Mickalene Thomas Quotes

I'm from New York, and yet I've done only one film executive-produced by Spike Lee and have never done a film that Spike Lee directed. I've never done a film that Keenan Wayans has directed, or Bill Duke.

The black groups that boycott certain films would do better to get the money together to make the films they want to see, or stay in church and leave us to our work.

The great thing about being the son of Maya Angelou is that I had the good fortune to grow up around some of the greatest black artists, dancers, singers, musicians, and actors of our time.

One of the scariest moments was being on Tyler Perry's first movie, 'Diary of a Mad Black Woman.'

I'm so grateful to be part of the Sundance family.

One of the reasons I stay in New York is because you're always around so many other types of arts, and it's easy to just get lost in it.

Many times, I get young people asking, 'What do you think about black movies?' And I say, 'What are you talking about? You mean Hollywood movies that have black people in them?' It's gone back to that, and that's not the same thing as a black movie.

If you walk into a coffee shop in 1903 Vienna, you might find at the same table the artist Gustav Klimt, Sigmund Freud, Leon Trotsky and possibly Adolf Hitler, who lived in Vienna at the same time.

Tupac Shakur is something that, of course I want to make the Tupac movie, I love Tupac, but when that movie was announced, we didn't even have a script yet. It was just being written. People announce things too soon. If you go to any filmmaker - Clint Eastwood, Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese, Ben Affleck, Michael Mann - you go in their offices and there are scripts everywhere and there's about four or five of them you really want to make.

I was going to public school in the post-World War II, the grey doldrum years. But I was in this extraordinary environment of Manhattan, of Greenwich Village, of bohemian parents.

I never really considered film as a career, but I knew I didn't want to be a builder. So I went to art college, and it just gradually happened.

My uniform [in Star Wars] was cool. Not much else I can think of at the moment. You know, you don't know the enormity of these kinds of films until well after you're done.

I always tell the producers, if I can't get the girl at the end of the picture, at least give me more money.

I could do a thousand films that are easy for me to do-that's if I don't fall in the next year, because everyone's about to fall. What's so funny is you look at all us young guys and we're already thinking, Well, I'm going to branch out into directing, and it's all going to be this and that.

I loved being on the other side of the camera and interacting with the crew. When you are an actor, you have to stay inside this world, but when you are with the crew, on the outside, you are in the dirt, working through all the issues. It's just a different way of working, and I think I preferred it.

When you go on a movie set, there used to be one woman: script supervisor. Now they were in all capacities in addition to heading studios. So that's the biggest change of all from the early '50s, when I first started.

'Leonie' did get made and it was an extremely wonderful experience. I got to travel the world. I filmed for 6 months - 3 months in New Orleans and 3 months in Japan.

I never acted in anything I've directed but I have produced a number of films and I have acted in some of the movies I've produced. Usually with first time filmmakers and pushing a move forward I have played a small role but never the lead.

I remember saying to my agent, "Listen, everybody's going out to Hollywood and making movies. I think I ought to go out there." And his advice to me was, "I wouldn't do that if I were you. If they want you in Hollywood, they'll send you." And sure enough, they did.

On my last day of shooting, I'd be happy to say 'Cut, it's a wrap' and fall off the twig.

I'm still really into set design and construction when I do films. I notice that stuff.

"Bruce" was an Eddie Murphy film, so there was a whole different vibe, working on that film, as opposed to working on a [Adam] Sandler film, which I'd done a few of. First of all, there were tons of kids running around. I'm surprised I ever had a kid after doing that film.

Malcolm X is a person who has inspired - he has been the muse of several generations of black cultural workers, artists, poets, playwrights.

Black movies don't have real names, they have names like Barbershop. That's not a name, that's just a location.

Hollywood is a changing world these days. This is one of the things that ought to be changed.