A Quote by Ben Hecht

The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people. — © Ben Hecht
The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people.
The movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century.Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them - as an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.
[Let's talk about] Donald Trump. What does he represent in the American mind and in the European mind? He represents American white trash, [which Hillary Clinton called] 'deplorable and irredeemable'. It means from an establishment or educated cosmopolitan, urbane perspective, these people are like the red necks, and you can never deal with them.
Americans are much easier to please than Canadians. The American taste is less critical. Canadians are more cultured, they are more aware of the arts than Americans.
In North America, what happens often is that they put race before nationhood. Everyone here is Hispanic-American, Chinese-American, African-American. But really, we're just North Americans of all these different descents. The only time I notice North Americans becoming national is when a war happens or a crisis happens.
Mr. Trump needs to show how he will address the critical issues on the minds of Americans: national security and economic opportunity for hardworking American families. Americans need to see more vision and less trash talk.
But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. . . We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.
One of my favorite sketches, and a popular comedy formula, is to put someone with a mental handicap in some kind of unlikely situation. For example: The retarded gynecologist, the retarded Jesus, the retarded Osama Bin Laden. It works. It's funny. Inappropriate? I dunno. I feel like I'm a pretty good judge of what crosses the line of good taste being that I am retarded. Socially perhaps, but severly retarded.
My name is Frances Louise McDormand, formerly known as Cynthia Ann Smith. I was born in Gibson City, Ill., in 1957. I identify as gender-normative, heterosexual, and white-trash American. My parents were not white trash. My birth mother was white trash.
Romanian movies are not made the same as American movies are, only because it's newer there. For instance, cigarettes, over there, are much more prominent, and Americans aren't used to that.
Avoid head trash. Don't be a garbage can for anything that does not feed your intellect, stimulate your imagination, or make you a more compassionate peaceful person. Refuse to open your mind to other people's trash. Tune out anything that promotes conflict or controversy. This can infect you with a mind virus of cynicism or defeat, and you won't even know it!
In Malaysia, where Western culture was extremely influential, I'd grown up listening to Elvis and the Beatles and watching American movies. People wanted to be like Americans. In contrast, when I got here, I saw prosperous middle-class American college students wanting to somehow join the Third World.
My concern is to develop a North American type of anarchism that comes out of the American tradition, or that at least can be communicated to Americans and that takes into consideration that Americans are not any longer people of European background.
It may be the optimist in me, but I think America has a uniquely powerful and capacious glue internally. The American identity has always been ethnically and religiously neutral, so within one generation you have Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Jamaican-Americans - they feel American. It's a huge success story.
Even some of us who make movies underestimate their influence abroad. American movies sell American culture. Foreigners want to see American movies. But that's also why so many foreign governments and groups object to them.
It's like everybody is obsessed with Hollywood movies worldwide. And even though everybody hates the Americans, they're still watching American movies.
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.
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