Hollywood Portrayal Quotes

I liked 'The Help,' and I love Viola Davis. But I didn't think that film was a great film; I thought that was a very uneven film. I thought the Southern women were so caricatured that it was kind of like 'Harper Valley PTA' or something like that.

Zombies don't run. They don't dance. They don't say, "More brains." There is no Thriller Night. Those are stereotypes that are perpetrated by Hollywood, which I think is very irresponsible because it can get you killed.

When political figures are shown on television or in movies, it's always the liberal Democrats that are shown to be humane, caring people.

If Michelle Pfeiffer gave Mel Gibson a vial of blood to wear around his neck in a movie you'd think it was terribly romantic, everyone would cry and they'd win awards. But in real life if someone does that they'd be considered weird.

In the 1930s there was this tendency in Hollywood to portray everyone as rich. Even if they were doing a poor man's dance, they were all so nicely clothed, gowned, coiffured. That's why I decided to wear white socks, loafers, T-shirts, and blue jeans. I had a sociopolitical context in front of me: I was a child of the Depression who danced in a way that would represent the common man.

I think Brad [Furman] crafted an amazing film [The Infiltrator]. It's so complex, it's incredibly thrilling, incredibly touching and it's what people have been trying to do for years in Hollywood, is to try to capture what it's like to be undercover, what is that duality of life? And I think that Brad really caught that.

[FBI] philosophy is "Go ahead and make the story you want to make, and hopefully we'll love it." So that's that.

The problem with a lot of movies when it comes to race is that they want to be moral, and they want to make the audience feel good about something that a lot of people don't feel good about.

As a Middle Eastern male, when you're in a Chuck Norris movie of the week, you know you're going to die.

I sort of became infatuated with soldiers. I got to know some of them and got a little perturbed with Hollywood making a spectacle out of them and making them look like they have screwed up somehow.

Whatever their reasons, Hollywood, or the entertainment industry, is saying something about Indians. I don't see the rest of the media knocking down any doors to do that.

Movies such as 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' in 1939 to 'Dave' in 1993 portray Washington leaders as the ultimate Everymen - decent people just like you and me, only thrust onto greatness.

To put it simply, as a black man, I started watching films at the age of six, and I've since seen the bad guys changing race - between the African savages, to the Native Americans, and then the blacks and the Arabs and the Chinese and the Vietnamese. Look at 'Rambo': it's exactly that.

I've always hated the way Hollywood has portrayed accountants. They're always little nerd balls, wimpy, afraid of everything. Growing up with accountants, I don't see them that way.

The way Hollywood portrays mothers - you're either all good and saint-like, or you're all bad. And I think the real honesty of motherhood is not given a voice in movies. I miss that as an audience member.

You know, Hollywood sometimes tends to patronize the interior of the United States. As Horton Foote used to say, the great Texas playwright, that a lot of people from New York don't know what goes on beyond the South Jersey Shore.

Growing up, my favorite movies were 'Forrest Gump,' 'Shawshank Redemption,' 'Gladiator' - none of them really had Asian leading men.

Ever since I was a kid and growing up and watching things like the 'Naked Gun' movies, there was always this stereotype about how Arabs were perceived and portrayed. I've never watched those Arab villains in the movie and felt like that was me.

Sometimes in the mainstream movies, a character who is from the South is portrayed by a person who looks like a South Indian but speaks in fake accent.

Hollywood gave us far more Muslim terrorists in the Eighties and Nineties than it has since 9/11.

When you think about it there's never really been a realistic exposition of Hollywood, I mean - from the inside - showing Hollywood what it can do, what it has done, to people.

I find often in Hollywood there are many people who play themselves really beautifully. And certain parts are not that dissimilar from who you are as a person. And there are other parts where you would like to think that you have nothing in common with those characters, but you probably do have more than you think.

Teenagers have no advocate. I think any other minority so maligned by Hollywood would have pickets around the theater saying, 'We are not just idiots.'

I just think my family is so normal, but no one wants to accept that. I find my family to be normal because there's an understanding of what every job entails. And it is a job. It's not this fantasy that Hollywood and movies are all glitter and stardust.