John David Washington Monologues

Marie, what are you doing? Put the knife down, please. Marie?

Well, damn! Why didn't you do that in the audition?

You can't hang everything on identity. You can't say that I brilliantly subverted this trope 'cause I'm black, but I fell into this one because I'm a fucking man! Identities are constantly shifting. Does the male gaze exist if the filmmaker's gay and not straight? And to what degree? What if they're asexual? What if they're transitioning and you don't even know it? You can only look back at things and wonder what the fuck it all means! I mean, why did Ben Hecht and Selznick, two fucking Jewish men, spend so much time on "Gone with the Wind"? To this day, no one can explain to me why the fuck Billy Wilder made "Spirit of St. Louis" and lionized that Nazi bastard Lindbergh, huh? Or why Ida Lupino loved film noir and fucking violent men! Why Ed Wood wore fucking panties? He wore panties and made B films about fucking space aliens! Or Elaine May was fascinated with emotionally stunted men. I mean, did she see herself in them? Did she hate them in real life, but wanted to get to know them through the work? I mean, the fact that Barry Jenkins isn't gay, is that what made "Moonlight" so fucking universal? Or was being gay the reason Cukor empathized with women more than men? It's all a fucking mystery's the point! What drives a filmmaker? What drives an artist? I mean, why did Pontecorvo, a fucking rich Italian Jewish man, why did he... why did he feel such a kinship to Algerian Muslim guerrilla fighters that he fucking made "Battle of Algiers"? A fucking classic! Tell me that! Can you tell me that? Fucking Karen! Can you tell me that? No, you can't, can you? Because why? 'Cause nobody knows! Who the fuck knows? Who the fuck knows? I mean, why did I shoot the scene the way I did? Is it because I'm a man, is it because I'm straight? Is it because I'm desensitized to violence or is it because I believe that if you witness trauma onscreen, the audience should also feel that fucking trauma? That is the mystery of art, of film, what drives someone to make something and fucking say something. Now, you can criticize this system, which, like every fucking system, is white as fuck and, in our business, fucking male and white as fuck! I mean, goddamn! Shit, I've been waiting my whole life, I've been asking, "Where the fuck are all the black filmmakers 'cause I'm getting sick and tired of these little British boys running around here all in their feelings trying to overcome a fucking birth defect to save the fucking Queen from Hitler!" You know, just do me a fucking favor, all right? Ban every fucking film with a postscript and we'll be good. We'll be fucking great! But to write shit like this? To write this bullshit? To box people in because you don't have the love of film, because you don't have the mind to critique the form, the medium, the technique, you don't have the words to describe the fucking emotions or too much fear that you're not gonna get clicks or too much fucking fear that you afraid the mob's gonna turn on you! Well, then, fuck you! Fuck you for inhibiting the ability for artists to dream about what life may be like for other fucking people. Fuck you, twice! With a sick cactus dick! And even if you come up short, even if you could do better, fuck you! You're the reason they make this fucking stale, safe, stagnant turgid fucking shit in the first place! You're the reason, not me! You're the reason! I mean, you should be fucking bold! You should be fucking reckless! People should be fucking reckless! They should be yelling at the top of their lungs: "Hey Karen! Hey Al! I hear you and I don't give a fuck!" Because they're not gonna get any better until they start rebelling against this fucking purist, moralistic, academic nonsense in the same way that Spike Lee rebelled against the white system when he made "Do the Right Thing". You know, normally, I'd fucking wish death upon someone like this, someone who lacks the fucking imagination like this, but instead, I'm gonna pray fucking hard, the way my mama taught me, that she gets fucking carpel tunnel until her hands atrophy and cramp and she can no longer write nonsensical fucking garbage like this anymore!

Not everything I do is political because I'm black.

Cinema doesn't need to have a message. It needs to have a heart.

She kept saying that I'm the next Spike Lee, the next Barry Jenkins, the next John Singleton. And I just looked at her, was like, "What about William Wyler?" And you could tell, for three whole seconds, she was like, "Was William Wyler black?"

"Avoids being a white savior?" She IS a savior, she's trying to save her! Avoided the white savior trap? If I were white they'd say I fell into the trap!

You're by far the most excruciating, difficult, stubbornly obnoxious woman I've ever met in my *entire* life. I go from wanting to cut your head off one moment to fucking wanting to kiss your beautiful stupid little face the next. I fucking love you. I love you. Should we get married?

Seriously, I feel like we're gonna get married and divorced at least a couple of times, we might as well started now.

I'm going to be part of the larger conversation about film-making, without always having some white-ass writer making it about race 'cause it's fucking convenient. You know, I could see… I could see the reviews now. It goes something like this. This is how they be writin' and shit: "This film is an acute study of the horrors…" they like to use words like that, "… the horrors of systemic racism in this mental healthcare industry." Instead of it being a commercial film about a drug-addicted girl trying to get her shit together. I mean, these people, these fucking people are so pedantic. They are… I mean, we get it. You're smart, we get it. You're woke, we get it. Let us, us artists, have some fucking fun with the shit. Let us have fun with the art.

It's not a film about race. No. It's about shame, it's about guilt, and how that shit is inescapable. And it annoys me that so many of these journalists can't help but to flex their college education.

None of us are proud of where we first start off. I started off, I had to do token fuckin' punch up on straight to VOD rom-come, and under-the-table rewrites on films that didn't wanna pay writers! But you keep working! You keep on trying! You work harder and harder 'cause even if you're not talented, which you are, you can still get somewhere, as long as you don't have an ego. You don't have to be proud of everything you do! But you do have to work harder than 99% of people.