Lee Daniels Quotes
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If you really spend time with movies, it's three years of your life from beginning to end. I started out planting the seed with 'Monster's Ball' about independent cinema and raising money and that whole thing as a producer, and then it becomes easier for me.
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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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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'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'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 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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I was always in trouble. I was mischievous. And movies were always a part of my world.
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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 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 don't work with fear, and I don't work with actors that are fearful.
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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 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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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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I'm always workin', man. I gotta pay the light bills.
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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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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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I believe strongly that characters are five-dimensional, and they're complicated, and life is complicated, and people are complicated.
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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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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.
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I came to Hollywood to write and found out I don't have the attention span.