Lexi Alexander
If women choose guerilla style filmmaking or new media productions, etc., all power to them. But if they're there because 'Big Hollywood' won't let them in, then we're moving further and further away from equality.Collection: Equality
I have heard of 'Green Street'-dedicated birthday parties, a website dedicated only to the clothing. It has no end. If you hashtag #greenstreet or #greenstreethooligans, you cannot go a day without people saying it's their favourite movie. It's frustrating because it's a massive hit, but nobody gives it credit.Collection: Birthday
My equality rants have been out there so much that people must be getting sick of it, and frankly, so am I, but if a writer wants to do another story about it, then go for it, because the cause is a good one.Collection: Equality
Religion is all good, but we are almost back to medieval times now, where we are obsessed with going into religious wars and electing our politicians based on their religious statements.Collection: Religion
Back-light is the cinematographer's friend.
I always miss any kind of constant, especially now that I'm a film-maker who travels all the time. I'm always tempted to go to Catholic churches, although I despise the religion. But you want to go there just because it's the one thing in your life that's never changed.
As someone who grew up in Europe, I don't look at TV and automatically think of a primetime network series, created by a staff of writers. I think of 90-minute movies that can break talents out or a three 90-minutes-an-episode mini series that can introduce a fantastic new series like 'The Blechtley Circle.'
For every IP block, DRM, and who-knows-what security feature Hollywood spends thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on, some piracy kid will undo it for free and within a couple of minutes.
One of my short films was about a boxer.
I think in industries riddled with bias, you tend to hire women only if their previous work is very masculine, which is hilarious given that this is not how male directors are chosen.
I am pretty sure when Kenneth Branagh came up for 'Thor,' nobody at Marvel thought, 'Yes, that Kenneth Branagh is masculine enough to do action: just look at 'Henry V' and 'The Magic Flute.''
In martial arts, for every attack, there is a counter you can throw. Somebody traps you, you can throw a hook. But there is no counter for bias.
When I was nominated for an Oscar and seated next to Martin Scorsese, there was nothing in my mind that made me think, 'Hey, in three years maybe I'll make another remake of 'Punisher.''
Until I was on Twitter, trust me: I was completely wiped off everybody's consciousness in Hollywood.
I swear, if anyone near me even so much as whispers the sentence 'Women probably don't want to direct,' my fist will fly as a reflex action.
I was nominated for a live-action short-film Academy Award in 2003.
Bottom line - American history tells us that where there is a will, there will always be a way to achieve quick and fast inclusion.
Almost everybody agrees that the Academy has to become more diverse. Even the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences knows this, which is why, in 2013, it announced it would extend its membership quotas in an attempt to bring more women and minorities into the organization.
Maybe the biggest award show of the largest entertainment importer in the world needs an economic incentive to embrace diversity. Indeed, maybe we should boycott the show and pressure advertisers to do the same. Or maybe the Academy should learn the lesson of history and change because it's the right thing to do.
The people at Cabot Guns are a rare breed of geniuses and artists in a vast gun world.
When I was pitching 'Hooligans,' with a budget of $15 million, most people said they don't want to see a picture about soccer thugs.
I was pretty certain I'd stay in TV rather than returning to the feature world because the material just seems so much better in TV, especially in drama, but then 'Crossface' came my way. A heartbreaking, true story about the dark side of wrestling... I couldn't say no to that.
It's very hard to shame people in Hollywood into anything because they don't often feel that kind of shame.
Why is it when we see a white guy, we automatically think, 'Let's turn this dude into a star?'
When 93 percent of our stories are told by white men, it's an issue. And if those white men go on and tell the stories the way they see their world, which is all white, then it's an even bigger problem.
I'm not someone who throws the towel in, although I think there are many times when I could have and should have thrown the towel in, and nobody would have thought any worse of me.
What's really amazing is that the showrunner who really got me my start in TV is Andrew Kreisberg. He brought me on to 'Arrow,' and he tracked me down because he was a fan of 'Punisher.'
Whenever I go on a job interview, I always recommend Rachel Talalay. I love her.
I think we need to stop looking at the file-sharing community with disgust and instead ask ourselves what we can learn from them.
Foreign distribution is a major aspect of financing films. If you're flooding an entire country with cam rips DVDs before the movie is released, that will affect the bottom line eventually.
Let me make something clear: There are very few things Hollywood is right about. This is a very corrupt, elitist industry that breeds favoritism and fails people up the career ladder.
The criminalization of file sharing is pathetic. It's so pathetic, it's almost funny. Imagine if the radio people would have lobbied for a federal law enforcement agency to raid all homes for illegal transmissions of moving picture experiments in order to stop the invention of television. It's ludicrous.
Money spent by Hollywood to fight piracy: hundreds of millions of dollars.
To make an entire country as big as America aware of a movie costs so much money.
A lot of the guys that work for Warners and make these big films there all come from the same film school. Like Michael Bay, Zack Snyder, Tarsem Singh - they all went to Art Center in the College of Design. And there's a certain expectation when these guys graduate.
Movies and TV are America's No. 1 export. So if our No. 1 export is all male, all white, then there's only one point of view. And I just think it's really important that as Americans - I'm a new American, but I am an American - that we don't portray ourselves to the world so one-sided and exclusive.
I love hand-to-hand, and I love putting on these fights; that's the background I come from.
I like doing violent movies.
I don't like people telling me what to do.
Everybody likes to drink a Coke once in a while; it's when we run out of everything else to drink and we're only left with Coke that we need to start worrying.
I got to know the world of football fans and their pride in it, how they would find a family away from home. Most of them came from broken families. It always had a bit of romance to me, when I went to the game with all these boys that would just die for each other.
I am strangely attracted to the hooligan crowd. I find them actually less dangerous than some of the people I work with now in Hollywood.
In L.A., every day, I see people taking other people's jobs, and they don't care whether that person is married and has two kids. People have no morals here.
Please dox me. You don't even need to dox me - I'll give you my address and wait for you by my doorstep.
People have to fix whatever bias they have, and I see this bias consistently, all the time, towards women directors. They're just not being trusted with action.
I'm a special case: I'm a former stuntwoman and former kickboxing champion, but you couldn't be more overqualified for the job. I cannot be the base level for what women have to do to be trusted with action, because the guys don't have that base level.
I understand it must be hard to realize that the playing field you are collecting all your trophies from is not a level playing field, but that doesn't mean you can just make inaccurate statements.
The only reason I was offered 'Punisher' was because I had made an indie film that was rated R for violence and was filled with fight scenes.
There's a lot of talk now about the PC police, and 'why is everything bad?' It isn't. What it is, is that marginalized and oppressed people who have never had a soapbox, who have never been given a microphone, suddenly have a microphone.
I have a lot of guy friends, from martial arts and film, and soccer. I actually barely know women.