A Quote by Imtiaz Ali

I was interested in theatre and media and came to Mumbai to get a job. I imagined that the film industry would be a white building with producers sitting in different rooms, and you could walk in and meet them, and they would interview you and select you.
The streets and the industry are two different things. You could be one super-hot artist in the streets, and you could walk into a corporate building, and people would be like, "Who are you?"
Pass the popcorn, please. Life is a film, theatre, a theatre of the soul. We play different roles on different stages. At death, we walk offstage. At birth, we walk onstage.
I believe if you go to a movie theatre, and you see something you think is incredible, if you walk out of the theatre and there was a bin in the lobby of DVDs of the film you just watched, you would buy four of them - one for you and three for your friends.
Even here, in the U.S., I walk my daughter's dog and I look for interesting people sitting at a picnic table and I walk over with my white hair and I ask, "Would you mind if I sat and rested here for a minute?" Nobody would refuse that.
Even if I had any money I would rather burn everything I own and not even give them the ashes. They could have the job of picking them up. That's how much I hate the media industry.
There was a telemarketing job one summer in high school that I was rejected for. I still walk by the building that I actually had the interview in. It's still in New York, and I always think about that job and why I didn't get it.
If the interview was done in the studio, Frank McGee would automatically do it. But if I went out and got it, then the interview was mine. So I was considered a pushy cookie, because I would get the interview.
I would love it if, even for one day, you could walk through a neighborhood and see an Asian guy sitting on his stoop, then you look across the street and see a black guy and a white guy sitting on their porches, and a Mexican dude walking by.
I was interested in theatre, and the only experience that I had in high school was as an actor. But when I got in Conservatoire, my teachers would give me a lot of flack because I wasn't rehearsing my lines; I'd be doing stage management. I was interested in sound. I was interested in architecture. I was interested in every aspect of theatre.
'SNL' came out in the '70s. It's a different zeitgeist. It's hard to re-create it, just as it would be hard to do a black-and-white noir film now. The culture's different.
Unfortunately, you don't get artist development anymore. Record companies have become a huge corporate thing. It used to be you'd meet someone [in the business] and they'd have a little history of music. Some people in the companies now don't even like music. It's just a job. So I miss the days when someone would go out on a limb and pick a band that was different. I just don't see that anymore. It's the same with the film industry.
The only genre of movie that I could see making that doesn't have anything magical or otherworldly about it would be a war film. I'm very interested in history, and a war film could be something that would lure me in.
When I was discussing my role with other senior campaign folks, they would say, "I know you have four kids, but..." I said, "There's nothing that comes after the 'but' that makes any sense to me, so don't even try." Like, what is the "but"? But they'll eat Cheerios for the rest of life? Like, nobody will brush their teeth again until I get home? I mean, it just - what is the "but"? And I do politely mention to them that the question isn't, would you take the job? The male sitting across from me who's going to take a big job in the White House.
I am bouncing back despite being a girl from Mumbai who didn't work for two years. A lot of others girls in the same situation would have had to walk away from the industry.
People like myself, who have good credibility in the game and played at the very top level, you'd think would get a job or at least be given an interview, but you're not even getting an interview.
I would most like to do film or TV. Possibly theatre in the future, but I'm in L.A. a lot of the time at the moment and if I was going to do theatre it would be in London.
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