A Quote by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Something that happens to me is that I'll write a play specifically from my own experience, and then I'll inevitably be told that I'm being tunnel-visioned about it. People always ask, 'What about that other race? Or discrimination toward those people?'
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The race thing is sort of a misnomer. It's just the human race, right? That's it. The rest of it, and racism, is socially constructed. Nobody is born racist, no one. What happens is other things that are usually based on power, money, feeling good about yourself, or bad about yourself, those things play into hating other people for whatever reason.
There will always be people that will have assumptions about you, about my character, my personality, or that I might put on a show of being gay or something, or that I play up stereotypes or anything like that. It's always funny to me that those people are typically the people that know me the least.
If we write our laws and design them around the most privileged members of society, i.e., billionaire football team owner, then we forget about the people who don't have the same resources to make an appeal, to fight a wrongful accusation. Those tend to be members of the LGBT community and people of color because those are the people who tend to engage in the work of reappropriation to subvert discrimination. And yet those are the same ones being denied, based on their own identities.
I'm not going to tell you the movies, but I remember getting halfway through the thing and everything sort of tunnel-visioned on me and I couldn't read the script anymore. I looked at the people and I just turned and ran out in a cold sweat. It took me about a year to study it and feel comfortable going in and reading for people.
From the very beginning, I was involved in talking to people, listening to people. And it hasn't stopped. The idea was that people send me information; I'd ask them about it, listen, try to do something about it - and then ask for more feedback.
People always ask me, 'Why do you only write about heartbreak?' I think I only write when I'm broken, so that's just what happens. It makes me feel better, but having some distance helps.
Discover the time of day when you write best, and write then. For me it's about 7 am to noon. For other people it's overnight. Try not to do anything other than write between those times.
I write about presidents. That means I write about guys - so far. I'm interested in the people closest to them, the people they love and the people they've lost... I don't want to limit it to what they did in the office, but what happens at home and in their interactions with other people.
Is there something about the gay experience, being gay and the gay experience, that pushes us even more than other people toward competition?
There are some artists that I'll always be cool with. We'll kick it and we'll check on each other from time to time. It's not always about number one records or gaining something off from being around me. I experienced all of those people that came into my life that vanished as soon as the rumor came out. They didn't even call to ask what was going on. Those that know me know that it's not true. Those people really broke my heart because they treated me differently. Just going from having everything to losing it all. I lost everything because of that.
The contract stuff just happens to be a coincidence to me. I always play every game as if my back is against the wall. That's always something that has been good to me since high school. A lot of people believe the grass is greener on the other side, but I'm not one of those people. It wouldn't be my choice to leave, but the Seahawks know that.
If there's a feeling you have, other people have it. If there's something weird about your life, other people have lived it. If there's something kooky about your body, other people have that, too. We're not alone. There's some kind of tremendous relief in that and I think it can only be expressed in belly laughter. This tremendous relief that happens the millisecond we realize, it's not just me. That's what good laughter is about. It's about knowing that you're not alone.
The natural result of people preferring one of their own race is that a minority race president will find it hard to get elected, and so it's something we should do something about and which we can do something about.
People ask me many times, "Aren't you afraid you're going to scare people? Aren't you afraid you're going to make people feel bad about the human race?" I look at it as entirely the opposite. Something you can understand and identify should be less frightening than something you can't. And to understand that there are people who are capable of acting without conscience, without considering other people at all, explains a lot of things.
You get told a lot in school to tell what you know, write what you know. But what excites me about filmmaking, about being a storyteller, is being able to learn about other people, putting myself in somebody else's shoes, whether that be someone from the Dominican Republic or someone from Cuba or inner-city Brooklyn.
People ask me: "Why do you write about food, and eating, and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way the others do?" . . . The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry.
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