Screenwriters From The United States

"“You know, it isn’t that you can’t get information in electronic form, or microfilm, or disk, or cube, or any of the other forms—tape, holographic computer feed.” He paused. “Tell me, Aubry—what’s the similarity between all the modes of information storage I’ve just named?” Aubry scratched his head. “They don’t take up as much space as books, I guess.” “Yes, that’s true enough—but as far as I’m concerned, the difference is that they all require an external power source.” He cocked his head sideways, until he looked absurdly like a bird examining a piece of fruit. “Do you understand that that makes you dependent upon others?” Promise ran her hands over the spines of a nearby stack, then shook her head. “Not cubes. There are plenty of solar-powered cube-readers. One sunny day a week, and you’re set.” “True enough, but you are still dependent upon others to repair your viewer if it breaks down...the more advanced a technology, the more fragilely inter-dependent it is.” “So what?” Warrick shrugged. “It just seems to me that the most valuable thing that any human has is the ability to educate himself, to find out about the world around him, to program his primary organ of perception—his brain. And that basic, inalienable right should be as independent of external factors as possible. Once a book is printed and acquired, it’s yours. Nothing else is needed except a pair of eyes and daylight. Individual books have lasted for hundreds of year—do you really think you can say the same of your little viewers, or computers, or whatever? If you have a hundred libraries stored on cube, and your viewer breaks down, you have nothing. Give me an encyclopedia, and if it isn’t totally destroyed by fire, I can dig it out, dry it off, piece it together, and still have something of value.” His gaze became direct, and piercing. “There is nothing more important than directing the flow of information into your mind. It determines all—your attitudes, your actions, your life. You can rely upon the visual and audible media all you want—but they should be in addition to reading, not in place of it. If other forms replace reading, then your input is restricted, and much more dependent upon other people, who may or may not have your best interests at heart.” “So, that’s the most important thing you can think of in life? Reading?” Warrick sighed. “You are being obstinate, my friend. You learn if you learn.”"

"I was just walking across the street . . . this guy [a porn producer] stops and he gets out his car and he gives me his card, and I thought about it for about two weeks. Then you made the mistake of saying yes and going in and . . . yeah, I did it for about three months, and as soon as I started to gain popularity, that's when I was like, "OK I need to get the F out of here, this is not what I was trying to do whatsoever." I just wanted to let loose and rebel."

"It all started to spiral out of control when the death threats from ISIS started coming in. That's when I stepped away. As soon as I started to gain popularity that's when I was like 'get the f*** out of this."

"Women's rights in Lebanon are a long way from being taken seriously if a Lebanese American porn star that no longer resides there can cause such an uproar. What I once boasted to people as being the most Westernized nation in the Middle East, I now see as devastatingly archaic and oppressed."

"Perhaps better known as 'The hijab porn star', Khalifa hit the headlines in 2014 when she infamously humped on camera wearing the traditional Muslim garb. The BangBros film initially sparked outrage in her home country of Lebanon with haters claiming she had brought disgrace to the nation and insulted Islam. Khalifa stated in an interview with Loaded that she felt she is being made a scapegoat for internet censorship in her native land, and many others there have since demonstrated against the government, showing support for the American porn star. They claim that although she may have sex, 'She is still more decent than they are'."

"It gets me so down when I get 'no's' from companies who don't want to work with me because of my past, but I also thought I would never find a man like my fiancé. The fact that he appreciated everything I've done since porn meant so much."

"Elephant, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year, is Van Sant's masterpiece."

"It was such a privilege to work with Gus — a true luxury for me, as watching ‘My Own Private Idaho’ almost 30 years ago was an eye-opener for me, it made me understand who I am in a delicate way."

"I've stayed in touch with Gus over the years, and there have been a couple of things that were looked at, but never quite worked. But I was always interested in working with him again, because he was so instrumental in the kind of actor I am. I worked with him at a really crucial part of my career. I hadn't worked since I was a kid, and then I worked when I was 19 years old. He really changed the way I thought about acting. So I was really eager to work with him again. The process was incredible. In some ways, it was like being back in '95 or whenever it was."

"Once you're directing, you're kind of in a certain mode, where you're taking whatever is on the page and forming it into the film that you think it might want to be. So whether it's my writing or not, I still try to work with it in the same way."

"For me it was a lot like using music. I used it when I felt that it was right, when I felt like it was time."

"I grew up on the experimental cinema coming out of New York and San Francisco in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s."

"It’s really a play about these big ideas that don’t have any sort of definitive conclusion…What I hope people get out of it is—as uncomfortable as it is—to be able to live in these gray areas of conversation that none of us have answers to and see the humanity in people, even if you don’t agree with them."

"…The reason I write the plays is to open up some sort of dialogue or just to have this in the conversation. I mean what I would love is to have the guy—the Republican who thinks that the only issue is keeping brown people away—he is my ideal audience. That's who I would love to have in the audience. So I get a little bit tripped up because, on one hand, I want plays that my family can go to. You don't have to be an artistic person. You can go in and actually get something from it."

"…With theatre, I’m attracted to stories of social or political relevance to the world we all live together in… With film or TV, I approach them much more as an audience member—stories I’d like to see…"

"If you and your children were starving, if you saw violence and murder every single day, and just on the horizon is a safe country where people are allowed to dream, can make a decent living, of course you would cross the border. Any mother or father in their right mind would. We need to have compassion for this."

"i think its important to write plays that aren’t safe. often, that means that you are criticizing the institutions who’s help you need getting produced. and often, that means that you are engaging with audiences in ways that aren’t easy for them. every time i start a new play, it feels like the first time. it’s terrifying. it’s daunting. it feels impossible. i think that is a tremendous undertaking. [sic]"

"It’s what I know best. It’s roots. It’s Dazed And Confused and Friday Night Lights. It’s border life and El Pato and Whataburger and getting drunk in a back of a pickup. It’s dancing every weekend to country music, or Tejano music, or club music. It’s the beach. It’s, for better or worse, home."

"When I left South Texas, I realized that I became the other. I was the token of the room. Most of my friends were white so when I went to a party or a wedding or a work function, I would scan the room and only see my face in the people who were serving the drinks or passing around the appetizers. I realized I was the hanging fruit in the room, the living and breathing statue in the room, the object in the middle of the photograph, surrounded by white eyes."

"My grandfather saw a lot of violence and a lot of poverty, and really was incredibly, deeply tortured by it. It was always this elephant in the room that we never talked about growing up. He spoke fluent Spanish, but never in front of us. I think he was really afraid that we would be judged and held back by our Mexican heritage, like he was. Part of writing this play was like digging up my own family ghosts and things that I personally had always been afraid to talk about, because my family never talked about them. Also, because I’m Mexican and I’m white, I often struggle with wondering if I’m “allowed” to tell stories through this lens; growing up, the white kids always told me I was Latina or “ethnic,” and the Chicano kids always told me I was a “gringa,” so I never really felt like I fit in anywhere…"

"…what I’ve learned about it throughout the years is that it’s my way of giving voice to the often voiceless; I write mostly about the sort of people on the opposite end of flush, and so when I hear them speak in this kinda jagged form of poetry, it moves me in a way I can’t even really describe. Technically speaking, some actors sing it beautifully, others can’t wrap their minds around it."

"There is no one answer about why women are historically, across just about all of civilization, treated this way. It’s economics, it’s religion, it’s the reality of sex and pregnancy for women. It’s these value systems that get passed down from generation to generation that need questioning…Women haven’t survived for eons by being “weak” and “emotional.” We’ve survived by being a hell of a lot tougher and braver than we’re given credit for…"

"I have a strange love and affinity for South Texas and Texas in general. I carry a bit of dissonance for loving a place so many people outside of Texas hate. The reputation Texas has in places that I have lived is a rough one. The politics have skewed so far to the right and I’m usually in an environment that is mostly liberal so I find myself having to defend a place I no longer live in. But the Texas I know, the people I know, the experiences I’ve lived don’t always sync up with the image of Texas at the moment."

"A play is like a free-flowing poem in some ways. The play, as you write, will tell you what the structure will be. But, sometimes you forget to ask those questions as you write and you end up spending a lot of time trying to find the essence of the play…"

"…I like the word impressionistic more than experimental for some reason. I think experimental, I think of abstract language met with geometric stage gestures, while my writing tends to be worlds and people that we know and recognize, but the rules have changed on them. And on us, the audience, but the struggle is that I want the audiences to not spend time trying to figure out the rules, rather to accept them and see what it means to them as the world unfolds."

"I’ve always resisted being called a ‘gay’ or a ‘Latino’ playwright…I certainly talk about them in my plays, but I don’t want to be defined by them. Not because I’m not proud — but the minute you define yourself in a certain way, there are huge assumptions about what you’re supposed to be. And those boxes don’t really fit anymore."

"I’m a little bit highbrow and a little bit trashy…That’s what I think good storytelling is. If you can lure in an audience and have a good time with them, but also teach them what it’s like — to be a person of color, to be poor — that’s a success."

"Some writers write every morning, or every day. I don´t tend to do that. I am of the Wendy Wasserstein mind. Going to the movies is research. Walking down Central Park and seeing cute boys in tank tops is research. Going to the Museum of Modern Art is research. Having dinner with my best friends is research. Because research, when it comes to being a playwright, most importantly means living. It means experiencing and engaging with the world…"

"I was lucky…because my grandparents, who lived with us, were illiterate but they were great storytellers, so I got a kind of storytelling bug from them."

"I have a natural tendency toward theatricality and poetic language...I've never really written realism…and I wanted to give it a shot."

"…I like “mad realism.” I grew up with a mother who wanted to be a nun and we had pictures of angels all over the house. My grandparents told ghost stories. Seeing magic in the world just felt like how you perceive life. I didn’t know anything about magic realism, really, until I started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude in college and suddenly everything that I grew up with was there on the page — the same love stories, stories of obsession, stories of interacting with spirits…"

"…I think the most important thing for me is to give flesh and blood reality to people who are far away and distant from most American concerns. It's very easy to stick to the one-dimensional labels, and my hope is to completely explode the labels and reveal the flesh and blood and soul of each of the women in the play and to really make it impossible to walk away from the play with your prejudices still intact…"

"I'm a person that documents the lives of people of color…So that way, when we're gone, no one will forget we were here."

"Stop giving a s— what other people think of you. We make decisions too often based on that…When we start to live for ourselves, and be a little bit more selfish, I think we’ll lead more fulfilling lives. So I think what we need to do, is stare at ourselves in the mirror a little bit longer, and really own who we are and not try to be what we think others want us to be."

"The hardest thing about being a black writer in this town is having to pitch your black story to white execs…Also, most of the time when we go into rooms to pitch, there’s one token black executive that sometimes can be a friend and sometimes can be a foe. I wonder if they think it makes me more comfortable, if that makes me think that they’re a woke network or studio because they’ve got that one black exec. It feels patronizing. I’m not against a black exec. I want there to be more of them."

"Being black and gay, having dreadlocks, having a certain kind of swag, and dressing the way I do…‘That’s dope, you’re cool.’ I don’t feel validated by that. . . . I don’t want to be White. I don’t want to be straight. I don’t want to blend in. . . . I try to wear queer designers who happen to be brown and makin’ shit."

"I came into it equipped with these principles because of my Asian-American-studies background, but there was certainly a negotiation that had to take place just for me to get a foot in the door."

"What happens when you populate a movie with a lot of Asian-American people is that they get to be people."

"I was super-excited to do it, but I still felt a little nervous about it and I felt like my parents would be a good way for me to test if this was OK…They’re immigrants, and they understand what’s going on over there a little better than me…As soon as I brought it up to them, they thought it was hilarious."

"To us, it was important throughout the writing process that we put things in that were funny, number one, but also that felt like they came from a real place. And the conversations these characters have, reflect on the conversations we have. For us, it didn’t really feel like we were making any commentary or making any stereotypes, it was really us trying."

"My overall philosophy was to continue to do good work, to expand my range, and to show that range. I think Hollywood can certainly try to put you into boxes. My entire career has been somewhat of a reflection of my college theater experience, and that was, I did everything. Not only did I do Shakespeare and Molière, but I did Mamet and John Patrick Shanley; contemporary playwrights. I was writing in college, I was directing in college, and when I got to Hollywood, I tried to continue that. I think my first three roles in Hollywood are somewhat indicative of that. You’ve got 'La Bamba,' then 'Stand and Deliver,' then 'Young Guns.' All three films are very different, and all three characters are extremely different."

"Once you wrap your brain around playing your age, it's a very, very positive thing…"

"We went to the visual and the acting. You would lose some jokes if you didn’t speak both languages, but you didn’t lose the thrust."

"We would get letters from Nebraska. I’ve talked to Latin Americans, whether they’re from Colombia [or elsewhere], and they have somebody like that in their family…If you make it authentic, if it touches you, it doesn’t have to be your experience."

"The teenagers have been sucked into American culture overnight, while their parents are concerned with preserving roots."

"It’s like a fairy tale…[Fairy tales] give you a context in which to talk about some things that you’re experiencing in your day-to-day. Theatre works in the same way—if it’s good theatre. When it’s well-crafted, well-honed, it opens wounds for the purpose of encouraging conversation while also giving us the tools with which to have that conversation."

"I was living in Miami. Some people would say, ‘You were very young when you came from Cuba. How did you know us?’ They think I’m portraying Cuba, I said, ‘No, I’m portraying Miami. I’m portraying what I saw in Miami.’"

"The Vietnam War was raging at that particular time, so I wanted to do a positive play about a country character who was yearning for his home, as I was doing at Christmas…I drew on my experience growing up in the country - plowing mules, cropping tobacco, bootleggers, going to church. The rest was my imagination. I wanted to do something that could be performed on the streets - I love street theater. And I wanted my character to have a conscience."

"At that time the army had just been integrated in the States. And it was one of the few industries that offered black people the possibility of advancement if you did a good job. Most industries didn’t have that then: you were the last hired and the first fired. He was in Vietnam and we were sitting waiting, and we were luckier than some because he was able to come home and live a pretty good life."

"A lot of people want to tell me their stories, and it’s not just the people who were alive back then. Though the play deals with AIDS, it’s about more than just the epidemic. It deals with things that plague gay men now. It’s very much about addiction, too. And the audience’s experiences run the gamut. And these audiences feel emboldened in the best way possible to not keep secrets. And they feel like they trust us enough to tell us their stories. It’s a beautiful thing."