From casting to hiring to awards races like the Emmys, taking active steps toward inclusion will make for richer stories, a stronger democracy, and a better world.
The first 600 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, before you get into the Sierra Nevada mountain range, is heavy on desert. One of the things I carry with me in the desert is an umbrella. People think that's insane. It has a shiny top to it, so it looks totally ridiculous, but the difference can be 20 degrees.
I guess I need a hobby. Currently my primary hobby is complaining.
When you grow up in New Orleans, like, the only way to be an artist is to be a 55-year-old black musician. That's basically what we wanted to be. If you had asked me very truthfully what I wanted to be when I was 16, the answer would've been, 'I want to be a 55-year-old black musician.'
I loved movies. They inspired me more than anything growing up and wanted to do for others what those movies have done for me. I do a lot of other creative stuff but am not very good at it.
I went to film school at UT Austin. I learned a lot, and that school's good for puking up all your bad movies early and quick. But ultimately, no one can teach you to be an artist.
Filmmaking is a very complex form - ya know, acting, lighting, screenwriting, storytelling, music, editing - all these things have to come together.
I think the press mistakenly thought that all of these 'mumblecore' filmmakers were banded together in a similar ideology, but the truth is that we were all just using the same digital camera and helping each other make our movies because we were broke, and we were the only idiots willing to do it.
I grew up in a small, old-school Catholic world, imprinted with an above-average number of categories and judgments.