Barry Jenkins Quotes
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I'm always about, 'What is the most productive version of what I'm putting into the world?' Something that can be engaged by all folks. I don't have to change everyone.
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I used to be obsessed with race. I'm more obsessed with class now.
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If you try to create something that everybody can relate to, you're gonna make something that nobody can relate to.
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As a filmmaker, I really want to utilize the tools to carry the voice - my voice, and the voice of the characters.
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I'm so damn boring. I like reading and writing and making coffee. And walking. Barry Jenkins likes long walks.
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It used to be that watching a film was a very special occasion, the same way flying was. Before, if you took a flight from New York to L.A., most of the windows would be open. Now, we get on planes and we just close them because we're so used to what it feels like. I think the same thing has happened with cinema.
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My films are personal-voice-driven films about human characters and the place we live. Technically, I'm an independent filmmaker.
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Whenever I tell people I'm from Miami, they always ask me about the beach. But I can count on one hand the times I went there as a kid.
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Film is not an amazing medium to relay interiority. I think literature is much better for that.
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It's interesting because I think class is a heavy, heavy part of 'Moonlight,' and I think, in a certain way, through the sum of all these parts, it's become a commentary on the black experience in America.
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A month alone would make me so happy. Not good for my dating prospects.
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You walk on a set, and you have no idea - that's why I don't storyboard. It's all possible.
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I just came back from my hometown, making a movie about a kid who grew up just like me, and it was financed by white people in New York. Personally, I can't be angry. In my personal experience, the support was there.
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I was hiding behind athletics and all my jockitude, so I didn't have to deal with being ostracized as the weird art kid.
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I really sort of kept to myself. I kind of just watched the world. And I think to keep people from messing with me, yeah, you know, I went out to run track. I went out for the football team. Not because I love track or love football.
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As a filmmaker whose first film was made with the DIY tools of digital cinema, I love how the democratization of the filmmaking process and platforms like YouTube enables people to tell stories that in previous generations simply could not be told.
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'Moonlight' is a story that hasn't been told. Whether placed as queer black cinema or urban male cinema, the lack of coming-of-age films featuring people like Chiron and set in places like inner-city Miami is pronounced and unfortunate.
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Growing up, I wasn't the most vocal kid in the world. I feel like I learned through observation, and usually, when you're watching things, you're not speaking. That sort of metastasized in a way that I began to participate less and less in the world.
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The way I work, things are very nuanced; not everything is explained.
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To me, no matter who you're casting for what role, if something's authentic, usually you can mine something good there.
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Sometimes, how you ingest this idea of masculinity as projected onto you by the world could be the difference of life and death.
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I worked for Oprah Winfrey for two years right out of college in 2004. I was a director's assistant on the film 'Their Eyes Were Watching God,' which Oprah produced.
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I've worked at this film festival in Telluride called the Telluride Film Festival. Been there since 2002. I used to make popcorn. I was an usher. Cleaned toilets, everything. Grew up there as a kid.
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As a writer, a blank page will humble the hell out of you. It always does, and it always will.