My choice of films has never been governed by money. That is perhaps why I don't have a very fancy bank account. I'd rather get respect and creative satisfaction through my work than just earn money.
But I feel that I have a responsibility to help the film and I have relations with the studio and with those who put up the money so that I can tell a story that I believe in.
'La Lupe' is my passion project. I've done it as a one-woman show, but I'm raising money to turn it into a film. It's a story of a Cuban singer who became the Queen of Latin Soul, the first woman on the N.Y. salsa scene.
HATE, even if it's making money. is an underground movie, that's how it was made. It's a film about police brutality in the largest sense, it's about the whole of society and not just about the hood.
You definitely want to do the little films. They're always going to be harder, but you don't do them to make money. You do them so you can see what you can make with the research that you have.
There's still a lot of investors wondering what to invest in. And, of course, I think entertainment looks attractive when you read the few films that make these insane amounts of money. What they don't know is they don't always do that.
I used the principles of Kickstarter to make 'She's Gotta Have It.' We filmed that in 1985 to 1986. The final cost was $175,000. I didn't have that money. It was friends, grants, donations. We saved our bottles for the nickel deposit.
I'm a bit of a shopaholic. I've been working in the Bollywood film industry since I was 17, and I have always been financially independent, but I think I would be useless looking after my own money.
The whole year I was in LA I got into telemarketing and learned how to make money. Five years later that skill helped me make my first film.
Biographies are, in their nature, far more difficult to make into films than novels, because novels come with plots constructed and dialogue written, whereas I don't invent dialogue for my subjects or plot their lives for them.
Show me a Scorsese film, and I'll show you a movie where he's taken risks. It's just his nature. He's an artist, and artists take risks. He always does what he believes in.
Polaroid by its nature makes you frugal. You walk around with maybe two packs of film in your pocket. You have 20 shots, so each shot is a world.
Except here it's more power, more energy, younger and also in Europe it's still not only entertainment. Theater or films are looked at as a moral institution. That's why maybe they're so poetic. Here it's clear entertainment.
The poetry and transgression that was so much of surrealism's anarchic force has been recruited into mainstream culture. It has been made commonplace by television and magazine merchandising, by computer games and Internet visuals, by film and MTV, b...
I've done five films directed by women. I did like it. They had qualities, particularly in the romantic tenderness of scenes. I felt sometimes they were a little bit soft, but maybe they were clever to get the guys working the way they wanted them to...
When you're making a film, you become incredibly close. It's not like you're filing away papers all day. You're creating with human emotions, so you do become very connected, so it is familial and romantic.
They all matter to me, whether I'm working on a Sam Jackson film for a week or I'm the star of my own TV series - I take it all very seriously, and I have a healthy respect for the work in general, despite the role.
Shooting a film is like a kismet quest. You have thirty days and you need magic to happen. So that's why I wear suits. I'm praying to the gods, and I'm doing everything I can to respect the powers of the world.
I think that with piracy and tighter funds being around, people are realising that the game to play is to try and win people's respect with bold film making and then win a special place in people's collections, rather than just having the biggest ope...
A film has to be for commercial success as well as earn you respect as an artist. You don't want to do only things that are designed to run commercially, and neither do you want to do things that get acclaim but don't run.
So it's kind of nervous to be in this situation, but at the same time you look at all those actors and the work that they've done, I've been in bigger films than all of them and still kept my integrity and still kept my respect.
