Gina Prince-Bythewood Quotes

Some of my favorite films are musicals, like 'Walk the Line,' 'The Rose' and 'Lady Sings the Blues.' I just love the way the music and the story fuel each other.

Twitter and social media have so changed the game for filmmakers, but especially for artists. It shrinks the world and gives chance to feel like they know you. But it's a blessing and a curse. It can help build you up, but there's also such anonymity.

I love writing and directing because it's great therapy. Every project I've done, there's been a personal connection.

I grew up with white parents, and until after college, it was a lot of confusion, especially because I grew up in an all-white area. So I never looked around and saw anyone who looked like me.

I write to music, so every script I have has its own playlist. Music just opens me up to the emotions that I'm writing.

I hate to fly. I'm deathly afraid of it.

Movies have power. Power to impact society and the choices we make. I want to entertain, but I also want to say something to the world.

On my set, people have to respect the actor's process. I totally respect what actors do. I give them whatever time they need, and I never scream out directions from the camera. I take the time to walk up to them and talk to them personally.

If I get a note on my script or my films, what I say to a studio executive is that, 'You know, this is the film of my legacy, and I never want to be sitting in a theater looking up on the screen and seeing something that I don't believe in.' I will never do that.

The thing is I write to music, so every script I have has its own playlist. Music just opens me up to the emotions that I'm writing. It's just a pretty cool thing.

With 'Love & Basketball,' I played ball my whole life and did track at UCLA. So, I'm an athlete. And it was very important for me to get it right. I started with casting: As an athlete, there's nothing worse for me than watching a sports movie and the woman that they hire can't run or can't shoot. It sets women's sports back years.

Oh my God, I love UCLA so much. Their film school is great because it's unstructured, so there's a freedom to fail in there and just tell your story, and everybody makes a film. It's so important to have that freedom in film school because that's what you're there for: to learn and make a film.

A classic is a classic for a reason. Let's try to create new classics. The idea of repeating ourselves drives me a little crazy.

With 'Love And Basketball,' every studio turned it down.

Be passionate about your [movie] material, because you're going to have to overcome a lot of "No's," and it's that passion that fuels the fight.

I remember sitting in the theater watching 'Bridesmaids,' and I'm doubled over laughing, and then I'm crying in the same movie. It's the overwhelming feeling, as I'm looking up and seeing these women, and I'm realizing how rare it is to see that.

People often ask me if I feel discriminated against as a black female director. I don't. I'm actually offered a ton of stuff. But I only want to direct what I write. And I prefer to focus on black female characters. What's most important to me is to put characters up onscreen who are not perfect, but who are human and flawed.

My husband and I are writers, and I wish I could write faster. There are not a lot of movies made with black actors in mind.

I was adopted by a Salvadorian mother and a white father. Growing up having complete identity crisis. Then my search for my mother and trying to find out why I was given up, and how could a mother give up a child, then finding out the circumstances of my birth was pretty traumatizing.

I love movies. And I dig a great love story: the kind that wrecks me, then builds me back up and leaves me inspired. I write what I want to see.

'Beyond the Lights' was my fourth film. I gained a lot of knowledge, and I'm excited to share that with young filmmakers because I know how lost I was coming out of film school with that question of 'What's next?'

Talent has no gender. People are hiring young male directors right out of film school, off of a student film or off of a film at Sundance for millions of dollars. You can do the same with a female. It's not a risk about the work if you respect the film that they made.

'Black film,' that term allows studios to just marginalize a movie and say, 'We've made our black film. We've made our film with people of color in it,' as opposed to, 'I just feel like people of color should be in every genre.'