Martine Syms Quotes
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At some point, all black movies became biopics. All the good, serious ones became biopics. 'Ray,' 'Ali'... those types of movies, those are the opportunities available for mostly men. Those are the opportunities for a black actor to transcend 'black' movies. They have to play a black icon.
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A lot of my work, the subject is film and television itself, and history, and how that kind of coincides with larger cultural history and memory.
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Growing up in a specific area has a certain sociological and economic reason, so I'm interested in using myself as a case study to look as those things.
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When I'm working on something, even when I don't know exactly where it's going, I have a sense of what I'd like to make. So maybe doing things right is following that sense even when I stop trusting myself. The rightness is in the process, even if it doesn't match up with my plans.
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My writing, it's mostly fiction, but I want it to feel intimate and real.
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I played sports growing up, and I worked out a lot. Then, when I moved back to L.A., I just fell off everything.
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There's a certain amount of absurdity to the idea that having extremely crisp clothes is what's going to get you through the door. And there's a certain sad reality to it, too.
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There's no reason to be ashamed of feeling good.
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Pop culture or advertising doesn't work perfectly. No one is watching and mindlessly accepting every part of the narrative or ideology.
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I just have a deadpan sense of humor, I guess.
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I think I do more fiction than autobiography.
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There's an uncanniness to living in Los Angeles, from the way you move through the city to the moments of feeling familiarity or deja vu, like you've been somewhere or you know something when you really don't.
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I definitely think an on-screen experience is universal, in a way.
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People act like art is a white thing - or not for people of colour - when, really, so much culture and art comes from people of colour. I want everyone to get into what I am doing. So sometimes I don't like to work just in an art context because it feels like a lot of people aren't going to see it. I like it to be a part of everyday life.
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I think the sitcom is the format for television. It's the essential form, and it represents more of the canon of TV, which is why I latched onto it.
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I feel like there are actually a lot of relationships between a website and a film in terms of designing an experience for a screen.
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I've always been interested in the manufacturing of narratives, identities, and ideologies, and how they are embodied and negotiated by viewers.