I was the first voice of Baltimore television in 1947.
If you're a kid who's not necessarily attractive, and you don't have money, and you're not hip and cool, chances are you're not going to feel good about yourself and want to be an actor.
One day I had an idea for a movie. Everything came after that.
Initially, it was about kids at the bottom rung of the social ladder, due to their looks and their class background. But they're also outsiders in terms of their peer group.
There are a lot of people who like to think they don't have prejudices and that they're open people, and yet, we all have that in ourselves, oftentimes against people of our own race or our own gender or whatever.
I think there are some very evil things about gentrification.
I was going to be an English teacher.
Kids who have no money are still figuring out a way - somehow - to dress nicely.
Kids - in a really good way - can talk about their differences without the baggage that adults have.
On one level, I enjoyed the irony of the situation: a girl who's from a Cuban or Puerto Rican household who's been discouraged from speaking Spanish.
On one hand, as a filmmaker, I don't want to make a movie with guns everywhere.
Right now the thing that I have learned the most is to be grateful that I have finally gotten to a point where I am being paid to make films, after eight years.
Well, this is the second time I've done New Directors.
When you make work, your goal might not be first and foremost to have as many people as possible see it, but it might be more about honing your craft as a storyteller or making art, but, there's no doubt about it, you want lots of people to see it.
I think Bob Costas is terrific. He's so knowledgeable. He can talk about any subject, not just sports.
Working on the film really made me confront my opinions about change and gentrification.
Toward the end of school I started watching movies. Got a job in a movie theater in Brookline, Massachusetts.