A Quote by Ava DuVernay

There's really no precedent for someone like me gaining clout in the space that I'm in - a black woman directing films in Hollywood.

Ava DuVernay

Quote Topics

Black Clout Directing Directing Film Films Gaining Hollywood Like Like Me Me Precedent Really Someone Space Woman

Quote Author

Ava DuVernay
American - Director
Born: August 24, 1972

I want to be someone who is a great representation of a black woman in Hollywood, a black woman in the entertainment industry.

Kat Graham

I've done all the other kind of production work on films than directing really badly. That is the truth. It's made me a better director because I feel like directing is the only thing I can really do.

Azazel Jacobs

There's a thing I really mind hearing, when someone says: "That's not my kind of film, I don't want to go and see that..." I don't believe that, I don't believe that it's possible to write off a whole genre of filmmaking - "oh I don't like subtitled films", or "I don't like black and white films", or I don't like films made before or after, a certain date" - I don't believe that.

Tilda Swinton

You are a white. The Imperial Wizard. Now, if you don't think this is logic you can burn me on the fiery cross. This is the logic: You have the choice of spending fifteen years married to a woman, a black woman or a white woman. Fifteen years kissing and hugging and sleeping real close on hot nights. With a black, black woman or a white, white woman. The white woman is Kate Smith. And the black woman is Lena Horne. So you're not concerned with black or white anymore, are you? You are concerned with how cute or how pretty. Then let's really get basic and persecute ugly people!

Lenny Bruce

I don't care about Hollywood films. I'm not against Hollywood films, you know? Hollywood films were very good before, in the 1950s.

Gerard Depardieu

My mom is Jamaican and Chinese, and my dad is Polish and African American, so I'm pretty mixed. My nickname in high school was United Nations. I was fine with it, even though I identify as a black woman. People don't realize it hurts my feelings when someone looks at my hair or my eyes, and says, "But you're not actually black. You're black, but you're not black black, because your eyes are green." I'm like, "What? No, no, I'm definitely black." Even some of my closest friends have said that. It's been a bit touchy for me.

Ayesha Curry

If you take the '70s with Blaxploitation pictures, there was a proliferation of black-content films and motion pictures, television, stage plays and so forth at a time when Hollywood was in trouble financially, and it was cheaper to do black films to keep the lights on until they could reestablish themselves.

Glynn Turman

I know a lot of people who enjoy rap music who aren't black. You can't just say it's black music. To segregate films the way Hollywood likes to segregate films, ultimately everyone loses.

F. Gary Gray

I've been doing second unit for years, which is sort of like directing mini movies. Now that I'm directing entire films, it's really just more of everything. There are a lot more questions that need answers.

David Leitch

Women sometimes really love to look at other beautiful women on the screen. But they don't look at a woman the way a man looks at a woman. They want to be that woman. They like if a woman is beautiful or sexy, especially if she's powerful. They like to see her catch a man, or to be powerful in the world. I think this is why a lot of women love noir films and classic films because they can really identify with these really strong, beautiful women. That's the kind of power that women have lost culturally.

Anna Biller

About the time I was 7, I got really into black-exploitation films, so I made my own Wonder Woman, but I made her black.

Mark Bradford

I think now that I've tried directing, I'm not interested in doing adaptations anymore. I could do an adaptation of someone else's work that I would write, but the idea of taking someone else's material entirely doesn't interest me. One of the things that I found really helpful, at least in my mind - and I've never discussed this with the actors or with the people I work with - is that being a neophyte in directing, I feel like I have a kind of authority simply because I'm the writer as well.

Charlie Kaufman

It really upsets me that the media insists on turning 'Do the Right Thing' or 'Boyz N the Hood' into 'black films.' They are American films. They may open the window on the black experience, but they had things to say to everybody. That's why they were so successful.

Bill Duke

I was raised in a completely black world. In those days, if a white woman married a black man, she lived as a black woman, and that was just the end of it. So, I don't have a feeling of being bi-racial. I don't have a connection to it. People often come up to me thinking I do have a connection to it, and I kind of let them down because I really don't.