When the producers of 'Why Poverty?' came to me to do a film about poverty in the United States, I asked if I could do a film about wealth instead. I tend to make films about perpetrators, rather than victims.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man - the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse - the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end.
It is easy to romanticize poverty, to see poor people as inherently lacking agency and will. It is easy to strip them of human dignity, to reduce them to objects of pity. This has never been clearer than in the view of Africa from the American media, in which we are shown poverty and conflicts without any context.
The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.
Poverty is about people lacking the tools they need to get on in life. And solving it is about tackling educational failure, antisocial behaviour, debt problems and addiction, and of course it's about work.
The poverty from which I have suffered could be diagnosed as 'Soho' poverty. It comes from having the airs and graces of a genius and no talent.
Why is the public so interested in movies about the wealthy? My answer is that Shakespeare wrote about kings. That's where the action is. And it's the classic, cathartic thing. You get to indulge in a lifestyle you're not part of, a tragic error leads to a downfall, and you get to say, 'Thank God I'm not him.'
Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.
I think one of the most important American films is 'Jackie Brown,' which is such a humble depiction of humble characters but so powerful. The film was pure depiction of the American poverty of the '90s.
You think in a different way when you don't have any money. The joy of poverty is that you use your imagination to come up with stuff.
As an actress for most of my life, I am profoundly familiar with poverty.