Film Directors From The United States

"When my career dies, and I can’t sell a project or do anything else, that’s when [Dexter’s Laboratory] will return to save me and help pay my mortgage and everything,” Tartakovsky joked. “But I think [Samurai Jack] was very organic because we never finished the story. I never looked at it as a revival, but more of a continuation to finish it. And I think, the problem with [Dexter’s Laboratory] was the woman who played Dexter’s voice [Christine Cavanaugh], she passed away a while ago. I feel like her voice was the soul of the show, so it’s very hard for me to do an imitation. Unless we reimagine it in some other way."

"The kids’ business of animation is pretty much gone at this point, but adult animation has been steadily rising for the last twenty years. It’s incredible to see, and all the original shows feel like they’re adult, and I want to open that up to features. Why can’t viewers watch animated movies for adults in the same way? An R-rated raunchy thing is fine, but maybe we can do an action, epic thing in the future. Primal proved I had that muscle, and I want to be sincere, because if I’m not, it’s going to fail. If there’s an emotion I want to convey or something I’m experiencing, that’s where I’m at."

"Yeah, that story’s not finished. We have more things written already and figured out for it to finish, but somebody’s got to want to finish it. .. It’s not up to me. It’s not like I can go, ‘Okay, Genndy, here’s $10 million or whatever.’ My life doesn’t work like that. It’s still, well, ‘Why should we do it? Why was this canceled?…Are people going to watch it?’ You still have to resell it and have people want to pay for it. It’s not up to me. .. Yeah, that’s probably the only thing I would return to. Obviously there’s more Primal planned, and hopefully I’ll get to do it, but looking backwards, I have too much new stuff that I still want to do. Unicorn is just scratching the surface of where I want to go."

"I don’t try to be a hard guy to work with … but I decide what I’m going to do with a character. I will take direction, but only if it kind of supplements what I want to do. If I have instincts that I feel are right, I don’t want anybody to tamper with them. I don’t like tamperers, and I don’t like hoverers."

"Sometimes what comes around the corner is better for you than what you're planning to do anyway."

"To the world, he was an Academy Award-winning actor, a director, a storyteller. To me, he was simply everything. His passion for his craft was matched only by his deep love for characters, a great meal, and holding court. For each of his many roles, Bob gave everything to his characters and to the truth of the human spirit they represented. In doing so, he leaves something lasting and unforgettable to us all."

"It was as if somehow Al Capone had become head of the United States."

"The Western is our genre in the United States of America. The English have Shakespeare, the French have Molière, the Russians have Chekhov, but we have the Western."

"As you get older, all those dumb clichés, they’re all true. You only have a certain amount of time left, and you should only spend it doing the things that you want to do."

"It's not painless – there's a lot of struggle with all the identity stuff you go through. But we were saying you can count on one hand people whose parents achieved at a very high level and whose children also achieved. So it definitely binds us and I think that's why we enjoy working together. Our heads aren't swelled about it."

"Criticism used to be an art practiced by educated people. Now you don't know what any of them are looking for in anything"

"Mankind, humankind is at stake"

"It was a tradition that had gone all the way back into slavery, as long as we knew ourselves, we knew this as a part of the world in which we lived. We related to it on an individual basis, as it happened, we related to the incidents."

"I fully expected that a black man particularly would by lynched from time to time because it was going on when I came into the world"

"Peace, peace, peace. This is where it’s at, and this is where I am."

"We knew that if we lived within those parameters there was a world, that was really to some degree a safe world, and a world that provided us, reaffirmed us as to whom we were because it was a black world"

"The struggle and the arts are connected almost by definition"

"I come together to say, I choose to live for brotherhood and not for folly. I choose peace and not war. I choose life and not death."

"Colorblind casting shouldn't violate common sense"

"The history of the black man on the frontier – and, indeed, the history of the Indian – has never really been paid attention to in the movies."

"in the end it is history that will tell the story"

"If you can’t outfight the man, outsmart him"

"Performing artists are less political today than they were years ago because they're not called on to be political"

"I don’t think being a celebrity or being anything else overrides the responsibility to be a decent, humane citizen"

"Optimism is small and personal"

"when the time comes we'll give each other our own Oscar and attend our own funerals and screw the rest of it if necessary"

"But there were limits of the power that the black community had. It could not punish those from the outside who wrought crime against us, it could not demand that justice be done, it could beg, it could pray, you know, it could cajole, it could wheedle, you know, but it could never insist, and we knew that that was a limit"

"There is a lot of American history waiting to be rediscovered, once you get away from the official version"

"I have less opportunities than I used to, but I don't think there's any prejudice against me because of my age"

"Art has a deep responsibility, social, cultural, and otherwise. And that the basic motivation for the creation of art is, in a sense, to meet those responsibilities. Now, it doesn't mean that you cannot express yourself in any way you want to, but it takes place in a social context, whether you mean it to do so or not"

"I would say that a deeper patriotism is required when we consider to whom we owe our patriotic response"

"We're going somewhere, even if it's only around the Goddamn corner"

"I’d hate to go to hell and say I was busy trying to save the Oscars"

"Blacks are by and large are still, in a majority sense, Democrats"

"One of the traps we've tried to avoid is the presentation of ourselves as victims or beggars"

"We were not by any means a helpless community, cowering against, under the boot heel of the oppressor"

"They knew what to say because it fell into the existing rhetoric"

"I had a sense of certainty that no matter how dark it is now, one of these days it'll change."

"We have freedom. What we don't have is equality!"

"It felt right because really if I hadn’t taken his class, I wouldn’t be where I am right now. I’m happier than I’ve ever been."

"I told my parents I was moving to LA to do porn before I moved to LA to do porn. They were really cool about it. They actually paid my first three months rent when I moved out here."

"Sean gets sex work. He just does. It's so exciting to me that I can't even think about it. It would feel like this industry that I love being recognized on a stage it's never been recognized before on. It's not about the taboo of sex. It's just about a marginalized community of people who he finds really interesting and wants to explore."

"Unlike adult performers of the past, Casey Calvert is an educated woman who didn’t stumble into porn, but headed there because that’s what she wanted."

"As a sex worker, it’s impossible for me to make a general statement about sex workers as a whole, because I see them as individuals. What I can say is that not all sex workers are the stereotype people want to believe. Many of us are college educated, feminists, and absolutely love what we do."

"Porn has long offered a glimpse of the future. Long before alternative sexualities were accepted in popular culture as they are now, porn accepted them. Porn accepts everyone. There is content for everyone."

"She has already been a close collaborator of ours for years in front of the cameras, but she also brings a wealth of experience in writing, directing and producing from her own independent adult and mainstream projects. I'm excited to see what she will bring to the table!"

"Being a porn star is just like having any other job, except you're naked on the Internet. When I'm not on set, I'm doing all the things normal people with normal jobs do. I'm certainly not running around banging strangers ‪24/7."

"I think it's the sacrifice. The Superman we have now, this risen Superman, in a lot of ways his place on Earth, in my way of thinking, has been solidified. He is all things now. He is not only the sacrifice, but he is the risen. He's a man, but he's also like a god. You know what I mean? He has completed the apprenticeship in humanity, and now has his Master's Degree. To me that's what it is about. I think in the end when you see him, the way I would think about it--and look, frankly there's not enough movie, I know that sounds crazy in context [laughs], to really explore it. But that was always the plan going forward. In the end if there was two more movies, the last movie really is a Superman movie in a lot of ways."

"Yeah. Well, there is something about Batman – even for me growing up… I’ve always felt like he’s really troubled, you know? He’s working out a pretty massive trauma that happened to him, and I think that by keeping that alive in the story – through a nightmare or imagery like that, you feel like it’s still boiling. To me, it keeps him on point as a character. Like, if you let that fade too far into the background, you start to go, “No wait – why is he doing this again? What’s he upset about? Like, there’s police. He knows that, right?” [Laughs] You know, we have a little thing called the justice system, and it works okay."

"I want to go deep beneath the surface of a subject, visually depict its core meaning, and express that understanding through a cinematic combination of intentional visuals, music, editing, and captivating performances."