screenwriters-from-the-united-states

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We could make some very fine motion pictures if we didn't have to bother with cameras and lights."

"You can't use imitation silk before the motion picture camera. The lens is even quicker to detect imitation emotion."

"We movie people should not be afraid of what people will say of our work. We should not allow a word or a theory to drive us into anything or away from anything without some strong inner reason. Most of all, we should not be afraid of popularity and of financial success. Success is like posterity brought within our immediate vicinity. To have pleased millions of people with comedy, pathos or a well-constructed story is to have done a glorious thing. You can call it art, merchandise, trash or wooden nutmegs, but you cannot rob it of its noble mission—to cast light into dark places."

"Of course they put communist propaganda in the movies! They paint a rich man as a fiend. They make every rich man in a play look like a fat boy in a museum, and every poor boy is made out as a skeleton. Actually, the only millionaires I've ever known were skinny dyspeptics—look at Rockefeller."

"When an actor loses control of himself he loses control of his audience."

"Ever since I was six years old people have been prophesying that I was going to kill myself with overwork. All the prophets are now dead."

"Woman's intuition is the result of millions of years of not thinking."

"The censors are going to stop crime by censoring the films. Why don't they put an end to diseases by burning the medical books which describe them?"

"Horace said: "He who would make others weep, must first have wept himself." Every motion picture director should have that on his wall."

"Today, Wallace’s work feels like a whisper from a deeper source. It invites us to slow down, tune in, and consider the possibility that consciousness is not confined to the brain and that art can be a form of spiritual technology. For audiences drawn to esoterica, mysticism, and the aesthetics of the unseen, Wallace offers a rare synthesis: the rigor of a journalist, the imagination of a mystic, and the hand of a visionary. His drawings are portals to another world. And though the Ricco/Maresca exhibition has closed, Wallace’s psychic radio is still broadcasting. All you have to do is listen."

"We were really interested in exploring the idea of authority figures getting the public really riled up with xenophobia and racism, but ultimately the most dangerous people are the white dudes standing next to you. We wanted to reflect that story. So, the supervillains are, in a way, a misdirect."

"Every so often you want to map out your plot mythology but never so specifically that you can’t let a story surprise you. You want to allow the type of action of the writer's room so that you have the ability to take a left turn."

"I’m not a fan of endless mystery in storytelling. I like to know where the mythology is going and that we’re getting there in [an] exciting, fast-paced way."

"Mythologies become exhausting burdens, from a writer’s perspective. If you look deep into The X-Files, which we bring up a lot in the room as something we’re just terrified of, or late in the game with Buffy, as much as I love that show, things get complicated and it’s hard. It becomes less about the fun of why you fell in love with that show, in the first place, and more about servicing all of these storylines."

"When you start a show, the plans are not set in stone. They’re really mutable, cocktail napkin sketches."

"If I had a worldview, and I don’t know if I do, but if I did, it’s one that’s intensely humanistic. [That worldview] is that the only thing that matters is family and personal connection, and that’s the only thing that gives life meaning. Religion and gods and beliefs — for me, it all comes down to your brother. And your brother might be the brother in your family, or it might be the guy next to you in the foxhole."

"I talked about the commercial: The white parents would let all these kids come in and just open the refrigerator and just be in there and get something to drink, and they pull out some Sunny Delight"

"I put some stuff together, and man, the next thing you know, boom. Wow. The response changed my whole outlook on everything. I couldn’t sleep that night"

"I never stop. You’ve got to keep creating"

"I was like, ‘If it was where I’m from, you had to go to the side of someone’s house, to the refrigerator.’ That was one of my first jokes"

"I never thought my way of thinking would equate to comedy"

"I was there watching these guys, and I was like, ‘You know what? I’m ready to try"

"Just living, but living outside of the box and doing different things. Everything’s in play. You just have to watch what you say, because the landscape we’re living in is challenging. But I try to be wide open"

"In this particular time, the conversation around art and commerce is one that is very relevant.And having that conversation around the expectation of that relationship, what that relationship looks like, and the execution of trying to exist in that relationship, I think, is something that a lot of people can find relevance in and feels universal, just with existing in a capitalistic society.And as it continues to get more capitalistic, seeing how that affects art and the people that are trying to make it."

"I think there’s something very beautiful and artful about seeing people pursuing their dreams, some of the barriers they face, and what they do to push through that is a very universal journey. And so I hope while they’re laughing, they’re also gleaning the human side of it.And that’s something beautiful: that combination of humor and real grounded emotions"

"I think it allowed people to see me in a way they hadn’t been able to see me before because I was stepping into lots of characters and not necessarily projecting myself. Stand-up was the art form that I felt really amplified me as Dewayne, the person"

"I think stage presence and recognizing the relationship with the audience have helped me in the sense that I am very conscious that this is art that I want to be consumed by people, and if that is the case, then the people should be in mind when I’m creating art"

"And so I think that has just given me a perspective of elevating my awareness and consciousness of how I want people to perceive it and receive what I’m doing, that I think gives me a greater sense of motivation and information to ground my characters in something that I feel people can actually take away with them"

"And that was something that changed my career because it allowed people to see me in ways that they hadn’t before, which was as a full person. You could see that I could write, you could see that I could perform, you could see that I’m funny, you’re seeing the stories that I’m telling you, which are about my life"

"Oh, this is a space where I have the most power in any kind of artistic lane that I’ve been able to occupy"

". But because they are in some ways the beneficiaries of racism-they are racists!"

"A free-wheeling conversation with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee 9 March, 2021"

"More women are becoming enraged about these things and I think we’re on the verge of doing something about them"

"My constant battle is putting aside time wasters, and I have to watch out for procrastination"

"Staying on the path of something you’re trying to create has much to do with having confidence in yourself and in your capacity to realize the things you want out of life"

"I usually played good girl wives and mothers. And truthfully those good-girl roles were stretches"

"When African-Americans are on screen, they've usually got guns."

"Racism undercuts confidence. I wish I had known that sooner"

"the dreams stay in my head, they haunt me, they push me and become a kick to my consciousness, making me act"

"The Divine Impulse—it’s always safe to follow it"

"We have to bring forward the graces in life and make them real"

"I am an actress, wife, mother, and own my own home and I have never seen my experiences reflected on the screen."

"Critics still see blacks as 'the other,' an 'exotic"

"It occurred to me that being what they call 'colored,' being a Negro, was some kind of a disadvantage"

"Feminine sensibilities are not being acknowledged, and we’ve allowed the antipeople to steal the children and are tolerating far too much: the assault on ourselves, the families of the world, permitting war and rape."

"The worries and fears about personal lacks are immobilizing and make me dream the dream too long"

"I don't know who I would be if I weren't this child from Harlem, this woman from Harlem. It's in me so deep"