My kids watch everything downloaded; they have no idea what the numbers or the names of the channels mean, except, 'FX makes the show that I see on my computer.' So it's harder to get a show on the air, but at the same time, there are a lot of terrific shows.
It's time to debate images, especially when someone's going to prison for downloading them.
I'm always thinking about what a black lady would think about what I'm doing, just because I feel like they have such great taste, mostly because as black women, we've spent a lot of time downloading what a white male narrative is, so in my head, I'm like, 'If a black woman likes it, if she responds to it, then it's probably pretty damn great.'
With 'Downsizing,' a lot of the discussion hasn't been about the film itself, but about cultural and political conversations happening outside of it. It's being digested in the context of the time.
People's financial situation has changed, and they surrender their cats all the time, because they're downsizing or moving to a property where they are not allowed to have pets.
I love music. In a lot of my downtime, I spend time listening to other people's music or other people's rhymes and writing my own.
At this point in my life I am just about enjoying my free time and my downtime and that's what is about for us. My job is about making your job easier. I take a lot of pride in the quality of what I present, especially in 'Money Saving Meals.'
I think what's hard for me is not that I don't get downtime to chill, it's that I don't get time to make music.
Any time there is an economic downturn or political strife, lipstick sales skyrocket. If you have a hard day, it's this $14 thing that lifts your day. I think drag has that same lipstick effect.
I talk to a lot of librarians, and there's always a steady drumbeat of how libraries are places of community. But a lot of them have also recently - and just in the nick of time - refurbished, because during this economic downturn, people have a tendency to borrow instead of buy.
The impact of the downturn is starting to feel very real. House prices and the housing market have been taking the knock for some time and that's affecting people.
I have started or run several companies and spent time with dozens of entrepreneurs over the years. Virtually none of them, in my experience, made meaningful personnel or resource-allocation decisions based on incentives or policies.
When you're building a business, you want to focus and deliver excellence at what you do. This simply cannot be done when you are launching multiple ventures, dozens of new products, and selling everywhere and anywhere at the same time.
Qualified software engineers, managers, marketers and salespeople in Silicon Valley can rack up dozens of high-paying, high-upside job offers any time they want, while national unemployment and underemployment is sky high.
I was lucky, as many of my generation was, in having a man like Dr. King in our lives. He came at a time that we needed to take a long look at each other and see how similar we were.
Could I have worked under a system where there were Draconian controls on my creativity, meaning budget, time, script choices, etc.? Definitely not. I would have fared poorly under the old studio system that guys like Howard Hawks did so well in. I cannot.
I wanted to play Dracula because I wanted to say: 'I've crossed oceans of time to find you.' It was worth playing the role just to say that line.
The books that stuck with me most as a child were 'A Wrinkle In Time', 'Dracula', 'Hatchet', 'Bunnicula', 'White Fang', and this YA/kids' book called 'Nobody's Fault' where a kid drowns one weekend as friends play around a flooded ditch.
The Iraq war was fought by one-half of one percent of us. And unless we were part of that small group or had a relative who was, we went about our lives as usual most of the time: no draft, no new taxes, no changes. Not so for the small group who fought the war and their families.
I write until the first draft is finished, and then I feel that I can get out. But, during the time of the writing of the first draft, I don't go out. I'm just locked away, writing. It's a time of meditation, of going into the story.
