Callie Khouri Quotes
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What I'm mainly interested in is not having women characters that have to be perfect, obviously. That's something I feel strongly about and have that in every single thing I've ever done.
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One of the reasons I wanted to do a show about Nashville in Nashville was because when I lived here, the hardest thing to go out and hear was country music. Country was taking place inside the studio and it was an export.
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I call myself a feminist, not a feminist filmmaker. If somebody asked me if I had a feminist sensibility it would be pretty hard to deny, but is it the theme of my work? Not necessarily. I'm interested in a lot of things.
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'Gravity' is a great example of a movie that we hope they're going to do more of. It's really entertaining, with a female star. It's not the kind of film you typically see, and gives me hope.
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Every so often when I'm writing, a character might actually be a distinct person in my head - often not an actor or a face, literally a person who just seems to exist in my imagination. Then the challenge is finding somebody who is close enough to that to make me feel like I've ended up where I wanted to be.
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People always ask me about 'Girls' with this kind of hesitation. What do I think of it? I love it. It's awesome. I get a lot of Where do you come down on this? I come down on the side of 'Yay, Lena Dunham. Congratulations. I'm jealous.' She's doing something so fantastic. Maybe it's not for everybody, but it certainly is for me.
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For me, the movies I like are all independent. And getting an independent feature made, it's like you get down to the selling organs part, and it just loses some of its luster.
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I love to start characters in a place where you think you know them. We can make all kinds of assumptions about them and think they have no redeeming qualities, but like everyone, they're complex.
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I like writing flawed women, and being one, it's something I feel I can write with some veracity and authority.
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I tried to get a baseball movie made a couple of years ago and I don't think it didn't happen because I was a woman, but because sports movie don't sell internationally.
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I'm almost numb to misogyny at this point. It's just everywhere.
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What I'm not about is exploiting women.
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Nashville is the place where I first realized how impossible it is to look at someone and know what is inside them, what special something they possess.
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I think this happens to a lot of people, men and women, where you reach a point in your life and all of a sudden realize that things have changed. You suddenly realize that people are coming up behind you, that maybe somebody might want to replace you for less money.
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Political stories in general are tough. They just don't appeal to as wide an audience.
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Whenever I've seen shows or films set here, they just don't feel like the real Nashville to me.
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You're allowed to make things for women on television, and there's not like... you don't have to go through the humiliation of having made something directed at women. There it's just accepted, whereas if it's a feature, it's like 'So, talk to me about chick flicks.' It's like... I don't think you want to hear my opinion about this.
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I think of feminism as more of a political ideology.
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When I lived in Nashville, Tanya Tucker and people like that were coming up, and I'm sure that Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette were going, 'What's that noise? That's not country.' It's always been this battle where whoever comes up behind the reigning stars isn't country enough. There really is a lot more crossover now.
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I don't know anyone male or female who can quote-unquote have it all. It's a made-up idea. Men don't have it all. They may have it better because they get paid more for the same work, but they don't have it all.
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I want to make something that's respectful and respected. And I think you can make something for women that is respected on television.
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I don't think any studio - it was a long shot at the time - but I don't think any studio in a million years would make 'Thelma and Louise' right now. But there's so many other kinds of movies they won't make right now.
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I wrote 'Thelma & Louise' in 1988, and we shot it in 1990. Everyone kept saying, 'This is so groundbreaking... this is going to change the landscape,' but I don't see that result at all. When we saw some female studio executives, we were hopeful that more women would be hired as directors, but that didn't really seem to happen.
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The movie I've watched a million times is 'A Face in the Crowd,' directed by Elia Kazan, starring Andy Griffith and Patricia Neal. I first saw this movie, I guess I was in my early 20s. I'd never heard of it, and somebody told me about it, and I watched it and was just completely jaw-droppingly shocked at how current it was.