'Sabotage' was a work for hire. It wasn't my original idea or script or anything.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
'Sabotage' was an opportunity. That was journeyman work, but the irony is I learned more off that movie on what filmmaking is and isn't than everything else combined. A lot of lessons, and it will impact me for the rest of my career.
I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.
Self-sabotage is the proverbial hammer over the head that finally wakes us up, demanding that we pay attention. For most of us, it takes something devastating to crack us open, to get us out of our minds and into our hearts.
Sabotage did not involve loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations. Bitterness would be kept to a minimum and, if the policy bore fruit, democratic government could become a reality.
I know that I wouldn't mind going back to work if I could find the right script and the right crew to work with.
I wasn't involved, except to the degree that they sent me drafts of the script as the writer turned them in. They asked me at one point to write a memo about what I thought of it.
When I was a screenwriter, I was doing it for mercenary reasons.
Having a day job again I found really kind of fueled my fiction, because it became almost this forbidden thing where I had to sneak off and do it in private.
Different directors have different things, so when I left Mike Leigh, as it were, and I went into other projects after 'All or Nothing,' it took some getting used to - what do you mean there's a script?!?' That kind of thing.
All business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.
No opposing quotes found.