Diverse Audiences Quotes

The biggest thing I've learned from my dad is he's had adoring crowds of 8,000 at Berkeley, and 6,000 at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. That's an amazing feat to have people coming out in one of the most liberal universities and one of the most conservative.

The wonderful thing about films is how they can be understood by so many different people on so many different levels.

Trying to please everyone can be very hard, but, like 'Shrek' or 'The Simpsons,' 'Robin Hood' manages to entertain adults and children at the same time, but in different ways.

I can go from one extreme to another, from playing at the Sydney Opera House on the Songbook tour to shows with Soundgarden at Voodoo Fest, all in a week.

It's like one of the best things that can ever happen to you as an actor: to have your story reach people, even if they don't look like you and even though they may not be able to identify with a black male; they can still identify with what's happening to you.

Not every movie has to serve as every audience member's need for completion.

I've worked throughout California as a poet: in colleges, universities, worker camps, migrant education offices, continuation high schools, juvenile halls, prisons, and gifted classrooms.

Audiences want great story telling; it's why white people watch my show 'Black in America.' It's why black people watch 'Latina in America.' All of that is statistically shown and proven but it was because it was good story telling about people who were outsiders.

There are so many screenwriters with incredible stories to tell, so I hope there will be some kind of shift in the business where very few types of movies are now made by the studios. There needs to be different budgets for different audiences; not everything having to be a huge opening weekend.

I don't think anyone ever gets over the surprise of how differently one audience's reaction is from another.

I've done some really weird gigs. The ones where no one turned up - they're probably not the interesting ones to talk about. I played some pretty random ones in L.A. I signed to play all-R&B nights or an all-comedy night where I'd be the only white person there. They were fun.

In my writing, I want to address all communities, you know. I've spent many years talking about Chicano culture, Chicano history, and at the same time, I've also been in many communities and presented my work in many communities, in many classrooms, and that's where my vision is and my delight is and my heart is.

There are a lot of good comics, no doubt, but as far as the quality of the comics goes, I think what you have is a bunch of situational comics - there are black comics that work only black crowds, gay comics that do only gay crowds, and southern comics that only work down South, and so on with Asian, Latino, Indian, midgets, etc. The previous generation's comics were better because they had to make everybody laugh.

When I first started doing comedy, there was no such thing as a room that had black people and white people in it. That didn't exist.

When I started in the clubs, I had to work places where didn't nobody else want to work. I had to do clubs where street gangs were, had to do motorcycle gangs, gay balls and things of that nature.