Lena Waithe Quotes

One of my favorite films is 'Big Fish,' which I think is a masterpiece.

I like Rob Morgan in 'Mudbound.' Most of the attention being paid to this movie has focused on Rachel Morrison's cinematography and Mary J. Blige's stiff but intensely stoical performance.

In 'Dear Father,' you will see some remarkable work in terms of the screenplay.

I don't think 'Lootera' is slow paced; it's finely paced for its setting and story.

Can fiction teach us? Absolutely. Fiction has the power to illustrate place, era, and atmosphere in vivid detail. But it is not Anthropology for Dummies.

Think about 'GoodFellas': It could be a textbook on how not to write a screenplay. It leans on voice-over at the beginning, then abandons it for a while, then the character just talks right into the camera at the end. That structure is so unusual that you don't have any sense of what's going to happen next.

But having a really good understanding of history, literature, psychology, sciences - is very, very important to actually being able to make movies.

I do remember when I first read the script of the 92 In The Shade. I was in the house at Nicholas Beach, and that gang was starting to break up, and I read this terribly well-written dialogue, not figuring out that films are about structure and the thing was totally unstructured, and I thought, "Who is this writer? God, he's great."

When you do 'Mad Fat Diary' or 'The Village,' you always learn about the particular time period, and that's always nice for an actor.

I love 'Shattered Glass.' It's one of my favorite movies. I think it's just brilliant.

I love the ending of 'The Wrestler.'

I don't know for a fact, but I feel fairly certain that the first person who described a movie as 'character driven' had to have been a producer or studio executive.

I was a big 'Blue Valentine' fan. I really loved that movie. And I thought the performances were just unbelievably real, which is certainly what I always strive for in my work.

Obviously when it comes to the question of telling stories about other people's lives in a situation as political as South Africa, you get to be political.

My first two novels were set in the past, and that freed me up in a lot of ways; it allowed me to find my way into my story and my characters through research.

And when you look at the Turtle's movie there is something there, definitely something there.

I keep waiting for a paradigm shift to happen that will let network and studio execs see that sci-fi is the same as any other genre in terms of how you approach it - logically, character-based, with challenging ideas and forward thinking - but I worry that it might never happen in my lifetime.

'The Help' sheds light on a certain truth in America, but the tragedy is if we don't get a chance to contrast it with other points of views. 'The Butler' does that, 'Red Tails' does that and that's what '96 Minutes' does.

It's important that period films aren't seen as just a lovely visual exercise.

I like dramas because there's a big overlap between film and fiction, so I feel relatively qualified to talk about plot and characterisation and that sort of thing.

Novels can be a snapshot of a moment in time, or several moments in time, and as a reader, that's what I really like, and as a writer, it's what I'm drawn to also.

I think 'NH10' could have been done equally well by anybody else, and it's not a 'female-centric' or 'male-centric' film. It's the story that will appeal to the audience.

I've always had an interest in story-telling and history and just film and art in general, but particularly when it comes to storytelling, I think the reason why we became involved in film is because we wanted to get some great stories out there.

I don't have a favorite genre. I think 'genre' is a literary term. I don't have a favorite kind or type of movie. I like the ones that are good.

'The Princess and the Warrior' is looking at the same things as 'Lola' - just from a different angle.