Quotes

I've been blessed with the opportunity to express the views of black people who otherwise don't have access to power and the media. I have to take advantage of that while I'm still bankable.

What's the difference between Hollywood characters and my characters? Mine are real.

Making films has got to be one of the hardest endeavors known to humankind. Straight up and down, film work is hard shit.

[after Do the Right Thing (1989) lost out on the Palme d'Or to Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival] Wim Wenders had better watch out 'cause I'm waiting for his ass. Somewhere deep in my closet I have a Louisville Slugger bat with Wenders' name on it.

"I respect the audience's intelligence a lot, and that's why I don't try to go for the lowest common denominator." -- at the New York premiere of his media satire "Bamboozled".

Agents aren't going to get you anywhere if you aren't established.

You just have to be on good terms with the actors and talk stuff out beforehand. A perfect example is She Hate Me - I had many different discussions with many different women, and also with [the actor] Anthony Mackie, so they knew. And this was before they even agreed to do the film. But actors want to know - 'Here, it says they make love. What type of acts are we talking about? What's going to be seen?' I have no problem with that. At the same time, I still want to allow myself some flexibility. But shooting a sex scene is very mechanical - 'Will you move this way? That way? Raise your leg?' And for the most part the crew isn't allowed to be there - I close the set, make it as comfortable as possible.

For me, a large part of Jungle Fever (1991) is about sexual mythology: the mythology of a white woman being on a pedestal, the universal standard of beauty, and the mythology about the black man as sexual stud with a ten-foot dick. Buying into the mythology is not a strong foundation for a relationship.

But actresses are asked to compromise themselves, not just from the director but the producer too - 'Are you going to show your tits or your ass?' They say that shit all the time. It is men making decisions. And of course they would rather have heads explode on screen than show a penis.

Amongst black people, you have always heard it said that once a black man reaches a certain level, especially if you are an entertainer, you get a white trophy woman. I didn't make that up.

You have to do the research. If you don't know about something, then you ask the right people who do. With She's Gotta Have It (1986), I don't think I got any revelation; it was just good to hear the women whom I interviewed confirm what I thought already.

[Speaking out after the death of comedian Richard Pryor]: "He was an innovator and a trailblazer. It's a great loss".

"Before, I used to think that everything was based on race. Now class matters just as much. If you are a poor person: black, white, Latino, whatever, the Bush Administration does not have your best interests at heart. If the Government thought poor people mattered, the response [to Katrina's disaster] would have been much quicker." (March 2006)

It has been my observation that parents kill more dreams than anybody.

Racism is when you have laws set up, systematically put in the way to keep people from advancing, to stop the advancement of a people. Black people have never had the power to enforce racism, and so this is something that white America is going to have to work out themselves. If they decide they want to stop it, curtail it, or to do the right thing then it will be done, but not until then.

[on the Academy Awards] What film won Best Picture in 1989? Driving Miss motherfucking Daisy! That's why [Oscars] don't matter. Because, 20 years later, who's watching Driving Miss Daisy (1989).

You gotta make your own way. You gotta find a way. You gotta get it done. It's hard. It's tough. That's what I tell my students every day in class.

I've been very fortunate. Some people might call me a hardhead, but I'm not going to let other people dictate to me who I should be or the stories I should tell. That doesn't register with me.

Each artist should be allowed to pursue their artistic endeavors, but I still think there is a lot of stuff out today that is coonery and buffoonery. I know it's making a lot of money and breaking records, but we can do better. ... I am a huge basketball fan, and when I watch the games on TNT, I see these two ads for these two shows (Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns (2009) and House of Payne (2006)), and I am scratching my head. We got a black president, and we going back to Mantan Moreland and Sleep 'n' Eat?".

[on why he became a filmmaker] I had just finished my sophomore year, so I came back to New York trying to find a summer job. Couldn't find one, so with a super-8 camera that I had gotten, I just spent the whole summer shooting stuff around New York City. That summer happened to the summer of 'the blackout' and that summer was also the first summer of disco, and there were always block-parties around everywhere, and people would just plug up their tables to the streetlights. That was the first summer that 'the hustle' came out, so I made a film called 'Last Hustle Brooklyn', which I inter-cut with the looting from the blackout and the block-party stuff. That's when I really decided I wanted to become a filmmaker.

[re Oldboy (2013)] Rage doesn't have to fester for years, but revenge? That stuff takes time. It's the oldest staple of films, in stories. It goes back to the Bible.

Black people can't be racist. Racism is an institution.

[on how independent filmmaking changed since he started] That might as well have been a million years ago. Filmmakers like Jim [Jim Jarmusch] and I, the only reason we went to film school was because of the equipment. We didn't care about the MFA. You went to film school to get the equipment. Now students look at the cost of going to schools and say, "I could use that money to buy my own camera and lighting kit." It's a new world. [2015]

[on why other companies passed on Chi-Raq (2015) before Amazon Studios] They never give you a reason; they just say, "It's not for us." My co-writer Kevin Willmott and I wrote the script and went to Sundance and everybody was saying no, no, no, no, no. Amazon said yes. I tell my students, "All it takes is one yes. You get a bunch of motherf-ing nos, but all it takes is one yes." [2015]

[his advice for aspiring filmmakers] I hope they're doing it because they love it, not because they want to be rich or famous. Not that those things can't happen, but the main reason, the focus is, "This is what I want to do for the rest of my life and I love it." Not to say that you don't want to make money, but the passion should be driven by your love for that particular thing that you're doing. {2015]

[advice to young people considering a show-business career] You've got to have heart and you've got to have drive. And when you get knocked down you've got to pick yourself up - put your hands up on the ropes and pull yourself to your feet. Because, if you can't take a hit, you're not going to last long, that's for sure.

I had a great education. From kindergarten to John Dewey High School in Coney Island, I am public-school educated.

One thing I hope School Daze (1988) does is knock all this goddamn "Black Woody Allen" shit out the window. People say I should take it as a compliment. Fuck that. So often black artists are compared to whiter artists. To me, it's saying that I've patterned myself after Woody, that my work is not original.

I don't mean to be cynical, but a lot of films appear to be written by eleven year old minds. Look at American Pie (1999). I mean, stick your dick in a pie, and you think that is a movie?

[2018 interview, on the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, when Do the Right Thing (1989) lost the Palme d'Or to Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)] Sally Field and the late, great Hector Babenco, who directed one of my most favorite films, Pixote (1980), they told me that it was Wenders [Wim Wenders] that did it. He was not letting it happen. He just lied again at Cannes this year and said jury presidents have no power. I would have left the hatchet buried, but now he lied again.

They knew what they were doing. And he was good, too. [Discussing the women Magic Johnson slept with in a 1992 interview with Esquire magazine.]