My dad had a movie theater so I was there every night.
I had always loved Haitian art, but I stumbled onto Haiti quite by accident. I went there on vacation after finishing a movie called 'The Delta Factor,' and I met lot of painters and fell in love with their folk art.
Sometimes I take the watch, or I take the shoes, but usually the souvenir is to take the life you had with those directors, or the crew - the camera person, the lighting person. When you finish a film it's like a little death. You had a family for a bit, and you finish the movie and you probably will never see each other again.
There's an inherent idea that if a Black executive producer and a Black director are going to do a movie based on a Black writer's book that everybody is going to be Black.
I've been terrified of the water, and yet it seems I'm forced to go into in on every movie that I make.
When you write a movie, you have a hundred collaborators. But when you write a novel, it's yours.
Editing is the only process. The shooting is the pleasant work. The editing makes the movie, so I spend all my life in editing.
I'm not a movie guy, I'm not a TV sitcom guy, but whatever seems to fit and is funny is good for me.
If you were brought up in the '40s, a kid in Ossining, New York, hanging out at the poolroom and stealing, how can you think, 'Here I am in Ossining. I, too, can be a movie star!'
But it was not possible to do this movie, in this matter of time, without a solid rehearsal period.
Corporate Hollywood thinks I'm a geek to go back and do theater. They don't understand why I don't want to be a movie star, why I'm not pursuing Mel Gibson's roles.
One of the scariest moments was being on Tyler Perry's first movie, 'Diary of a Mad Black Woman.'
The riot isn't seen in the movie, but it is alluded to. He has this one speech that gives a great sense of texture and paints a picture of what was happening in Harlem then.
The point is to expand the scope of what a movie can possibly mean or be, to get people involved because they're artistic or understand the point of the material, not just because they fit a certain bill aesthetically.
I never wondered whether I should be a stage actress or a movie actress.
I feel very meditative when I ride. A horse does not know whether my movie is a hit or a flop or what is happening in my relationship.
It's possible for me to make a bad movie out of a good script, but I can't make a good movie from a bad script.
It's the formulaic studio movies the make money, and when they do, the actors in them are automatically movie stars.
I see the first 'Bourne' movie as really kind of a fulcrum in changing the modern action film, where things are really gritty and really character-driven. Think about how the entire Bond franchise was completely radicalized by Bourne.
I always like having kid energy around. I think it's good for a movie, even when you're doing dramatic stuff.
People are not used to seeing an older woman on screen, unless she's playing a character role. Why can't they make a movie about a woman who's forty-five who's falling in love or getting divorced? Why does the leading role always have to be a woman who's twenty-three or twenty-eight?
Hellboy is the first movie where both ends of the spectrum are combined.
Every time I'm shooting a movie I want to kill myself. Because I don't see the light in the end of the tunnel.
I remember driving home from a movie - it wasn't 'Halloween' but another one, maybe the original 'Omen' - and I dropped my friends off, and it was also broad daylight, and yet I was sure that, like, Damien was in the backseat or something like that.
I want to do a musical movie. Like Evita, but with good music.
You always have this fear in a movie of just being somebody's woman.
Most Americans acquire dogs impulsively and for dubious reasons: as a Christmas gift for the kids. Because they saw one in a movie. To match the new living-room furniture. Because they moved to the suburbs and see a dog as part of the package.
And now it looks like I'm probably going to shoot a movie that I wrote. I got the money to do it, and I would star and all, because of being on Howard.
I love movie sets. It's another home for me. Movie theaters and movie sets - they're just the best places to be. I love them.
I watched 'Ghostbusters' from the age of four. It's my favorite movie, still. Bill Murray's, like, the weirdest straight man that you've ever seen. He's convinced that he's the normal one, even though he's definitely not.
I want to go make an original movie. It's all very personal, but I want to define myself a little bit more as a filmmaker and hone my craft.
How do I let the director know how obsessed I am and willing to do anything for the movie? Like, I wanted to write this one director a letter, so I wrote him a handwritten note. But then I was like, 'How many people are writing this guy handwritten letters? Is it going to seem cheesy? What do I do?'
What I had noticed is that there weren't a lot of women lining up to see a comic book movie, but they were going to line up to see 'The Devil Wears Prada,' which may have been something I wanted to address.
I was never really a nerd. I'm not really into comic books or Dungeons and Dragons or any of that kind of stuff. I was in drama class, and I'm a big movie and music buff. And I'm into sports.
The result is a picture that represents so much of what I want and rarely get from a movie - a couple of hours filled with characters who are as exciting as the people I know in real life.
I always wanted to see if I could sell a movie to the public without doing any marketing because my philosophy was like, 'Hey man, I'm reaching my audience everyday. I'm twittering with them. I'm in direct contact with them on the podcast.'
