My love of performers is not really different than my love for painters. Everyone’s really high-strung and trying to do the best they can. Hilton Als Read Quote
Dramas about addiction can be exciting to watch. And then dispiriting. Exciting because degradation is fascinating to follow from the relative safety and smugness of an ‘appropriate’ life, and dispiriting because if all that sad mayhem can happen to this or that character, what’s to keep it from happening to me or you? Hilton Als Read Quote
I think someone like Khandi Alexander, who’s now on ‘Treme,’ is one of the most extraordinary actresses I’ve seen in years. But she’s dependent on someone brilliant like David Simon to realize that and to give her a forum. Tyler Perry’s not interested in that kind of nuance because it doesn’t sell. Hilton Als Read Quote
Moonlight’ undoes our expectations as viewers, and as human beings, too. As we watch, another movie plays in our minds: real-life footage of the many forms of damage done to black men, which can sometimes lead them to turn that hateful madness on their own kind, passing on the poison that was their inheritance. Hilton Als Read Quote
I think that Tyler Perry’s genius really has been to tap into the domestic market. He knows what his audience is based on, having toured America for so long, and then giving them the blueprint for his films prior to the films coming out, and then the films have the built-in audience because they’ve seen it in theaters already. Hilton Als Read Quote