Quote

I feel like I can be myself in L.A. I feel like Mississippi is a little close-minded; not all of Mississippi is, but just the part that I came from. They really don't get outsiders.

I've just come back from Mississippi and over there when you talk about the West Bank they think you mean Arkansas.

I knew I had to write a good screenplay to be taken seriously, and I knew I needed to present Mississippi on visuals instead of just saying, 'Hey I wanted to film it in Mississippi.' It would seem like it was a hometown boy just wanting to be home.

In Mississippi, you don't admit that you're gay. It's just an awkward thing down South, which is sad.

I see more genuine sociability between the races in Mississippi than I see in Michigan. No question.

I decided early on that I wanted to participate in the greater American experience, rather than the parochial one in Mississippi. But I have an urge as a writer to meld the Southern experience into the larger American one.

Well not really to get attention, but to entertain, but you know to show some elements of rural life as well, it kind of blended all in, its kind of like a mockery in a sense, kind of stab back at people that have those stereotypical ideas of the south.

The nature of the South is changing faster than the stereotypes are. Much of the South now looks like San Jose. Is it still southern?

I think we Southerners have talked a fair amount of malarkey about the mystique of being Southern.

Oh, definitely and I talk about all the things that I really needed to make me happy at that point in time were outside of Mississippi, and now all the things that I need to make me happy are back there.