Critics have called alien epic 'Avatar' a version of 'Dances With Wolves' because it's about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy.
It's a bummer interracial love is still such a big deal. To me, it's quite normal. I grew up seeing couples that were interracial. Who cares if it's a black guy and white girl, or an Asian guy and white girl, etc.? Odds are, every combo exists out there somewhere so why not put it on the screen? Shouldn't art imitate life?
A hundred years ago the American white men used to put on a white sheet and use a bloodhound against Negroes. Today they have taken off the white sheet and put on police uniforms and traded in the bloodhounds for police dogs, and they're still doing the same thing.
I moved to New York and was told, "Go back home. We don't need you. Go pump gas. You're from Vermont. We've got no use for you. You're not drawing guys in tights." So, I learned how to draw guys in tights, and I put them in as many crime situations as I could.
The thing about 'Watchmen' that people should know is that when it came out there was absolutely nothing like it. Up until then, comics were about the same thing: a guy in tights fighting another guy in tights and saving the girl - that was it.
I'd pick a young white guy over an old white guy for president anytime because the younger guy is more likely to have been influenced by the great social changes of the '60s and '70s.
In a world of iPads and emails, nothing has really changed in the theatre. You still get in an hour early, do your wardrobe, put an old pair of tights under your wig, and you have, 'This is your call, Miss Jensen'. I got exhilarated by that.
How do we refresh our language? Why do we still use, like, a 150-year-old classification system to talk about people? It's so weird! We still call people black and white?
I dressed as the Riddler once, when I was little too heavy to do. I would wear tights. My brother was in a hair metal band, and he had Riddler tights made. My brother's a geek, but he was in a heavy metal band, so I'm a chubby fifteen-year-old, and I borrow his Riddler tights and wear them to school with the package. That wasn't a good idea.
The guy that I worked on 'Thriller ' was a genius and he was 20 years old, but it was like working with a gifted 10-year-old. The guy who I worked on with 'Black Or White' was crazy. Michael had gone mad.
People basically aren't that racist. They want their laughs. If I make a white guy laugh, he's gonna come see me. He's not gonna go see the white guy who doesn't make him laugh just because that guy is white.
I still think of that guy I was without a wife or kids, and I still want to entertain that guy. The lonely guy, the frustrated guy, the guy with no money - this is the guy who needs to laugh.
The one thing that always bothered me when I played in the NBA was I really got irritated when they put a white guy on me.
The Indians are still winning the battle against the white men, but sooner or later, the white guy will win.
The comics I read as a kid were all about guys in tights. But here was a guy who wore a fedora. He fought crime like they did in Marvel and DC, but he did it in the real world. I had just turned 12 when I met the Spirit and it was a strange coincidence. At the same time I discovered girls I fell out of love with guys in tights.
I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds.