Tamra Davis Quotes

Music video played a huge role in developing my sensibility as a director.

I love mentoring young filmmakers and girl filmmakers.

I learned early in my career to not let myself get in the way of humor but, instead, find what is great in a talented person.

It's incredible what happens when you explain to kids what good food is - they get so excited! They go home and tell their parents ... and they're excited to cook the recipes themselves in class.

I do have a priority in my house, and that is I want my kids to be healthy, and if I give them the right food, I am headed consistently toward that goal.

I love making films, and as long as I love the subject, I just have a crazy amount of passion and energy for the project.

I hope to work till I'm an old lady.

Helping out in your kid's classroom is a great way to get involved with your child's school.

Many of the stranger but most frequently quoted scenes in 'Billy Madison' were unplanned.

Pesto is such a great standard. It's so simple to make and always tastes good.

I wanted to make a film that wasn't just a biography. When you watched it, you actually felt that you watched a movie, that you had an emotional reaction. In order to do that, I felt that I had to really keep myself emotionally raw while working on the film. I had to feel myself crying, so the audience could be moved, too.

In 'Billy Madison,' I worked with Adam before anyone really knew he was Adam Sandler.

My connection with Basquiat was really in Los Angeles, which really was a whole different world to what he was experiencing in New York.

In 1983, I was working at an art gallery in Los Angeles and going to film school at Los Angeles City College. At that time, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a young painter and was visiting L.A. for his first show at the Larry Gagosian Gallery.

Having someone cook all your meals is the best vacation ever!

I read the script for 'Guncrazy' in 1985 and loved it because it was one of the few scripts I'd come across that revolved around a strong female character.

A school morning is usually a pretty hectic time in any household.

I have this concept that I call 'Combo Meals.' The idea is that I start with the kids' meal and then add a few more ingredients, and it becomes the adult meal. This way I'm not making two entirely separate dishes. I'm just simply adding on to what I'm already making.

I have been lucky in my life to have met people that are special, so extraordinary talented that they somehow are on a different plane. Sometimes these amazingly talented people find a way to keep reinventing themselves to stay relevant and alive. Some fall under the crushing vibrancy of their own intensity.

I'm extremely determined and ambitious.

It felt amazing to be one of a handful working female directors in Hollywood.

All of my main characters have been under 30.

My kids like their eggs with catsup. I like mine with salsa.

I had all these tapes in my closet that I had shot years ago with my friend Jean-Michel Basquiat. I was working on a film about him when he died, and then I just put everything away. It was too sad.

Many classrooms are overcrowded, and splitting the class into smaller groups gives the children more one on one attention.

There's no continuity in videos ... you can jump around all over the place. In features, you can't throw in a close-up of a musician stomping on a guitar - you have to film a scene.

I understand that in some families both parents have to work, so the kids are home alone eating more processed foods. But if the kids know how to make oatmeal or eggs in the morning or pasta or a lentil soup at night - we're giving them real survival tools.

When you are talking about someone's art, it is usually so personal.

Basquiat will continue to show us new things about who we are and why he was so important.

I've been lucky enough to work in pop culture, especially with people right before they popped.

I have a great little camera, and I had a theory that if the story is interesting, it doesn't matter what medium you shoot it on. You just have to make a good film.