unsound. But he doesn't know that. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" The studios didn't really take independent films seriously, till 'Sweetback' was such a financial success. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I'm not a normal director. You can't look at me that way. What's kept me alive is my technical skill at doing other things. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" My first feature, I made in France. There's a great respect for the author there - they don't change your stuff. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" One day, I was sitting in a movie theater, and I said, 'What the hell? I can do better than that.' "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Over time, you accumulate a lot of life material. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" 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. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I didn't even know I had a legacy. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I went to a number of schools when I was a kid on the south side of Chicago. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Truth of the matter is, I can't even read or write music. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" 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. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" It must be horrible to do things that you don't like hoping to please other people, and they don't like it either, and you've got to eat it. "

Melvin Van Peebles