Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it. ↗
I feel reviewers are tougher on comedies in general. They don't take them seriously, and the ones that get great reviews are not necessarily the ones that I like. ↗
In fact, some reviewers have said that as they got into the story they forgot that the protagonist is a black woman. They were moved by the story - by the people as a whole - and not by the little things. ↗
I know that an author must be brave enough to chop away clinging tentacles of good taste for the sake of a great work. But this is no great work, you see. ↗
When you hire that first person, then you're a boss. You've got performance reviews. You've got complaints about not making enough money. You've got people who are just going to sell your story to the tabloids. ↗
I think that curiosity happened on these reviews where I was just a guest of the reviewer, because it introduced me to new cuisines and to the idea of cooking as a mechanism for studying other cultures and understanding other parts of the world. ↗
On the first movie we got good reviews, but we were still dealing with genre stuff. It's going away. Judge the movie - is it a good one or a bad one? We know we made a great movie and it's being judged for just being a good film. ↗
As I was coming up on the stage, there was one source that could make or break you, the New York Times. Inevitably there would be one actor singled out for a better review, or worse, than somebody else. The effect of that was cancerous, divisive. ↗
