I was never interested in singing in the church or school. I was more interested in becoming a musician.
If a girl gets assaulted, it's not because she was drunk. It's because somebody decided to assault her.
You can't blame a victim for being under the influence when there is a violent act [happening to them]. These are two separate things.
We make movies about remarkable people like President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives in "The Island President" and Al Gore in the film, who get up every day and are driven in an almost inhuman way to make a change in a problem that they see in the world and shine truth into a very dark arena where bad actors try to lie to the American public to gain profits for fossil fuel companies. To us, that's a natural drama. And that's primarily where we work - character-based films that we hope will bring issues to life through their stories.
We see ourselves as filmmakers and as storytellers. We want to make films that move people emotionally. The most effective thing that cinema can do is get into people's hearts and have them see a new perspective on life - step inside someone else's shoes and mind for 90 minutes and experience the world in that way.
What we really are trying to do day to day now is to wake up every day and think about more activist behavior - what we can do to move the needle on the climate crisis, whether it is calling legislators or trying to win the conversation with someone who might not see the issues the way do.
Most people are good people. But they're afraid to speak out, they're afraid for their safety and their jobs. And unfortunately that dictates a lot of their actions.
A painter with prestige among painters is bound to be discovered sooner or later.
The highest possible form of treason is to say that Americans aren’t loved wherever they go, whatever they do.
What excites me is that, when things are tough, people become resourceful, and now with the Internet, social networking and the ability for people who in the past had been relatively powerless, they have tools to be able to spread ideas and organize. The urgency is there and the tools are there and I think that the possibility for really, really powerful results is there. I think it's all brewing, it's all bubbling up right now.
Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue.