Much as banks don’t care where your money’s coming from, the Electoral College is all ‘don’t ask, don’t care’ when it comes to votes.
John Ridley
Gay marriage will be universally accepted in time. But if I may be so bold as to say to gays and lesbians, don’t wait for that time to arrive. Just as my father and his generation did not ‘wait’ for their civil rights, nor should you. The toothpaste ain’t going back in the tube. The tide has turned.
John Ridley
For children, diversity needs to be real and not merely relegated to learning the names of the usual suspects during Black History Month or enjoying south-of-the-border cuisine on Cinco de Mayo. It means talking to and spending time with kids not like them so that they may discover those kids are in fact just like them.
John Ridley
As a coping mechanism, or as a way to make a little hard count by shilling demons in the shadows, I try not to belittle the thought process of the conspiracy theorists. As a cocktail waitress in Vegas once schooled me: never get down on anybody else’s hustle.
John Ridley
There are any number of very hard working people in Hollywood who deserve recognition. Mostly its the artisans and crafts persons – the ‘below the line’ workers – whose only reward is to be pejoratively labeled ‘below the line’ workers. I say get them all on the next thing smoking to Vegas for an all expense paid weekend of whatever.
John Ridley
There are still some people out there who believe comic books are nothing more than, well, comic books. But the true cognoscenti know graphic novels are – at their best – an amazing blend of art literature and the theater of the mind.
John Ridley
Slavery was not a bad day on the job. It was not your boss yelling at you. It was not hard work for little pay. This was a full system of human subjugation.
John Ridley
I understand politicos gotta make bank. But cloistering with the Hollywood elite is not how you prove you’re a man of the people.
John Ridley
Why do we cling to bigotry? Because bigotry, plainly, is convenient. It is a near-effortless way to both elevate one’s stature and make a pity grab in this culture of victims that we have become.
John Ridley
Let’s be very clear: Living ‘unforgiven’ is not the sole domain of blacks. It can be found in any successful person.
John Ridley
I love graphic novels – I love reading them, I enjoyed writing them, I would love to go back and do them again. I hope I’m savvy enough to do them in the right way.
John Ridley
The great thing about working with NPR – and, really, there’s like a million of ’em – is all the cool stuff I get to do for the public. Meet the president. Hang out at the National Finals Rodeo in Vegas. Drink a $10,000 martini.
John Ridley
White folks, no matter how well-meaning or open-minded, have no true idea what it’s like to be black in America. That’s not a slam against white people or an accusation of latent bigotry. But the fact is that we all live in an Anglo-dominated society.
John Ridley
As an ex-stand up, I can tell you that a comedy club isn’t a place you go looking to get the abuse you just can’t seem to find in daily life. The stage is a performer’s domain. You protect that domain. You are not on stage to take what’s given just ’cause you’re getting paid. If you are attacked, you retaliate.
John Ridley
I don’t think I’m alarmist. I’m more disappointed by the euphemisms in some instances than outright bigotry. Now, to me, you walk around with a Klan hat on or you’ve got a swastika on you arm, you just look like a dope, you know what I mean?
John Ridley
When times are tough, people want to escape to somewhere fantastic without having to pay actual escape-to-somewhere-fantastic cash. And offering a couple of hours away from the ordinary is what the movies do best.
John Ridley
Bad news: Complainers are rewarded for complaining. Indicative of the victim culture in which we live, people have not only come to expect something for nothing, but are then rewarded for how loudly they can ventilate their sense of having been victims of fraud.
John Ridley
I still have my first ‘Black Lightning’ that I got way back in the day, and my first ‘Steel.’ And I proudly display those comics, by the way. I have a lot of comics, but those are among the ones that mean the most to me.
John Ridley
It does no good to believe in what does not exist to the point one cannot focus on what is real. That would be the greatest tragedy of any ‘conspiracy.’
John Ridley
As an individual, and I have to say as a person of color, the thing about being an ‘other’ in America is I really feel like you’re bilingual. I’m from a small town in Wisconsin, but even when I’m in New York and I’m working for MSNBC or CNN, you’re used to being the only black person in the room.
John Ridley
I’m John the Fourth, so I think there’s a lot of things in life that have been truly handed to me by the hard work and the pain of others.
John Ridley
There are some individuals who look at graphic novels as ‘canon,’ and they cannot change in any way, shape or form, and that’s what makes them in some ways good fans.
John Ridley
Certainly as a kid, I grew up with Batman, Superman, whoever – they didn’t need to be black for me to relate to them. But when a character like Cyborg came along, I got excited, because he looked a little bit more like me; his experiences were a little bit more like mine.
John Ridley
I didn’t know I was a good director, and I mean that sincerely. I had done a film a long time ago called ‘Cold Around the Heart.’ Nobody saw it, and it didn’t turn out the way I wanted to.
John Ridley
I’ve written films that are violent. I’m not big on sitting and watching violence.
John Ridley
Seriously, you know – I love to write. I enjoy the process; I enjoy the different processes, because writing for film and television and graphic novels is all very different. So I’ve never had the feeling of, ‘Oh, you have to do this one thing.’
John Ridley
Writing a screenplay needs to be more than words on a page – and by the way, I think the words on the page are something you have to try to execute on the highest level you can; I’m not dismissing that by any regard.
John Ridley
As far as superhero stories, what’s appealing is of course that aspect of wish fulfillment. I mean, you start out reading them as a kid, and a couple things jump out at you – there are heroes out there, and you wish you could run into a phone booth and change your life, or be like Peter Parker and put on a mask and become a hero.
John Ridley
With comics, you don’t have to worry so much about budgetary constraints. In film and television, however fanciful you want to be, someone can come up to you and go, ‘Okay, this is going to cost X amount of dollars, and we only have so many days to film this.’ With graphic novels, you can have that alien invasion you’ve always wanted to see.
John Ridley
I haven’t tweeted once in my life, but I’m sick of hearing about it already. What once may have been the cool way of letting a hundred people know that you’re about to go mow your lawn now has the feel of a used-to-be-fresh means of communicating. So yesterday, like two-way pagers. And AOL.
John Ridley
Just mention the idea of warrantless wiretaps and expect to get hit up with a congressional investigation. But give somebody an avatar and a URL, and he can’t tweet, post or hyperlink enough personal information about himself to as many people as possible.
John Ridley
I don’t know what’s hipper: to Facebook or to Twitter. I just know for me, personally, discretion never went out of style.
John Ridley
At the risk of sounding like that old guy in ‘Gran Torino’ telling those ‘young punks’ to ‘get off my lawn,’ it’s gotten to the point that whenever I hear somebody talking about Twitter or twittering or tweeting, it just makes my little tummy want to hurl.
John Ridley
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.
John Ridley
The thing about working in Hollywood is that, at some point, you really get tired of hearing how godless you are, and how if you and the rest of the heathens in Tinsel town would put more God-centric shows on TV, people wouldn’t be abandoning prime time in favor of their Bible study classes.
John Ridley
Fanboys are a creator’s blessing and curse. If a fanboy likes you, they love you. Obsessively. If you cross them with some plot point or story direction they reject, expect to be wholly and continually eviscerated across the Internet.
John Ridley
Republicans can be a funny bunch. They’re against affirmative action, but they always seem to be able to find people of color to fill a slot just when they’re most needed.
John Ridley
Every president to hold office has espoused some version of Americanism – the truths that we hold self-evident, even when those truths are not always in evidence. But for all their grand rhetoric and mostly good deeds, none was able to seal the deal on the trifecta of equality, plurality and socioeconomic ascendancy. Obama has.
John Ridley
Obama is the New Generation and the hot light of a dawn that goes way beyond clever talk of morning in America.
John Ridley
Quite simply, quite plainly, just by virtue of his being, Obama is America. The first true American to lead our nation.
John Ridley
Even I haven’t downed enough L.A. Kool-Aid to believe that somehow Hollywood movies are an overt instrument of morality.
John Ridley
If the American public is so into morality in movies, why don’t they throw more of their disposable income at religious-themed entertainment? For every ‘Passion of the Christ,’ there’s a ‘Fireproof’ that comes and goes with no notice.
John Ridley
So, is Hollywood anti-religion? Not in my opinion. But unlike, say, politicians and preachers who talk faith before going off to speak in tongues to their mistresses, Hollywood just doesn’t wear its faith on its sleeve.
John Ridley
Facts tend to take the punch out of a good hate rant and are therefore left best unsaid.
John Ridley
Not only does Hollywood make money – it seems to make better movies during recessions. I’m sure a lot of studio executives wish we could have one every year.
John Ridley
In every election cycle that I can recall, there comes a moment – or a few – where charges of elitism and claims of commonness are wielded by presidential candidates like a sword and shield: ‘Vote for me ’cause I’m one of you. It’s the other guy who’s out of touch.’
John Ridley
I don’t want an underachiever working on my car’s transmission. Why would I want someone regular sitting in the Oval Office? Sorry, give me somebody who has demonstrated a capacity to excel.
John Ridley
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.
John Ridley
When I go to business meetings, I’m still told way too often by some receptionist, ‘The mail room is downstairs,’ to believe that racial perceptions don’t still exist. But I figure there are always going to be knuckleheads no matter how many of their herd get stuck in the tar pits of progress.
John Ridley
Why don’t we hear more about and from Asians when it comes to race in America? Are Asians the new Invisible Man – there but not there? In some ways, yeah. Blacks and whites are always carping about the metrics of racism. And any conversation about immigration reform is immediately flipped into a referendum on Hispanics.
John Ridley
To this day, the only argument against Obama that critics can seem to come up with involves admitting he’s better than them – though they certainly season it with some racism. You know, he’s that lucky black man who actually appeals to the populace. He’s that elitist who got himself off food stamps and into Harvard.
John Ridley
Oh, happy day when the enemies of ascendancy have got to confess that people of color rock.
John Ridley