Jews From The United States

"Paley, Mister Paley. "He is to American broadcasting as Carnegie was to steel, Ford to automobiles, Luce to publishing and Ruth to baseball," the New York Times had once written. The New York Daily News had called him an electronic Citizen Kane." His reign at CBS, wrote Washington Post television critic Tom Shales, could be summed up as more than five decades of "brilliant brinksmanship, salesmanship, statesmanship, and showmanship.""

"From a young actor’s perspective, you learn a new set of skills in any movie. I’m only six years away from drama high school. At 23 or 24 you’re learning every day. I was lucky not knowing any of the actors prior, really. There was this unifying ulterior motive to make the movie great. It felt good. Things have to be utilitarian. It’s the healthiest way to approach art and creativity, you know. No ego."

"I admire people, and I've done it myself, who go on a talk show and say, 'Hey, we've got to keep movie theaters alive, we've gotta keep this genre alive,' and another part of me feels like if people want to see it, like Barbie, like Oppenheimer, they're going to go see it and go out of their way to be loud and proud about it. I don't want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it's like, 'Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this anymore.' All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there. I just lost 14 cents in viewership. I just took shots for no reason."

"He’s kind of exorcist in front of the camera where you feel that there’s a force behind him that suddenly comes to the surface. I was dancing behind the camera. I think I had tears in my eyes."

"I am content being alive now, no matter how fucked up our political and societal present is. I think regardless of who you are, when you are tempted by the romanticism of the past, you forget how fucked up so much of it was. Take the worse state of health care as a banal example. Or, far more seriously, how the US was before the civil rights movement—and after it, for that matter, too."

"I think that’s fair, well, I don’t know if it’s fair but I think people are entitled to their own reaction."

"He’s somebody you want to be around. He’s somebody you want to talk to. He’s such a committed actor and takes it seriously but at the same time is entirely open."

"I think an Oscar nomination does open doors. I have been fortunate to have had some incredible roles since the movie. [Whether] the nomination had anything to do with that, I don’t know – I just know I am incredibly grateful to be getting the work that I am."

"My whole life I was Timmy and then as I got older, it seemed like Timmy was youthing me out, so it’s been Timothée since. I tried Timo and Tim, too. The real pronunciation is Timo-tay, but I can’t ask people to call me that; it just seems really pretentious."

"I almost think the chemistry, as opposed to the physical mechanics of the actual kissing or a sex scene is more palpable in the lack of contact."

"I just told my parents I was going alone. I’ve always felt like there was less creative space on sets with guardians. I just felt independent at a young age."

"I try to be super careful. The danger is you can end up focusing more on what’s going on off-camera than on-camera. You don’t want to be entertaining for the sake of being entertaining. The work should be the work. If it resonates, it’s going to resonate, and then people are naturally curious about how you got to that destination. It can’t be about how you’re getting to it."

"I don’t know if it’s a pressure, I do feel it’s a responsibility though. I was talking about this with Steve Carell, about how there was a general complacency in previous generations that everything was going along nicely and that ratcheted the stakes up really high. People our age are so much more engaged, and I think that’s a good thing."

"My world had flipped. But if I kicked it with my friends, things could still feel the same. I was trying to marry these two realities. But I don't even think I knew that was what I was doing. That dissonance was real. And thank God. Because I feel like if I'd caught up to it immediately, I would've been a psychopath or something."

"I figured early on [acting] was what I wanted to do for a job. And I certainly hoped it would work out, and that I would be playing lots of different parts. But I don't think I anticipated being an ant!"

"I call myself an action figure in real life and a superhero in fake life."

"There’s nothing sexy about nice; there’s nothing alluring or intriguing. And yet, I really love it when people are nice. Because honestly, I just think life is so hard. There are so many things that can get you down—that are so frustrating and so maddening. As cornball as it sounds, kindness is a thing that can defuse it a little bit. Kindness and laughs."

"When you’re playing a part you’re not just thinking about genre. ‘Oh this part is gonna be action then drama and I’m gonna tell some jokes and be funny…’ I don’t compartmentalise it like that."

"You hear some comics that used to play colleges all the time. They don’t want to do that any more, because there’s no room for any kind of daring comedy. Everybody’s gonna be pissed off about something. And that’s… a drag."

"Actors talk about a love of craft and contributing to artistic welfare. But, really, I think [the desire to act] came for me from wanting more attention from my parents."

"Over the last 10 years, I never made a very concerted effort to mix it up. I just wanted to work on things that I liked. But I think I was feeling some fatigue over that and wanted to try something different."

"I also think there’s something about the Midwest. The people that I grew up with in the Midwest — there’s something hardwired in them that they just don’t take themselves too seriously. They don’t get too big for their britches."

"Jewish women in second-wave feminism helped to provide the theoretical underpinnings and models for radical action that were seized on and imitated throughout the United States and abroad. Their articles and books became classics of the movement and led the way into new arenas of cultural and political understanding in academe, politics, and grassroots organizing. Even a partial honor roll of Jewish women's liberation pioneers must include such figures as Shulamith Firestone, Ellen Willis, Robin Morgan, Alix Kates Shulman, Naomi Weisstein, Heather Booth, Susan Brownmiller, Marilyn Webb, Meredith Tax, Andrea Dworkin, Linda Gordon, Ellen DuBois, Ann Snitow, Marge Piercy, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Vivian Gornick. Despite historians' acknowledgment of the salience of Jewish women in earlier social movements, their prominence within radical feminism failed to attract much attention."

"Man's discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire and the first crude stone axe. From prehistoric times to the present, I believe, rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear."

"In medieval times, opportunities to rape and loot were among the few advantages open to...soldiers, who were paid with great irregularity by their leaders...When the city of Constantinople was sacked in 1204, rape and plunder went hand in hand, as in the sack of almost every ancient city....Down through the ages, triumph over women by rape became a way to measure victory, part of a soldier's proof of masculinity and success, a tangible reward for services rendered...[and] an actual reward of war."

"[R]ape by a conqueror is compelling evidence of the conquered's status of masculine impotence. Defense of women has long been a hallmark of masculine success. Rape by a conquering soldier destroys all remaining illusions of power and property for men of the defeated side. The body of a raped woman becomes a ceremonial battlefield, a parade ground for the victor's trooping of the colors. The act that is played out upon her is a message passed between men - vivid proof of victory for one and loss and defeat for the other."

"The story of Bangladesh was unique in one respect. For the first time in history the rape of women in war, and the compex aftermath of mass assault, received serious international attention. The desperate need of Sheik Mujibur Rahman's government for international sympathy and financial aid was part of the reason; a new feminist consciousness that encompassed rape as a political issue and a growing, practical acceptance of abortion as a solution to unwanted pregnancy were contributing factors of critical importance. And so an obscure war in an obscure corner of the globe, to Western eyes, provided the setting for an examination of the “unspeakable” crime. For once, the particular terror of unarmed women facing armed men had full hearing."

"200,000, 300,000 or possibly 400,000 women (three sets of statistics have been variously quoted) were raped. Eighty percent of the raped women were Moslems, reflecting the population of Bangladesh, but Hindu and Christian women were not exempt. ... Hit-and-run rape of large numbers of Bengali women was brutally simple in terms of logistics as the Pakistani regulars swept through and occupied the tiny, populous land ... Rape in Bangladesh had hardly been restricted to beauty... Girls of eight and grandmothers of seventy-five had been sexually assaulted ... Pakistani soldiers had not only violated Bengali women on the spot; they abducted tens of hundreds and held them by force in their military barracks for nightly use."

"War provides men with the perfect psychological backdrop to give vent to their contempt for women. The maleness of the military—the brute power of weaponry exclusive to their hands, the spiritual bonding of men at arms, the manly discipline of orders given and orders obeyed, the simple logic of the hierarchical command—confirms for men what they long suspect—that women are peripheral to the world that counts"

"The master-slave relationship is the most popular fantasy perversion in the literature of pornography. The image of a scantly clothed slave girl, always nubile, always beautiful, always docile, who sinks to her knees gracefully and dutifully before her master, who stands with or without boots, with or without whip, is commonly accepted as a scene of titillating sexuality. From the slave harems of the Orient potentate, celebrated in poetry and dance, to the breathless description of light-skinned fancy women, de rigeur in [[a particular genre of pulp historical fiction, the glorification of forced sex under slavery, institutional rape, has been a part of our cultural heritage, feeding the egos of men while subverting the egos of women- and doing irreparable damaage to the healthy sexual process. The very word "slave girl" impart to many a vision of voluptuous sexuality redolent of perfumes gardens and soft music strummed on a lyre. Such is the legacy of male-controlled sexuality under which we struggle."

"Pornography has been so thickly glossed over with the patina of chic these days in the name of verbal freedom and sophisication… Part of the problem is that those who traditionally have been the most vigorous opponents of porn are often those same people who shudder at the explicit mention of any sexual subject… There can be no equality in porn, no female equivalent, no turning of the tables in the name of bawdy fun. Pornography, like rape, is a male invention, desgined to dehumanize women… Pornography is the undiluted essence of anti-female propoganda."

"I don’t have any sort of grand statement to make, to anybody. I don’t want people to know that much about me, really. I don’t have much of an interest in being an open book."

"I don’t come from a family of actors, I didn’t grow up around it and so when I go to Los Angeles for work, or to a premiere, I like it because it feels like I’m just popping in."

"Being jewish is a tangible unbroken form of identity going back 3000 years, whiteness is a construct from 200 ybp."

"I think there is a resurgence of anti-Semitism because at this point in time Europe has not yet learned how to be multicultural, and I think we are going to be part of that transformation which must take place. Europe is not going to be the monolithic societies the once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the center of that. It's a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multicultural mode and Jews will be resented because of our leading role. But without that leading role, and without that transformation, Europe will not survive."

"The bottom line here is that in actual historical fact, Turks were not like Nazis; Armenians were not like Jews; and attempts to convince Americans that they were are propaganda, not history. The Armenian tragedy was real and terrible, but it was not the only terrible tragedy in Turkey in 1915 and it wasn’t genocide; it was that in the midst of a wider war that brought death and destruction to millions on all sides, nationalist Armenians fought a war to claim a piece of Turkey for a country of their own, and lost."

"We can't let lone nutters get in the way of progress [...] #endwhitepeople [...] I'm not talking about wiping out people who identify as whites, it's about ending white privilege. [...] Show me in the UN OSAPG framework where it says whites are a protected group? genocide is only applicable to protected groups."

"In other words, I bet on a Daniel Pearl busy gathering proof of Pakistan’s collusion between the leading rogue states and terrorist networks of the world. My hypothesis is that he was writing an article on Pakistan’s duplicitous game, whereby it posed on one hand as a good ally of the United States, and on the other lending itself, through its most prestigious scientists, to the most fearsome operations of nuclear proliferation. To put it simply, was Pearl breaking the taboo? Entering this sinister world of mad scientists and Islamist fanatics, taking steps into this dark night where secret services and nuclear secrets exchange and share their shadowy realms, working on this highly sensitive and explosive material—was Pearl violating the other major prohibition that weighs upon this part of the world?"

"There’s the Danny—I’ve read his articles—who even if he is proud of America, thinks that America and, in general the West, has an obligation to the world, owes the world something. There is the diehard humanist who, in spite of everything he sees and has seen in his life, continues to want to believe that man is not a predator to other men, but a brother, a kindred spirit. There is the journalist who through his reporting goes unflaggingly towards the forgotten of the world, pays his debt, our debt, the debt of the hordes of smug and overfed Westerners who couldn’t care less about world poverty and don’t consider themselves “their brothers’ keepers.”"

"Because in a certain way Daniel Pearl is still alive—because of the emotion his death has aroused, and also because of the values everyone can feel, indistinctly, he incarnated—he is this living antidote to all the modern stupidities about the war between civilizations and worlds."

"The Chinese are formidable, clever, hard-working, disciplined people. They’ve achieved economic miracles. They’re not supermen. We can beat them if we do the things America does best."

"The pathbreaking movie director Joan Micklin Silver got to have a career that almost no woman was allowed to have, and did not get to have the career that she deserved. Such is the paradox of the pioneer: You get to go where very few have gone before, but when you get there, there’s nobody to pull you up or push you ahead. You make your own way, and withstand the indifference, the hostility, the condescension, and the people who treat you as a curiosity or a slightly troubling anomaly."

"Hollywood, of course, expected women to be collaborative, but had no intention of rewarding them for it. So she stayed independent. (Hollywood's ignorance of Joan Micklin Silver's talents and ambition)"

"We were so young and had never produced anything, and Joan was infinitely patient and remarkably assured on the set. We learned so much about movies from her. And she really knew how to talk to actors. John [Heard] could be tricky — he was moody and had a tough reputation. But he never gave her a moment of trouble. (memories of the production of Chilly Scenes of Winter)"

"Joan Micklin Silver was one of the most courageous artists I ever knew. She knew she could prevail at a time when women were not being taken seriously as film directors. We have all been deprived of seeing so many many other great movies that Joan was ready and prepared to give us."

"I really love being the person who in the end gets to make the decisions and have it become the way you want it to be and that urge is an overpowering urge that I have that makes me want to make films."

"It's a human truth that romantic fantasies are very hard to let go of and while it would be very nice to say Izzy, observing the difference between the two men realize that immediately that Sam was the better choice. I mean maybe you know maybe you work more rationally than than Izzy I don't know. But I mean the thing is that that you don't always do what's good for you, you know you don't always do what's right for you and sometimes you have to grow past it or go through something in order to reject it. (discussing the lead character's decision making in the film Crossing Delancey)"

"Great American filmmaker not nearly revered enough, I think she should be talked about alongside John Cassavetes as people who really moved the needle for American Indie Cinema, like after World War II and before Sundance."

"Abstract notions of feminism never interested Joan; specific women and their stories did. Yet without setting out to do so, Joan Silver influenced generations of women to come. She was a trail-blazer, a risk-taker, a champion of other women directors. And always as quietly confident as she was the day I met her some fifty years ago."

"I came of age for film, at a time when the sexism was pretty strong. And although I could get work as a Writer, I couldn’t get work as a Director at all. And I had the experience of watching young men who had made shorts as I had, prize winning shorts, as I had, moving on to directing films and I couldn’t do it. And, and my husband, Ray [Ray Silver], was… became angry, and he said, “You know, maybe you can do it, maybe you can’t, but everybody should have a chance to try for the brass ring.”"