Film Producers From The United States

"Move Bitch!"

"No gold or platt I was simply red from the years i been holdin' back"

"Comin' to Shady Park is like a freak show, there's some respectable women, and there some freak hoes"

"John Wayne once called him a "goddamn liberal pinko faggot" and Barry [Norman] laughed in his face. "But that just made him even crosser" explains Barry. "He got up out of his chair, clearly intent on doing me physical harm, then a PR person from Paramount came over sat him down and said "I think the interview's over now, don't you?'"."

"John Wayne was such a nice man, but he was always a little shy with women, especially blondes."

"I eat as much as I ever did, I drink more than I should, and my sex life is none of your goddamned business."

"There's a lot of things great about life. But I think tomorrow is the most important thing. Comes in to us at midnight very clean, ya know. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday."

"With a lot of blacks, there's quite a bit of resentment along with their dissent, and possibly rightfully so. But we can't all of a sudden get down on our knees and turn everything over to the leadership of the blacks. I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people."

"In fact, I don't even call myself an actor. I'm a reactor. I listen to what to what the other guys says and I react to it. That's the John Wayne method."

"The picture business has grown up since I got into it 15 years ago, has acquired a dignity that is beyond reproach. Hollywood is, today, a quiet town compared to other places I have been and can, moreover, be pretty proud of itself, having pushed more charities, given more time to selling war bonds and more talent to entertaining servicemen than any other town in any other part of the country."

"We had a pretty good time together, when she wasn't trying to kill me!"

"Wow! If I'd have known that I would have put that patch on thirty-five years earlier. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm no stranger to this podium. I've come up here and picked up these beautiful golden men before, but always for friends. One night I picked up two: one for Admiral John Ford, one for our beloved Gary Cooper. I was very clever and witty that night, the envy of even Bob Hope, but tonight I don't feel very clever or very witty. I feel very grateful, very humble, and all thanks to many, many people. I want to thank the members of the Academy. To all you people who are watching on television, thank you for taking such a warm interest in our glorious industry. Good night."

"Wayne's most enduring image is that of the displaced loner uncomfortable with the very civilization he is helping to establish and preserve...At his first appearance, we usually sense a very private person with some wound, loss or grievance from the past. At his very best he is much closer to a tragic vision of life...projecting the kind of mystery associated with great acting."

"It was there, that summer of 1943 while the hot wind blew outside, that I first saw John Wayne. Saw the walk, heard the voice. Heard him tell the girl in a picture called War of the Wildcats that he would build her a house, 'at the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow.' As it happened I did not grow up to be kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to that bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow. Deep in that part of my heart where the artificial rain forever falls, that is still the line I want to hear... When John Wayne rode through my childhood, and perhaps through yours, he determined forever the shapes of certain of our dreams. It did not seem possible that such a man could fall ill, could carry within him that most inexplicable and ungovernable of diseases."

"They lockin' old white cookbook bitches up!"

"I'd fuck you, but I don't have a change for a 5."

"You know, I grew up around black people my whole life. I mean, if the truth be told, I probably know niggas better than you. And don't go getting offended by my use of the quote-unquote N-word. I have a black wife and two biracial kids, so I feel I have a right. I don't give a God damn what that prick Spike Lee says. Tarantino was right. Nigger is just a word. If Ol' Dirty Bastard can use it every other word, why can't I?"

"Here's the thing. I grew up in Fort Greene. I grew up here in New York. It's changed. And why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers in the south Bronx, in Harlem, in Bed-Stuy, in Crown Heights for the facilities to get better?"

"With Bamboozled, Lee takes a look at one of film and television's rarest breeds-the black television executive. His satire is based on the current lack of diversity in Hollywood, where 75 percent of television writers are white. And in most cases, the minority writers at networks are all working on the same show (in 1999, it was found that ABC employed nine black writers-all assigned to the same sitcom). In order to succeed in his position as a black television executive, then, Lee's main character delves back into the history of blacks on screen to revive one of the most popular forms of early entertainment: the Minstrel. And with the Minstrel, of course, comes Blackface-perhaps the most dreaded image in the history of American media."

"My film is supposed to reflect that; it is an indictment of the people who write and accept those shows, because we know that they exist today. It also has to do with the $1 million question: What is black? It is a never-ending quest for who we are, and some people are still in search of that."

"You always avoid direct eye contact, you know that? Are you afraid of something? Are you afraid that I might see the real you? Huh? Answer me. Come on, answer me."

"I know that it's painful at times, but we're not making this up. The depths of degradation in cartoons, movies, and television shows, the misrepresentation of a people - it's an American legacy. Not just in television or movies, but in all media."

"In life, there are times to be quiet, and there are times to shut the fuck up. This is one of those times."

"Let me tell you the story of right hand-left hand. It's a tale of good and evil. Hate: it was with this hand that Cain iced his brother. Love: these five fingers, they go straight to the soul of man. The right hand: the hand of love. The story of life is this: static. One hand is always fighting the other hand, and the left hand is kicking much ass. I mean, it looks like the right hand—Love—is finished. But hold on, stop the presses; the right hand is coming back. Yeah, he got the left hand on the ropes now, that's right. Ooh, it's a devastating right and Hate is hurt. He's down. Left-Hand Hate KO-ed by Love."

"I may have been born yesterday, but I stayed up all night."

"Everybody's a teacher. People can teach you two things, what to do and what not to do."

"We've killed more Muslims than they've killed us by an awful lot, and we've invaded more Islamic nations. But we're exempted from these things?"

"This is a second act for me, and you give me that. I wanna thank you for this. I'm so grateful and proud. I just wanna to dedicated this (the award) to anyone else out there, who is trying to get a second act, because you can do. (Speech after receiving the British Academy Film Awards for the Best Director)"

"I asked Michael (Bay) why it was easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers. He told me to shut the fuck up, so that was the end of that talk. He said, 'You know, Ben, just shut up, okay? You know, this is a real plan.' I was like, 'You mean it's a real plan at NASA to train oil drillers?' And he was, 'Just shut your mouth.' See, here's where we demonstrate that, because Bruce (Willis) is going to tell the guys they did a bad job of building the drill tank. See, he's a salt-of-the-earth guy, and the NASA nerd-o-nauts don't understand his salt-of-the-earth way, his rough-and-tumble ways. Like somehow they can build rocket ships, but they don't understand what makes a good tranny. Like eight whole months, as if that's not long enough to learn to drill a hole. But in a week, we're gonna learn how to be astronauts. I mean, this a little bit of a stretch, let's face it. 'They don't know jack about drilling'? How hard can it be? Aim the drill at the ground and turn it on."

"I'm always described as "cocksure" or "with a swagger," and that bears no resemblance to who I feel like inside. I feel plagued by insecurity."

"We covered "Hey Jude." My father panicked, misunderstanding the lyrics and thinking our lead singer was belting out "Hey, Jew" to a roomful of Holocaust survivors."

"All those rumors about her being underweight are trash. She's gorgeous."

"There's an old saying in Hollywood: It's not the length of your film, it's how you use it."

"People like to define you through what they’ve seen you do … There are aspects of my personality, I guess, that come through on-screen, but I don’t sit around thinking, I’ve been a bumbling suitor all my life."

"When I didn’t have a family, I was much more of a workaholic … I still like to work, but I also want to be home with them. As you get older, you realize you need balance. If it’s not fun, what’s the point?"

"All the Sixties were complicated, you know. On the one hand it was funny too, you know; on the other hand it was cruel, you know. The communists are so cruel, because they impose one taste on everybody, on everything, and who doesn't comply with their teachings and with their ideology, is very soon labeled pervert, you know, or whatever they want you call it, or counterrevolutionary or whatever. And then the censorship itself, that's not the worst evil. The worst evil is — and that's the product of censorship — is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself. I am stopping to being honest, I am becoming hypocrite — and that's what they wanted, they wanted everybody to feel guilty, they were, you know... And also they were absolutely brilliant in one way, you know: they knew how effective is not to punish somebody who is guilty; what Communist Party members could afford to do was mind-boggling: they could do practically anything they wanted — steal, you know, lie, whatever. What was important — that they punished if you're innocent, because that puts everybody, you know, puts fear in everybody."

"First of all, whoever didn't want to be a member of this association or the other association, was branded, you know, like a dangerous individualist, you know, infected by the Western decadence, you know. So everybody joined. And everything is controlled and everybody is a member of some committee, because then their watchdogs placed in the committees can control everything, what this person says or how this person think, you know. It was... [Sighs] it was just ridiculous."

"You know, you have to really decide where you want to live: if you want to live in the jungle or in the zoo. Because if you want the beauty, if you want freedom, the jungle is... that's your world. But you're in danger there, you have to live with snakes, sharks, tigers, skunks, you know, mosquitoes, es. You want to be safe, you have to live in the zoo. You are protected. You know, if you are a lamb, the tiger will not attack you. You know, you'll get a little bit something to eat every day; that's fine. You have to work hard, but you live behind the bars, and what's wonderful — you live there behind the bars and you dream about the beauty of the jungle. Now what happened was that the bars opened, and everybody runs after the dream. And suddenly, well, yeah, it's beautiful — yes, I am free to go wherever I want, do whatever I want, but where do I want to go? Oh, my God, and here is a tiger and here's a snake. Oh, oh, and people have a tendency to, you know, back. And you will be surprised how many people prefer to live in the zoo; they are not ready to pay for the freedom; they think that freedom should be, you know, for free, even for granted, which never is, never is."

"I tell you, in my opinion, the cornerstone of democracy is free press — that's the cornerstone. I'm convinced if the press... it was not possible, of course, but if the free press existed through this century, there wouldn't be Hitler there wouldn't Stalin, there wouldn't be all this incredible price people have to pay for their freedom, you know, because that's what they're always first after… newspapers, radio, television, everything like that."

"There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently."

"Bill Clinton is like a lot of white politicians. They eat soul food, they party with black women, they play the saxophone, but when it comes to domestic and foreign policy, they make the same decisions that are destructive to African people in this country and throughout the world."

"Racism is a system of power and in the absence of power you cannot be considered a racist."

"Her comments before and after Los Angeles were filled with a kind of hatred that you do not honor today and tonight.… If you took the words "white" and "black," and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech."

"[David Mills:] Even the people themselves who were perpetrating that violence, did they think that was wise? Was that a wise reasoned action? Sister Souljah: Yeah, it was wise. I mean, if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people? In other words, white people, this government and that mayor were well aware of the fact that black people were dying every day in Los Angeles under gang violence. So if you're a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person? Do you think that somebody thinks that white people are better, are above and beyond dying, when they would kill their own kind?"

"Souljah was not born to make white people feel comfortable. I am African first! I am black first! I want what's good for me and my people first."

"If there are [any good white people], I haven't met them. Where are they?"

"My definition of "good" is that you understand that this is a question of power, that you be willing to give up some power, that you be willing to give up some resources, that you be willing to pay black people reparations for our years and years of service in this country, that you be willing to go home and tell your white mother and father about white racism and how it affects and kills black people in our communities. That's my definition of good white people and I haven't met any like that."

"What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through."

"Before Google Docs existed, those rare times I met software engineers, I’d ask them to please create software so two people in different locations could edit a document together online. God bless Google Docs."

"I called Ira up and I said, 'You're gonna be a cult hero eventually'—and I think it's coming true. The other thing I said to him was, 'It's gonna devour you.'"