Rick Famuyiwa Quotes

I'd see movies, comedies, and I loved 'Animal House', I loved all the John Hughes stuff, but I never saw me and my friends totally represented.

What we wanted to do was tell a story that felt relatable to anyone who's been a teenager. We haven't all been a second-generation Pakistani-American girl with superpowers, but we've all been 16 and awkward.

When I first saw 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High,' I thought: That's what my life is like. That's my day-to-day.

I think that YA stories have a lot of heart, and I think that whatever age we are, we connect to them because we sort of see ourselves in them.

People love teen movies because everyone can relate.

I wanted to make a movie that was kind of a tribute to the way I feel when I watch a John Hughes movie.

When I did a study of all the coming-of-age movies that meant a lot to me, whether it was 'The Graduate' or 'Rebel Without a Cause' or 'Dead Poet's Society,' they all had that timeless feel. None of them were completely married to the details of their age. They felt timeless in their treatment of it. That's what made them resonate with me.

If you watch any John Hughes film of the eighties, that was my childhood experience.

A youthful American voice isn't particularly challenging - I've been a young American, and they're all around me. I can walk from my house to Barrington High School.

That's what was so amazing about 'Mulan.' Here is this story with all Chinese characters, and yet so many people related to her character and loved the story. So I really think as long as you have a good story that relates to a lot of people, it doesn't matter what ethnicity it is.

Audiences want to feel represented, want to be able to empathize with the characters and the stories they are seeing on the screen.

'Sag Harbor' brought me a new readership - it's a coming of age tale about growing up in the '80s.

When a story is told really well and is real, even if it's not about their own lives, people can apply it to themselves.

I remember seeing 'Gremlins' and having my mind blown and seeing 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' at 13, and it was this hugely aspirational experience.

I find it really hard to relate to the Bond women or Angelina Jolie in 'Salt.' And of course it's informed by my experiences and the people I've met along the way and the places I've been.

What's incredible about 'Hamilton,' and the reason you can't get a ticket, is because everyone's responding to it. Everyone is seeing a bit of themselves in it.

With 'Dazed and Confused,' I got the high school experience I didn't get to have.

The 'Cheers' family seemed like my family.

The influence of John Hughes is fully felt in the melodrama 'Donnie Darko.' This first film written and directed by Richard Kelly is a wobbly cannonball of a movie that tries to go Mr. Hughes one better; it's like a Hughes version of a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I remember loving 'Hairspray.' I was obsessed with it, and I didn't realise why. I felt so connected to it at the time because there wasn't any other kind of representation. So when it happens, you think, 'wow, I really connect with this movie. Why is that? Maybe it's because there's a girl like me up there on the screen.'

'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.

I'm pretty normal. That's why I feel like I hope most teenagers can relate.

'Dirt On My Boots' is a very different song. I heard the melody, and I heard the lyrics, and I heard the drive of that song. I totally related. It was kinda me when I was on my bulldozer working for my dad.

Back then, Lisa Lisa was somebody that I liked. She was Puerto Rican, and I related to her somewhat. I was a little bit of a fan.

You couple that with how I looked when I was younger, and growing up... The voice is not quite breaking. It's awful. No, I don't enjoy that at all. But that's one of the things people love and find so endearing about the Harry Potter series, and why they've lasted so long. Because people have grown up with us, and they care about the characters. They're not just some characters in the film, they're people you can relate to, and you care about, and you grew up with, and when they die in this film, people feel it!