A Quote by Leo Baekeland

I was trying to make something really hard, but then I thought I should make something really soft instead, that could be molded into different shapes. That was how I came up with the first plastic. I called it Bakelite.
I really do feel like an unremarkable person trying really hard, openly, to do something interesting and to make something of value and pleasure.
When I first started writing plays I couldn't write good dialogue because I didn't respect how black people talked. I thought that in order to make art out of their dialogue I had to change it, make it into something different. Once I learned to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I let them start talking.
I really think kids should understand that music is like learning the alphabet. You put small letters together to make words, and then you use these words to create a story, but with music. And they really need to know how to mix and match those letters and how to come up with something that is really interesting, or speak in metaphors as poets do to show us something maybe we didn't think about.
We were one of the first to say, 'Let's make a really nice shirt for skaters and let's make it really well.' We don't dumb down for somebody young; we are always trying to do something new.
We needed to make a sound that's not gonna fit in with everything else - we wanted to make something that was completely unique and individual to us. We spent a lot of time trying to make a sound that was a One Direction sound. At first it was quite hard to do that, but I'm really happy with the sound.
I always like to make people happy, make them have a good time. It's pretty obvious if the room is dead - if no one is cheering or singing or whatever, there's obviously something wrong. I always try to look for euphoric feelings, things people are excited that they're hearing, and then I build from there. It's hard to explain, actually. When I'm in the mood, I just feel it. Now they need something with vocals, now they need something hard, something soft.
Sometimes, when actors reach out to their characters, they're nowhere in sight. They need to find something inside of them. And then the characters are right there. As a director, I want them to find the character that's already inside them, instead of trying to manufacture or manipulate or make something up. That's not really honest or true.
Eventually, when I got the 'Meadowland' script, I saw something in it that made me think I could make something special out of it, something that could work with my style. Emotionally, I connected to it. I thought, 'If I feel this way just imagining it, maybe we can make that happen on screen and make people feel something when they watch it.'
It felt really radically uncomfortable. And I was really not sure at first about releasing that body of work. But then the more I thought about it, the more I thought that that position, that location, is something that's just sort of interesting in its own right, as an experience, as a process. Again, we're talking about this rubric, this set of rules, this grid that I toss on top of different locations globally. This is what came out of Africa.
Often, some people dress something up to make it sound scientific, use scientific words, call themselves doctor something-or-other, and then you look them up, and they're trying to make it sound like something it's not. There's this entire field that's adding the word 'quantum' to everything. It doesn't even make sense in that context.
I fell in love with that movie [Now You See Me]. I liked the actors. I thought it was an interesting world. When they called me with the opportunity to direct the next one, the first question I needed to address was, what are we going to do to make it different? How can I add something to the franchise? If I can't add anything, then there's no reason for me to do it.
I'm the only Mauritanian filmmaker so it wouldn't make sense to make a film in France. I could shoot outside of my own country if the story was something that called for it. Africa really has to be the reason for me to make a new film.
Sometimes you can feel the gears shifting in scripts, like really trying to make something work that feels sweaty for whatever reason. I really enjoy reading material that just flows - it's definitely a skill to make something feel effortless.
I was raised in Kenya, and I always wanted to be an actor from when I was really, really little, but the first time I thought it was something that I could make a career of was when I watched 'The Color Purple.' I think I was nine, maybe, and I saw people that looked like me - Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah.
One of my central philosophies is to be creatively driven so I have to be extraordinarily creative in the way I get things done and I have to be really flexible. Striving for the best creativity can be a really moving target if you're trying to budget anything because if you come up with a better idea for something and it's going to make the movie stronger then you have to do it. And that's what I do. The difficulty is that you have to use more judgement as a producer then you might in other places. I have to make unbelievably great creative decisions.
We recognize the chicken as another conscious being. It's different from us, but it has a life, and if something is really important for that chicken, if it would work hard to try to get it, and if we can give it without sacrificing something that's really important to us, then we should.
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