Each one of my movies is going to be about one of these different social demons. The first one, being 'Get Out,' is about race and neglect and marginalization.
Jordan PeeleRead
The best comedy and horror feel like they take place in reality. You have a rule or two you are bending or heightening, but the world around it is real.
Interpretation
Comedy and horror thrive on a believable foundation of reality, highlighting the extraordinary within the ordinary.
In this quote, Jordan Peele emphasizes the importance of setting a realistic backdrop for comedy and horror. By grounding these genres in familiar scenarios, audiences are more engaged, allowing for the surreal or exaggerated elements to resonate more profoundly. The interplay between the real world and these heightened experiences creates a powerful impact, making the emotions and reactions feel relatable and authentic.
In practice
This quote could be shared in a discussion about the importance of realism in film and theater.
Each one of my movies is going to be about one of these different social demons. The first one, being 'Get Out,' is about race and neglect and marginalization.
I'm a true believer in story. I think when you just tell people to think, people tend to get resistant and defensive and feel like you're accusing them of not thinking.
I'd been taught from an early age that I was in the 'other' category on the standardized tests. You know, I had to go down the checklist - Caucasian, African-American, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, and then, you know, at the bottom is other. So, you know, very early on I was taught, in a way, that I was somehow this anomaly.
Part of what horror is, is taking risks and going somewhere that people think you're not supposed to be able to go, in the name of expressing real-life fears.
I love getting cheers. I love giving scares. Anything that really works with the audience makes me happy.
You hear it said time and time again by successful directors: You have to make a movie for yourself. Don't make it for anyone else.
I really subscribe to that old adage that you should never let the audience get ahead of you for a second. So if the film's abrasive and wrongfoots people then, y'know, that's great. But I hope it involves an audience.
When I design and wonder what the point is, I think of someone having a bad time in their life. Maybe they are sad and they wake up and put on something I have made and it makes them feel just a bit better. So, in that sense, fashion is a little help in the life of a person. But only a little.
The first time I started choreographing was in the dark, in my living room, with the lights completely out, to some popular music on the radio. I put the radio on full blast and I started moving. I didn't know what it looked like. I didn't want to see it... I had to start in the dark.
I don't care if the audience is 600 Saul Bellows; I'm going to knock them dead with a comedy routine. I'm out there as a missionary for literature because, if people laugh and enjoy themselves, they might actually do something as bizarre as reading the book.
What the newer landscape artists see in a circle of a hundred degrees in Nature they press together unmercifully into an angle of vision of only forty-five degrees. And furthermore, what is in Nature separated by large spaces, is compressed into a cramped space and overfills and oversatiates the eye, creating an unfavorable and disquieting effect on the viewer.
One of the great functions of art is to help us imagine what it is like to be not ourselves, what it is like to be someone or something else, what it is like to live in another skin, what it is like to live in another body, and in that sense to surpass ourselves, to go out beyond ourselves.
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