Dee Rees Quotes

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Last Updated on May 30, 2021

Nov 07, 2020

Going into a room and saying, 'I'm a black lesbian' - it's a strike against you.

Own
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Nov 07, 2020

I still want to do features, but on my own terms.

Me
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Nov 07, 2020

I can't put anything out that's not me.

Hope
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Nov 07, 2020

To have a simultaneous global audience as an artist is more than you could ever hope for.

Give
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Nov 07, 2020

Filmmaking was the way I could write characters and not have to give them up to anybody.

First
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Nov 07, 2020

I had originally written 'Pariah' as a feature, and we shot the first act as a short film, and then we used the short as a marketing tool to fundraise for the feature.

Our
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Nov 07, 2020

Our country is pathologically violent.

Discriminating
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Nov 07, 2020

We shouldn't be discriminating against each other. The whole 'light skin versus dark skin' is an idea we need to break down.

Life
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Nov 07, 2020

For me, 'Pariah' is very much about that inner churn. It's about this person's emotional inner life, and that's really what I wanted to bring to 'Bessie.'

Driving
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Nov 07, 2020

For each character, I try to understand what is driving them.

People
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Nov 07, 2020

Contemporarily, we struggle with people worried about representation sometimes. It's a burden, as artists, that we take on that limits the work. It limits the characters people play. It limits the roles they want to do.

Down
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Nov 07, 2020

We have to create a range, and we have to let there be possibilities. And basically, by showing there are different types of people, you write down the monolith. You stop having to represent for all black people when you allow there to be different types represented.

Failure
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Nov 07, 2020

It's a failure of imagination if you can only write what you know - we have to be able to imagine different worlds.

Own
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Nov 07, 2020

You can't be limited by your own experience.

Grandmothers
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Nov 07, 2020

If I can go three grandmothers back and find a slave, that means someone else can go three grandmothers back and find a slave owner. When you interrogate your histories, it forces you to rethink who you are and where you are.

Nov 07, 2020

I think 'Mudbound' reveals the interconnectiveness of our stories. You can't separate out threads of history and race as economic construct. 'Mudbound' makes it very plain. Race is about commerce; it's not an actual thing. It's a fiction that was created to basically divide resources unequally.

Like
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Nov 07, 2020

Growing up, I was very aware that there weren't many people like me on the screen.

Feeling
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Nov 07, 2020

I'm not a writer that writes every day. I just kind of have ideas. I jot them down when I have them, and when I have enough, I just start. And for me, I start more around noon, and I'm all about feeling. Once there's a theme, I can't not write.

Nov 07, 2020

I wrote poetry and short stories. I would send them to magazines; they wouldn't get in. But short stories are how I found philosophy and how I'd understand the world.

Business School
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Nov 07, 2020

Filmmaking in general is my second career. I thought that writing wasn't practical, so I went to business school and got an MBA, and I worked three years in grant management.

Me
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Nov 07, 2020

My first job was at Proctor and Gamble in Cincinnati, my second job was at a pharmaceutical company in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. My third job was at Palmolive. And I realized, three jobs in three years, maybe it wasn't the job. It had to be me.

Learning
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Nov 07, 2020

Actors need to know why they're saying what they're saying, more than just learning their lines.

Life
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Nov 07, 2020

I started out at Procter & Gamble marketing panty liners, so basically selling women insecurity. I thought there must be more to life than this. Then I was on set for a Dr. Scholl's commercial, and I asked one of the execs, 'How do you get a job behind the camera?' and he said, 'Film school.' So I quit and applied to NYU.

Art
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Nov 07, 2020

I think art always comments on the time and place it was created.

Moment
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Nov 07, 2020

Each moment is defined by a multitude of histories, the past constantly converging upon us, perpetually decaying and reforming itself on the steady pulse of now, now, now, now.

History
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Nov 07, 2020

History informs where we are and how we got here.

Next
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Nov 07, 2020

I grew up in Nashville in a white suburb. We lived next to a Klan member. We didn't see hoods, but my dad knew that guy was a Grand Dragon.

People
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Nov 07, 2020

People have almost been lulled into complacency because there are no signs over the water fountains. But the signs have been in the policies. There's still housing discrimination and wage discrimination.

Everyone
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Nov 07, 2020

There's a line that runs between everyone and their ancestors, and you cannot sever that. Maybe disassociate from those ideas but not how you are connected to them. But, you can realise how you've benefited and change how you raise your kids.

Dark
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Nov 07, 2020

For 'Pariah,' people were surprised Kim Wayans was there, but comedians have a dark streak; they're comedians for a reason.

Identity
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Nov 07, 2020

Having to stake out your identity and have people question whether or not you're being yourself was a tension that I could relate to.

Hand
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Nov 07, 2020

You don't get to hand footnotes to the audience or explain what you were trying to do and what it's supposed to be. Everything has to be on the screen, and it has to be clear.

Character
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Nov 07, 2020

I'm always excited about stories that allow me to explore a character and create interesting stories and worlds that we haven't seen before.

Best
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Nov 07, 2020

As long as you tell the best story possible, you can trust that people will be able to connect to it.

Make
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Nov 07, 2020

I've always liked to write, but I never thought I could make a career out of it.

Creative
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Nov 07, 2020

I thought that marketing was a way to be creative in business but quickly learned all creative stuff happens at the ad agency.

People
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Nov 07, 2020

I just want to tell stories that are meaningful and have inspiration to them; people can watch it and take away something, or maybe they'll just think about themselves differently or think about the world differently. I just want to create characters that live on.

Learning
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Nov 07, 2020

When I first started going out to lesbian clubs, I felt a very binary recreation of hetero culture. There are butches and femmes, and I felt like I was neither of those things. I'm in a turtleneck and jeans and just learning to be comfortable in that space. I realized I don't have to be a certain way.

Heroes
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Nov 07, 2020

Creatively, most of my influences come from the literary world: Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara. Writers are my heroes.

People
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Nov 07, 2020

Coming-of-age stories, people roll their eyes.

Me
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Nov 07, 2020

You're your own person, and it's about you. I'm my own person, and it's about me. Everyone has their own life.

Life
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Nov 07, 2020

I was never physically abused, but when I came out to my parents late in life, when I was 27, they definitely had an intervention.

Make
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Nov 07, 2020

Our statement's on the screen. Awards won't make it better, and a lack of awards won't make it worse.

New York
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Nov 07, 2020

New York offers people the anonymity to be themselves without judgment.

Me
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Nov 07, 2020

When I first came to New York, I was surprised by all these out teenagers who were openly on the street being who they were. That intrigued me because I was 27 and still struggling with being myself.

People
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Nov 07, 2020

With friendship, it's hard sometimes - you don't outgrow your friends, but you do question how people are friends to you in different ways and how it's okay to cultivate other relationships outside of that.

Lord
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Nov 07, 2020

For me, books were my source of affirmation. Alice Walker, Audrey Lord - it was these authors who wrote about their experiences. It was this weird thing where I was censored in terms of what I could watch but not in terms of what I could read.

Like
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Nov 07, 2020

I like 'Paris is Burning' by Jennie Livington.

Me
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Nov 07, 2020

I think Charlottesville was shocking for some, but it wasn't for me or for my family, I mean, because I grew up in 1980s Nashville.

Parent
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Nov 07, 2020

I want people to get from 'Pariah' that it's okay to be you and not to check a box as a parent or child.

Like
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Nov 07, 2020

You don't have to make your life look like anybody else says it should look.

People
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Nov 07, 2020

You don't have to make yourself look like people expect you to look.

Love
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Nov 07, 2020

It's okay to be yourself and to love and accept yourself however you are.

Nothing
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Nov 07, 2020

Nothing I do is didactic. I just want to hold up a mirror and say, 'This is who we are.'

Nov 07, 2020

I thought I'd get an MBA, and then I could be anything. And I'd write on the side. That was the idea.

Been
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Nov 07, 2020

I've been around many different lives, many different voices. It was amazing material for a writer.

Going
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Nov 07, 2020

I was always going to direct. I wasn't going to hand my characters over to anyone else.

Home
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Nov 07, 2020

I was interested with exploring the idea of who gets to be in possession of the land - how it's sometimes impossible to go back home, how family can be the thing that drags you down.

Funny
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Nov 07, 2020

With 'Pariah,' at the time, I had just come out. I had a coming out experience, and I was writing about it, transposing my experience as an adult: What would it have been like if I had been a teenager in Brooklyn? The funny thing was people thought I was from Brooklyn. I had to be like, 'No, I'm from Nashville.'

Dearth
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Nov 07, 2020

There's a dearth of media around young black women and certainly a dearth of LGBT media for people of color.

Go
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Nov 07, 2020

I'd go to lesbian parties. I felt like I wasn't hard enough to be butch, but I wasn't wearing heels and a skirt - I wasn't femme - so I felt like I was sort of invisible.

Go
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Nov 07, 2020

When I first came out, holidays were hard. I reached a point where I didn't go home anymore. I constructed my own, kind of like, family group around Christmas.

Like
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Nov 07, 2020

Before Charlottesville, it might have been easy to dismiss the plot of 'Mudbound' as no longer relevant. Now, I feel like audiences will be more receptive to the material - and to interrogating their personal histories after watching it.

Nov 07, 2020

'Mudbound' highlights the fact that we're still battling a lot of the same issues as we were all of those decades ago.

Me
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Nov 07, 2020

For me, like, obviously, I want to see myself onscreen.

More
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Nov 07, 2020

I want more images onscreen because when I was growing up, I think, like, that one kiss in 'The Color Purple' was the one thing that I had. Or 'The Watermelon Woman.'

Interesting
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Nov 07, 2020

Creatively, I just like interesting characters. So straight, gay, or whatever - like, whatever, wherever the characters are coming from or their lifestyle.

Think
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Nov 07, 2020

I'm interested in telling stories about characters that are interesting and who are challenging in some way, one that will make you think about them afterwards.

Listening
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Nov 07, 2020

I grew up listening to Mary J. Blige's music. When I initially met her, it was like, 'Oh, wow. I'm meeting this woman whose music was the soundtrack of my college years.'

Me
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Nov 07, 2020

To me, if you can do the Wicked Witch live, you can play anybody.

Power
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Nov 07, 2020

There's a lot of power in saying no to big things that you don't want to do in order to say yes to the kind of things that really inspire you.

Artist
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Nov 07, 2020

For me, Sundance always felt big. It's not the only way to make your way, but for me, it was definitely that critical link between struggling artist, kind of working on my own, to actually working professionally and being connected and being seen.

Just
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Nov 07, 2020

My ultimate dream was just to be an auteur.

Nov 07, 2020

I had this thing where I only wanted to work on original material, no adaptations, and obviously, that changed. I really wanted to have the resources and have the space and the time to tell stories that I've really cared about. I've kind of changed my approach, but I've gotten to do that, to tell stories that I really care about.

Enemy
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Nov 07, 2020

The enemy is the system. And the system is made up of people, and we have a choice in that.

New
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Nov 07, 2020

In some communities it is - like, for me, coming out with my parents, they were not accepting; they were not understanding. So it depends. For kids in New York and L.A., maybe it's different, but for kids in Iowa, for kids in Tennessee, it's still something that's not really talked about.

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