John Ridley
John Ridley
John Ridley IV is an American screenwriter, film director, novelist, and showrunner, known for 12 Years a Slave, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
CountryUnited States of America
european
I've never been much of a European traveler. London once on a book tour, and Italy because that's where Ferraris are from. That's about it.
banks blacks characters degree fresh jamie popular portrayed prince remains witness
There remains a degree of anti-black intellectualism in entertainment. Middle and upper-middle class blacks have often been portrayed as buffoons in popular culture; witness the characters of Carlton Banks on 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' and Braxton P. Hartnabrig on 'The Jamie Foxx Show.'
allowed clearly conversation engage exhausting formed guys male met race
It's not that white guys shouldn't be allowed to engage in discussions on race in America. But there's nothing more exhausting than white male liberals' dogmatisms on race that were clearly formed during a conversation they had with that one black guy they met back in college.
definitive hard millions readers version
Doing adaptations is hard, ... because once you say, 'I'm going to take everything that millions of other readers have thought of and I'm going to make the definitive version of that,' ... I think it's a really hard thing to do.
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Reactionary conservatives are smiling through the racial apocalypse. To them, race baiting is a joke, as 'humorist' Rush Limbaugh will tell you when he's calling Mexicans 'stupid.' Or it's a matter of semantics when they claim that Sonia Sotomayor is a 'racialist' which, far as I can tell, is the smooth jazz version of being a racist.
confess enemies people
Oh, happy day when the enemies of ascendancy have got to confess that people of color rock.
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There's no disputing that for pols, the Internet is a great way to connect with people and raise some cash and post 'Sopranos' parodies or play your opponent's macaca moments. But in a 'net root' sense, it's pretty useless for getting someone elected.
defend faux guys liberal matters means please policy suggest
If faux liberal white guys want to support and defend Obama, by all means please do so. But I would suggest they try to limit that support to matters of policy and not perspectives on race.
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'The Martin Show,' the 'Jamie Foxx show,' 'Living Single,' 'The Wayans Brothers,' 'Hanging with Mr. Cooper...' Some of these shows were good, some were typical television, but they facilitated a lot of work for blacks in front of as well as behind the camera. A lot of us in Hollywood thought it was the beginning of a real racial breakthrough.
bring bringing door kicked open recognize sake talk though topic whatever
The first Barbershop kicked the door open and said, 'Look, we're going to talk about whatever we want to talk about.' I think the responsible thing we have to do, even though it's a comedy, even though we have a lot of fun, and even though in someway we are a little more absurdist than the movies, is to recognize that just to bring up a topic for the sake of bringing it up is not enough,
want way topics
I want to explore different topics and present them in slightly different ways.
wings today okay
I never wanted to show up and just say, "Okay, what are we doing today? Let's wing it!"
drama television want
Whatever you do, whether you're doing a television drama or a romantic comedy, you want to be relevant, to some degree.
believe unique emotional
I think I'm an overly emotional person. I feel a lot, but I don't believe that's unique to me or that's how I am able to do the things I do.