QUOTES by Justin Simien
Find most favourite and famour Authors from A.A Milne to Zoe Kravitz.
'Blue is the Warmest Colour' - I'm not a lesbian, I'm not French, I'm not a woman, but I saw so much of myself in those women and in those characters. I saw different parts of myself than I ever would've seen if I hadn't seen that film.
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The way Hollywood and TV is, black people don't have any choice but to see ourselves in white-dominated television shows and stories and movies.
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Balance, I think, and self-care is something I want people to really take to heart.
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It's not new to attempt to vilify the minority that speaks about their oppression. That's not a new thing.
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One of the things that I love about Robert Altman's movies is that, really, a Robert Altman movie is just a bunch of short films about various people told at the same time.
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Everyone is very aware that, not only do we have a race problem, but it's so pervasive that it affects national and global politics on a scale that I don't think a lot of people imagined.
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I want the Latino 'Do the Right Thing' to happen. I want filmmakers whose voices are not represented to get a shot.
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Shonda Rhimes has figured it out, of getting multiracial casts on television and appealing to everybody.
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I think we are aware that post-racialism isn't real, right? I mean, I hope so. I kind of joke that we're post-post-racial.
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It's called 'Dear White People,' but really, it's about these black characters and how they are involved or not involved in a racial scandal in ways that might surprise them and others, right?
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I remember distinctly not seeing myself. I didn't see myself in black culture, white culture, mass culture.
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Shows like 'Empire'... one of the most profound powerful things is that there's a gay male character who is loved. That character is going to save a lot of people's lives. Black families are confronting the idea that a gay black character can be human.
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I thought I was depressed because I wasn't a writer/director. I moved into a space where I'm a writer/director, my movie is a hit at Sundance, I have a wonderful, loving boyfriend, and wow, I have financial stability. Why can't I get out of bed still?
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Usually, with 'Star Trek,' you always trust the captain. The captains are always going to pull us through; the captain's always going to win.
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There is no monolithic black culture. It's completely different for someone born in Harlem to someone born in Houston or London with one exception, which is that people contributing to black culture have the experience of being black.
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Racism is systemic: It's oppression that's built into the laws, legislation, into the way neighborhoods are policed, and into job opportunities and health care and education.
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I wanted to be a filmmaker since I was a kid. I always did things that took me a little closer to that.
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Here's the thing: I come from a filmmaking background, so this concept of sort of overseeing a television show but not directing was, in general, not weird, but I had to get used to what that felt like. My initial instinct was, 'I want to direct as much of this as possible.' But the logistics of making of TV, that's just not possible.
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I definitely have fun commenting on the real world and interpreting through the 'Dear White People' lens.
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There was a time when a studio executive would really love something and have no proof at all that it would work and just do it because they believed in it. That's how 'Star Wars' happened.
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Everyone at a performing arts schools is weird. The weirder you were, the better. If you weren't weird in some way, they'd look at you and be like, 'Who's that square?'
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Hollywood is a world where the only thing that gets green-lit is something that made money the last year.
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'Color-blind' comes up - people say 'Oh, I'm color-blind and therefore can't be accused of racism,' but I think that if we are going to have an honest dialogue about racism, we have to admit that people of color are having a different experience.
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Daring to make films of any kind and thus invite the possibility of ridicule was an internal battle of mine for many years as I worked on the screenplay for what would become 'Dear White People' beginning at the end of George W. Bush's second term.
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I often have to play a role to get what I want in my life. At the same time, I can't do that without also nourishing who I really am and being aware of my true self and the ways in which I'm not bound by my race or sexual orientation or class or country or whatever.
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I see racism as institutional: the rules are different for me because I'm black. It's not necessarily someone's specific attitude against me; it's just the fact that I, as a black man, have a much harder time making an art-house movie and getting it released than a white person does about their very white point of view. That's racism.
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Any time a black person has the audacity to tell everybody else that they're also human beings, they are confronted with all kinds of malice and violence and ill will. It's been that way since black people were brought to this country.
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Self-doubt is a constant companion for a chubby, gay, black boy born in the South.
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There is an obsession with black tragedy. If you see a black movie, it's typically historical, and it tends to deal with our pain. And listen, there have been some excellent films made in that vein, and there are some painful parts of black history that should be explored, but it is kind of weird that only those films bubble up to the surface.
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I have different privileges because I am a man, and I have to acknowledge that and realize that another person of color who is also a woman is having a different experience than I am.
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I think art is much more valuable when it's honest. If it's not honest, it's just propaganda.
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Satire and comedy are really the only film mediums where you can get into ideas and have people leave the theater without being moralized.
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I never quite lived up to the image of the black man as I saw it growing up. I was never listening to the right music at the right time or wearing the right clothes at the right time. I was still listening to Michael Jackson, and everyone had sort of moved on to gangster rap. Alanis Morissette when everyone else was listening to En Vogue.
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The downside of doing a multi-protagonist movie is that you don't get to service each character as you would if they were the central protagonist of the movie.
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As much as I'd love to believe that we are 'post-racial' - an idea that really gained traction after the election of Barack Obama in 2008 - I can never escape the fact that in the world I am perceived as a 'black man' and, in certain parts of the world, as a 'black gay man.'
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There are a plethora of ways of being black, just like there's many ways to being white.
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I talk about being a 'what' to people. Like, being gay in mainstream society is a different kind of 'what' than being black. They don't always jive. It's confusing and leads to these really awkward personal stories that have just been in me for awhile.
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In the press, there's this desire for the black audience to be this monolithic thing that always responds to the same stars. That's a really reductive way of looking at the black audience.
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It occurred to me that by naming the film itself 'Dear White People,' I could tap into the burgeoning meme culture as well as make a meta-commentary about the controversies within the film.
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It is frustrating having to walk through America having to bob and weave people's impressions of me because they see a tall black guy walking down the street. That is frustrating.
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