A Quote by Susanna Fogel

If you're a filmmaker who grew up wanting to make a movie for people to have that female experience of sitting in the theater together, it's hard to do unless you can compete with the bigger spectacles that are being offered to them.
I grew up in a theater family. My father was a regional theater classical repertory producer. He created Shakespeare festivals. He produced all of Shakespeare's plays, mostly in Shakespeare festivals in Ohio. One of them, the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, is still going. So I grew up not wanting to be an actor, not wanting to go into the family business.
I actually grew up wanting to be a filmmaker. I wanted to make movies, and music was a detour, almost.
With these Funny or Die videos, I do everything for them. I write them, act in them, and co-direct them with my buddy Brian McGinn, who I grew up with. We also edit them together. We're working on a small scale of Internet videos, but we're slowly trying to make them become a bigger thing.
Definitely my generation and beyond grew up in theaters and when you make a film you think of the theatrical experience. You think of that big screen in the darkened theater with a lot of people, so that's always the thought behind it. If that's the case, it's nice if that's available. That's great, but I don't really mind if they're watching films on a plane. I don't mind. Anybody who just wants to watch a movie, I can't complain. If that's the way they're going to watch them, that's the way they watch them. Who am I to judge?
I love the movies. Everyone always says the same thing about the shared cultural experience, seeing things on the big screen, the church of the cinema... But on top of all that, as a filmmaker, I love having people be trapped in a movie theater, forcing them to watch what I made.
In Providence, we didn't have a first-run movie theater. But we did have an indie movie theatre on the Brown campus. That was the theater we'd go to. I think, as highbrow as it sounds, that I grew up on the films.
There's a difference between wanting to be respected and being a strong female and being known for being able to do things, but still very much wanting guys to open the door, wanting them to ask us out, still bringing flowers and stuff like that.
I don't think people understand what it takes to make a movie unless they've experienced it themselves or been around it. It's a miracle every time you make a movie, and a bigger miracle if it turns out well.
I've always spent a lot of time in movie theaters, kind of absorbing anything I can. I just love sitting in the dark, and watching the flickering image up there. Just sitting in a movie theater alone is inspiring to me. It takes a pretty bad movie to drain the magic out of that - but Lord knows, those movies exist.
One of my beliefs as a filmmaker is that if you can make somebody laugh, you can make them listen. With laughter, you can get somebody's guard down, you can open them up to listening to you. They don't feel like they're being preached to or talked down to. I think it helps, it makes really hard to understand information a little more accessible and palatable. And at the end of the day, it makes a movie a little more fun. It doesn't feel so heavy handed.
Animals are being exploited in such an unbelievable way; it's not acceptable. PETA is trying to get your attention, and they're successful at it. ... If you talk to people who grew up on a farm, they'll tell you that they had an experience where they were taking care of a cow, and one day their parents took it away and killed it. It's a torturous experience for them, and that's when they became hard. People are taught to be grown-up or whatever, and that's dumb. That bond they had with that cow or chicken was real.
I'm kind of like both of them: My mother grew up wanting to save the world, and my father grew up wanting to rule the world.
You get to actually make your movie. As a filmmaker, that's the dream. That's why you get up in the morning, to be able to do that. You feel constrained sometimes, but if the movie makes sense in the budget realm, then it isn't hard.
I love making films. I'm happiest when I'm doing it. For me, the fear is not being able to make the next thing and not being able, as a woman filmmaker and as a filmmaker of color, to put together the resources to make another thing.
I think working for the audience, for me, is the most fun. It's really a chance for something to work towards. It's where everything kind of comes together, and you have to make it work. You have all these people who are sitting there, wanting to have a good time and wanting to laugh. You really have no choice but to pull it out.
Being broke and poor - I mean, you grow up in the environment I grew up in, grew up hard and grew up poor. Your mom doesn't have a car until you make it to the NBA... no telephone. So, I mean, if you grow up like that, and you're able to make it to this level and be blessed the way I've been blessed, it's always great to give back.
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