Justin Simien
I remember the first time that I realized that being black meant that I wasn't allowed certain things. It was in the fourth grade, and it was who I thought was my best friend not inviting me to his birthday party because I would be the only black kid there. It was the first time I ever felt restricted, and it certainly wasn't the last time.Collection: Birthday
Racism is systemic: It's oppression that's built into the laws, legislation, into the way neighborhoods are policed, and into job opportunities and health care and education.Collection: Health
To surrender your ego, you have to have one first.
Hip-hop isn't dead by any means, but it's not something I define my black identity with.
I find myself listening to Blood Orange and Janelle Monae and artists like that.
I don't doubt that straight white men have identity issues and identity complexes and struggle with defining themselves.
The further away you get from being a straight white man, the less freedoms you have to figure out who you are and negotiate what you mean to society.
You know what, man, that's part and parcel of being a black person in this country: everything's harder. It just is.
Any time a black person has the audacity to tell everybody else that they're also human beings, they are confronted with all kinds of malice and violence and ill will. It's been that way since black people were brought to this country.
I think we all have identity crises throughout our lives.
For whatever reason, gay characters, or characters that deal with sexuality issues, who are black, in 'black films'... are typically not dealt with with any sort of complexity. They're exoticized: their being gay is sort of the point.
There are a plethora of ways of being black, just like there's many ways to being white.
There is a difference between being offended and being prejudiced and even being bigoted against. There's a difference between that and racism.
Black people are experiencing a systemic disadvantage, and it goes back to slavery, which was not that long ago.
When you're part of a society where you're constantly having to define your identity and sort of negotiate with what the mainstream culture thinks you are, you have less energy and time to figure out who you are when you go home at night.
We get caught in our little silos and end up working against ourselves. And I think social media culture really encourages that, because you're really just shouting into a void hoping someone picks up on what you're saying.
We like to think of the '60s as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X and a little bit of friction - no, there were all of these different groups. There was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panthers, Martin and Malcolm, but also the Whitney Youngs of the world, the Bayard Rustins of the world.
I wanted to be a filmmaker since I was a kid. I always did things that took me a little closer to that.
I took an internship at Focus Features while I was in film school. I was really interested in how specialty movies were marketed and found their audience despite being about topics that were outside of the mainstream.
I think I'll always be making movies that intend to say something new.
If you examine any aspect of the human condition long enough, you really do have to start laughing at it. Because the business of being human is kind of ridiculous.
I think I have a threshold for taking things too seriously.
One of the most powerful lessons I learned is when you make an argument in a film, you have to make sure both characters are right.
There is no monolithic black culture. It's completely different for someone born in Harlem to someone born in Houston or London with one exception, which is that people contributing to black culture have the experience of being black.
Usually, with 'Star Trek,' you always trust the captain. The captains are always going to pull us through; the captain's always going to win.
Racism is over in the 'Star Trek' future, but they found a way to comment on sexism and racism in the present day in such a subversive and smart way, you know?
I went to a school called Chapman University, which is a wonderful film school. It was a great program, but it was very white, and it was a culture shock for me because I grew up in Houston, Texas, and I went through what they call magnet schools, so my friends were like a Benetton ad.
If I just wanted to put clean, perfect images of black people on the screen for an hour and a half, first of all, there are other people already doing that, and they're making a lot of money doing it.
I definitely have fun commenting on the real world and interpreting through the 'Dear White People' lens.
America is a different country, and it will forever be a different country after the election of Donald Trump.
My thing is to try to tell the truth as honestly as possible. For me, the weight is, how can I tell the truth through fiction, the best that I can?
I tend to take on too many projects at the same time, but as I've always done, I will continue to shift my focus onto whatever feels most urgent in the moment.
Every movie has the thing it's about, and then, deep down, it has this thing that it's really about. 'Star Wars' is not really about a space opera, action, and the galactic quest. It's about self-doubt.
Hollywood is a world where the only thing that gets green-lit is something that made money the last year.
There was a time when a studio executive would really love something and have no proof at all that it would work and just do it because they believed in it. That's how 'Star Wars' happened.
It is a fine line between making fun of the right thing and making fun of the wrong thing. And the language oftentimes is the same.
I know it's 'Dear White People,' and you can imprint all kinds of concessions about what the show might be about on the title, but my goal was never to, like, educate white people. My goal was always to create characters that you can relate to and fall in love with.
Here's the thing: I come from a filmmaking background, so this concept of sort of overseeing a television show but not directing was, in general, not weird, but I had to get used to what that felt like. My initial instinct was, 'I want to direct as much of this as possible.' But the logistics of making of TV, that's just not possible.
Part of my struggle with being gay was that a lot of my homophobia was internalized because of the cues that I was - received. I didn't see anybody like myself in the culture. RuPaul was the closest to a gay, out black man that I had growing up.
It's always kind of gratifying to go back to the place that launched you and show you did good.
Films with predominantly white casts can come in any form, tell any story, big or small. For black films, you have the light, fluffy rom-coms or 'Madea' movies, and then you have the black-torture awards movie.
That is just the reality of being a marginalized person in this country: you have to deal with the psychological impact of your oppressor - whether that's being a woman dealing with men or gay people dealing with straight people or trans people dealing with everybody else.
Stories teach us empathy. They reveal to us ourselves in the skins of others.
I love great prestige television, but because I make television, sometimes I don't want to, like, you know, fall into a very heavy cerebral drama.
There can't be reverse racism against a group that is not at a disadvantage.
I think art is much more valuable when it's honest. If it's not honest, it's just propaganda.
I thought I was depressed because I wasn't a writer/director. I moved into a space where I'm a writer/director, my movie is a hit at Sundance, I have a wonderful, loving boyfriend, and wow, I have financial stability. Why can't I get out of bed still?
Shows like 'Empire'... one of the most profound powerful things is that there's a gay male character who is loved. That character is going to save a lot of people's lives. Black families are confronting the idea that a gay black character can be human.
I remember distinctly not seeing myself. I didn't see myself in black culture, white culture, mass culture.
For me it's just, I have too many ideas, man. It's a problem, actually.