A Quote by Ava DuVernay

Roger Ebert was such a champion of underrepresented filmmakers. He was a very big deal to me. It shows the power of critics. People who write about film, like you, can really affect the confidence of a young filmmaker. He did that for me, so it was such a pleasure to have an opportunity to talk about Roger in the movie.
I never apologized for anything in my life. The only thing I'm sorry about is putting a curse on Roger Ebert's colon. If a fat pig like Roger Ebert doesn't like my movie, then I'm sorry for him.
I think reviewers have become particularly venomous because, in a way, the power has been sucked from them. A 15-year-old can write a review on the Internet and it means as much as Roger Ebert's review, and that just makes Roger Ebert mad, so he comes out harder and stronger.
Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel first championed my film, 'Hoop Dreams,' which was essential to its success. Roger remained a great supporter of my work throughout my career, and I'll never forget him tweeting about 'The Interrupters' right before its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011.
For me certainly Earl Campbell and Tony Dorsett come to mind, and Roger Staubach. I've grown up here in Dallas watching Roger and his playing career and to be in the same fraternity as Roger Staubach is/was a huge deal for me.
I feel like I'm a graduate of the Roger Corman School of Filmmaking. I went and visited Roger on the set of Dinoshark and that's in the movie. That's where I really got a big whopping taste of what it's like to be on one of his sets.
If you take a movie like Easy Rider which everyone counts as the beginning of New Hollywood, that is a big movement. And then, when you really dissect that film and the people that were behind that movie, you realize that it has Roger Corman written all over it. Easy Rider is a hybrid film, taking The Trip and The Wild Angels and making a new explosion. And the people that were making it, guess what, they were all [people who had worked with Roger Corman].
When I was a young filmmaker starting out, I was really snobby about all the affirmative action for women filmmakers because I felt it should be about your talent, and I made a film that won awards, and people wanted me.
There hadn't been one done since the late 70s. I was living in Brooklyn, had no connection to Roger Corman, to no one in this movie. I didn't go to film school. I'm like the person who should have never made this film. But I just decided to put one foot in front of the other. I was writing film articles for magazines at the time. I convinced an editor from one of the magazines that I was working for to give me a shot to do a piece on Roger. This was an excuse to go meet him.
Roger Corman exploited all of the young people who worked for him, but he really gave you responsibility and opportunity. So it was kind of a fair deal.
I am deeply honored to be making 'Life Itself,' a documentary on the life of Roger Ebert, and to have had the full cooperation and enthusiasm of Roger and his wife, Chaz.
I went without health insurance until 'Roger & Me,' basically - from about age 20 till about age 35. With 'Roger & Me,' I joined the Directors Guild and the Writers Guild, and since then I've had excellent health care managed by the union.
If you ask Jim Courier, I mean, that guy has his tongue up (Roger Federer's) ass, I think...you know, the whole time when you actually listen to him commentating or listen to him talk about Roger Federer. Sometimes makes me sick almost.
I don't really care about the critics or when people talk good about me. It can't affect you. I'm one to trust myself and to look for more.
What's happening to movie critics is no different from what has been meted out to book, dance, theater, and fine-arts reviewers and reporters in the cultural deforestation that has driven refugees into the diffuse clatter of the Internet and Twitter, where some adapt and thrive - such as Roger Ebert - while others disappear without a twinkle.
Alejandro Amenábar is a very interesting filmmaker. I had really liked The Others, which was a movie he made with Nicole Kidman a few years ago. He made a very compelling case about how much he wanted me to be in this movie. Whenever a really passionate, talented filmmaker seems to have an interest in me, I take it very seriously because I like to work.
For my very first movie, 'Roger and Me,' I made it as part of my deal with Warner Brothers that the four people that were evicted in that film, that Warner Brothers would house - would pay their mortgage or their rent for the next two years to give them a chance to get on their feet.
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