Lee Daniels Quotes
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I think that, as African-Americans, oftentimes we have to put ourselves on pedestals as opposed to really looking at ourselves and trying to understand ourselves and become better people. We always have to be on pedestals.
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I'm a filmmaker. I'm always searching for the truth in everything I do. I demand it from my writing partner and my crew, actors, and so hopefully, we're making people think.
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I don't know what gives me more pleasure: watching my story unfold or going in and watching a room full of black people talking for me and writing words for black people.
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People enjoy making fun of people who are famous; they love putting people down.
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I look at my movies; I call my movies 'the kid.' It's like I'm giving birth. I'm in the cocoon, you know?
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I was always in trouble. I was mischievous. And movies were always a part of my world.
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I went from off-off Broadway. I would direct plays in Baldwin Hills. Almost Tyler Perry-like, really trying to express myself in that and not really knowing how to, knowing acting in story, but not really knowing how to technically hold a camera.
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I'm in a great place because I trust people behind the camera as I go off, and I still go back to my day job and do film.
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I went to school at Radnor High School. And I went to a liberal arts college in St. Louis, Missouri, called Lindenwood College.
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I'm always workin', man. I gotta pay the light bills.
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Some of the most provocative TV that I'm inspired by is in the U.K. You guys take it for granted, but in America, we can't do it.
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I didn't have the sensibilities of your ordinary filmmaker, let alone your ordinary African-American filmmaker. My heroes were John Waters, Pedro Almodovar, and actors that were part of that world.
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To come into my world, I've got some M&Ms and some potato chips, and I'm asking you to move furniture. We're making a movie. We're making it like we're putting on a play.
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I don't work with fear, and I don't work with actors that are fearful.
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As a film director and as film actors, you get used to a certain rhythm that's slow. But with TV, it's hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry. It's a different pace.
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Most times when I do a film, it starts out with one idea and ends up not being what I thought it was going to be.
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Stars make money on real movies. They make big money on real movies. To come into my world, I've got some M&Ms and some potato chips, and I'm asking you to move furniture.
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'Push' had a story, 'The Paperboy' story you could just throw up in the air and shoot holes through the book because the story wasn't as strong. But I felt the characters were stronger in 'The Paperboy'; they were vivid.
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I thought I could write. So it was my intention to start off as a writer. But I wasn't really great at delivering the word at the end of the day.
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Putting on a movie is like going to war - for me, at least. It's all about time; time is money, and we don't have it. So it's all about getting to know each other intimately quickly. You are with family members that you like or don't like, but you can't leave them because you're stuck with them.
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With TV, you're in people's houses every night. And you have so much time to tell stories. I don't know why I didn't do it before.
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I believe strongly that characters are five-dimensional, and they're complicated, and life is complicated, and people are complicated.
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I've never done a studio movie, let alone worked for a network. Every one of my films has been independently financed.
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Rarely do celebrities and actors speak up for what they believe in.