YouSaid · the spoken record

Ava DuVernay

lines on the record: 119
first: 2023-09-18
most recent: 2023-09-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, I was down in the Lamert Park area, this glorious black arts district in Los Angeles and became a part of the arts and culture space there and just a young person who was very attracted to hip hop and all the disciplines within hip hop.”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's interesting even to get the question because it makes me think, you know, at my age, oh, right, that's not normal for people who don't live in those communities. But yeah, police are everywhere. They're overhead as well. We call it the ghetto bird. It's a helicopter helicopter that. Flies low across black and brown communities in Los Angeles, especially was one of the tactics of the LAPDE.”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember being enraged. I remember that, you know, the Rodney King. Assault was one in a steady litany of assaults on the black community at that time. And so it was just a very oppressive LAPD presence in black communities and in spaces where black people convened all around the city that was deeply felt and became quite combustible when Really, the first video footage of a police assault that reached national prominence was still not enough to result in any kind of punishment for the officers who were involved.”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know, I think people who aren't from LA think it's all together, but it's really quite a sprawl. So if you're from Compton, Long Beach, Linwood, you really have no reason to be in LA proper unless I had no reason to be in LA. So I really wasn't familiar with LA proper until I got to college. And it's like 40 minutes up the coast, but it felt like a different world. And so, yeah, just had a dorm experience, living the dorms for the first couple of years, worked my little job as a waitress, came home with my tips, going through, you know, to the games. Like it was a very normal college experience except for the fact that there was huge, huge racial unrest happening in the city at that time. So feeling, you know, being a college student and And the historical context of the times that we were in really had a big effect on me”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I loved it. I had a beautiful experience there. Learned a lot, was involved with the Black Student Union, you know, learned about the power of protest, learned about communities of color in Los Angeles that hadn't been engaged with because I”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oddly, the first film with black people I can remember seeing and really, and I know it's not the case. I know I'd seen other ones, but for whatever reason, the one that I really remember feeling deeply was not until I got to college, which was Mope and Blues, Spike Lee's Mope Better Blues. I know I'd seen the other films before then. And I'd seen all kinds of other films Ladies Sing The Blues Other Things, but the one that really had an effect was Roberta Blues.”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first film I saw that where I saw people of color on screen that was very formative for me was Westside Story To find out years later, half of them were not brown. But you couldn't tell me that Bernardo was not straight from Puerto Rico at the time. Like, it was that film was such a big deal for me that it was a while to shake off and realize that it was the magic of movies that made me see what I was seeing and feel what I was feeling. But that was the first film where I saw people like the folks in my neighborhood because I went to school with a lot of Latino and Filipinox people. I remember loving the colors and the culture.”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, all that kind of stuff. Very few black people, I remember. But just a bunch of studio stuff with. Different views of white life, and I really enjoyed it. And then as I got into, I mean, I enjoyed movies. And so as I got into high school, I remember, you know, loving the John Hughes stuff and wondering if there was any black people at the school I remember seeing the film that I really liked. I think it was 16 candles. And I remember I saw the one Asian character. I really thought, oh, that's not nice. I remember thinking that. Everyone was laughing and I remember thinking that that's not nice. But just generally. Consuming the movies as a young person would, and at some point in there being aware that I wasn't seeing films with black folk in it.”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anything that they played at the Lakewood Mall. That's the only place that I went to see movies with my aunt Denise who would take me after school to the Lakewood Mall. I should go there and see a movie one day. That'll probably bring back such emotional. But yeah, anything. So this is the late 70s, early 80s”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I thought, right, these are the tools that I need to go into the courtroom and I am truly a few short steps from the courtroom. This will not take long. I am that smart, and I will use this briefcase and I will go to the Supreme Court and do whatever I need to do.”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I always got that I was bright, that I was smart, the things that every kid should hear, right? Just that, you know, I had potential and I could be anything that I wanted to be at the time for many, many years when I was young, when people would ask that horrible question that you asked children, which I don't think. Children should be asked, What do you want to be when you grow up? I'd say a lawyer. And I would always hear positive reinforcement. Oh, I can see that for you, or that's perfect, or you're going to be that. I remember my godmother, Charlene. Ah gave me a briefcase for my eighth grade graduation”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you were a teenager and people would meet you and they would say, oh, Ava, she's going to be. This or that? What would people say about you? They would say Oh, she's going to be the president, or what would he remember people saying?”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I love you calling him an entrepreneur because I think that we don't use that word for people who are not creating companies that are fancy, so to speak. He owned his own business, a small carpet and flooring company. And yeah, he had about, I don't know, six or seven men who worked with him, but he would, you know, get down on his hands and knees and put in carpet and flooring for residences and commercial spaces in Los Angeles.”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, my dad remember the first day that he came to pick her up for a date. And open the door. I don't think I've ever told the story. I opened the door and he was just so handsome. And he had on a starched white shirt putting up. And slacks, and like a belt, and shiny shoes. And I just really liked him from there. He was such a gentleman and so kind to me and continued that to be that to me all of his life for the rest of his life. So he had a big effect on me.”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, there were three of them who raised us. It was my mother, her mother, my grandmother, and her sister, my aunt, were just a big, big part of our lives. And my two sisters came right after me. So there's a lot of ladies, a lot of that energy. And I would go to my aunt's after school. And I just spent a lot of time with her. So, you know, was as close to her as I was to my mother. But they had very different interests. My mother's interests were. You know, my education and the clothes on my back and the food under my plate, and just trying to keep it all going, and my aunt. Her interests were art and fun and kind of the things that my mother was so busy and focused on taking care of us, didn't really have the space, the mental space for. And so they made a good team.”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A frustrated artist who Music and fine art and movies. Didn't grow up in a time or in an environment that encouraged or celebrated those interests in her. So she became a nurse following in her mother's footsteps, but always fostered her love of art as just a lover of it to Stefan and really exposed me to all kinds of things that I would not have I don't believe I would have come across if it hadn't been for her.”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Today, Ava oversees a campus just outside downtown LA that encompasses much of her work. Array is a production company, a distributor of films, a nonprofit education center, a community event space, and a resource center to help people of color get into the film industry. Ava fell in love with the arts at an early age. For the first years of her life, she grew up in Compton, California, and then moved to the nearby neighborhood of Lynwood. And one of the most important people in her life was her Aunt Denise.”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Any filmmaker that's in a screening of their films not watching the film, they're watching the audience. So, you're watching the backs of heads have become really good at watching the backs of heads. Like, I can tell what you're feeling by your neck at this point. For the first time being in the back of a theater, watching just the side view of the light of the screen hit people's faces as they smile, as they nod, as they cry, whatever. That feeling just, you know, it was my first hit and I was addicted and I've been addicted ever since.”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, one of my favorite parts of traveling is getting a feel for a neighborhood, the way locals do. A few summers ago, I was in Rome and stayed in an apartment I booked on Airbnb. It was tucked in a quiet neighborhood just outside the Roman forum. Every morning I'd walk to the corner cafe, grab an espresso, and just watch the world go by outside. I even managed to chat with the owner about the neighborhood he lived in for nearly forty years. And he got me thinking about my own neighborhood. There are incredible hiking trails and great restaurants and, of course, the beach. And when I'm traveling this summer, listing my own place on Airbnb could be a really smart way to let someone else experience the area the way I do, like a local. Listing your home on Airbnb while you're traveling is a great way to make some extra money. You could put the money toward your next trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much”
2023-09-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT