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In an illustrious career spanning more than four decades and counting, special effects innovator John Dykstra cut his teeth working on Douglas Trumbull's '70s sci-fi classic Silent Running. His visual effects wizardry on that film landed him his first of two Academy Awards. About 30 years later, Spider-Man 2 brought him his second Oscar statue.
A founding member of George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic, Dykstra was one of the first special effects artists to employ computers. At ILM he designed and built the first computerized motion control system dubbed the Dykstraflex, which was used for many of Star Wars' groundbreaking effects.
Dykstra's other credits include Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Inglourious Basterds and, most recently, X-Men: First Class (director Matthew Vaughn’s nuanced, finely rendered prequel) -- which was recently issued on DVD and Blu-Ray. Plus he was a producer on the 1970s television series Battlestar Galactica, for which he shared an Emmy.
By phone, the 65-year-old Long Beach, California native discussed the state of special effects in today's computerized film world. While reflecting on the past, he’s focused on the future.
Q: You were there with Silent Running, which came out of 2001: A Space Odyssey -- its director Douglas Trumbull had worked on Stanley Kubrick’s classic -- so your connection to the technology of filmmaking goes all the way back.
JD: Doug Trumbull [visual effects director for 2001 and director of Silent Running] is still out there, and I love Doug. I learned all of my stuff from him to begin with, and he's still doing pictures like The Tree of Life.
Q: What do you think of as your benchmarks? There can be no greater benchmark than Star Wars. To be the guy that was responsible for those effects, working with George Lucas. Let’s face it; it’s the start of the mega-blockbuster science-fiction movie.
JD: The thing that's so funny about that is the studio didn't think they had anything that was going to be worth selling. Everybody ran from the room when it came to assigning responsibility for having brought Star Wars into the studio and actually produced it. And it wasn't until they actually saw the film that they realized what they had.
The medium of motion pictures has a component to it where you really don't know what you've got until you finish it because there are so many pieces that go into the execution of it.
Anyone who works in film needs to be able to think both tactically and strategically. You have to know not only what you're currently doing and how that relates to the other departments around you collaborating on the same piece, but you have to have a long view and understand that you don't fall in love with a particular image or scene execution because there's a much bigger story you have to pay attention to.
Q: In 2005 you won the Oscar for visual effects in Spider-Man 2. How did that feel?
JD: The Oscar is a pretty interesting accolade because it comes from your peers, and the fame or the notoriety that comes with the ceremony notwithstanding, the thing that's really important about it is it's given to you by a bunch of people who do what you do.
So it is a reflection of the real individual effort as opposed to simply credit for having worked on a picture that was particularly successful box office-wise.
I'm proud of myself and the people that I worked with doing Star Wars because it truly was an effort of invention. We started with an empty warehouse and we built all the cameras, we built all the devices that move the cameras, we built all of the miniatures, and we photographed all of the miniatures so we truly could lay claim to the responsibility for having provided to George that particular component of his movie, which was really cool.
Q: What connection do you feel with the movies you’ve worked on? Though you must have had a moment with all of them -- especially when you get a chance to reinvent the characters -- which is your favorite?
JD: There's no question about it. Let's be blunt: Star Wars was the most fun because I was a kid when I was doing [it] and working with a bunch of my best buddies working in a warehouse, which was essentially a big super garage, and we really got to expand the boundaries of what was being done. So that was hard to top.
I thoroughly enjoyed working with Sam Raimi and Joel Schumacher on the Batman movies and Spider-Man movies, and Matthew Vaughn was terrific too. The difference for me was the subsequent movies, as we moved out of the Batman era into the Spider-Man and X-Men era, is that we got to put a lot more thought into how the images that we were creating represented the character, as opposed to simply how we were going to make those images.
If you go back prior to digital imaging, you had to put a subject in front of a camera, so if you wanted to have an exploding galaxy you had to figure out how to make something that looked like an exploding galaxy and actually photograph it as opposed to creating a simulation, which you can now do.
So the good news was that when you did things like that you had a certain investment in the image you were creating and you got to imbue it with more emotional content because you had to work so hard to figure out the mechanics of making the image and you had to take the image apart down to what the most important components were.
Now you have the ability to create something from whole cloth and the sky's the limit. You can do pretty much anything you can conceive of. But the onus is on you now -- as opposed to then, actually not as opposed to but as much as then -- on making something that's one, a unique image, and two, that has something about it that's evocative.
And the part that was fun about the X-Men movie was that we have all of these characters who in and of themselves had to manifest a power that reflected a part of their personality.
Emma Frost [in X-Men] says it all. The whole business of how she looked as the diamond girl and what emotional content she carried in her diamond form as opposed to the content she carried when she was her flesh and blood form was an important part of that design function.
And that's the part that's really cool. All of a sudden I'm no longer bound by having to fit a camera into an environment or create a chemical reaction that looks like a specific thing; I can actually make that visual completely from scratch.
Of course we rely on references in the real world to make all that stuff have verisimilitude, but there's no limit to what you can put together. Like the Havoc character, in creating the energies that came out of him and how it came out of him and what it reminded us of or hopefully the audience of in terms of the real world of physics.
That's a manifestation of cosmic energy, for lack of a better term, but that's what they called it. That was fun making up a visual representation of a thing that nobody really knows what it looks like.
Q: How has your job as a visual effects supervisor changed from those earlier days and on something like this film where you’re doing such advanced work? Are you more of a manager or do you get to get down and dirty and really conceptualize the ideas as much yourself?
JD: The focus has changed from figuring out physically how to do stuff to figuring out what things should look like. That has always been true, but a much larger percentage of your effort went into figuring out simply how to get something done.
It wasn't unusual for us to have to bolt a camera onto an airplane and fly down a canyon or bolt a camera onto a motorcycle and take it out in an unusual environment or dig a giant hole, like the sand crawler from Star Wars and find a miniature landscape environment that looked like some alien surface.
Now those things we did a lot more location scouting, we had a lot more physical work to do because we simply had to place cameras, we had to get the right time of day and the right light, and that was stuff was not something you could just manipulate.
So you had to have an idea in mind and had to figure out how to execute it. My guess is you got to spend about 25% of your time figuring out the idea and about 75% of your time figuring out how to capture it.
In contemporary filmmaking subsequent to the advent of digital imaging we get to spend I would say an inverse proportion.
We get to spend 75% of our time figuring out what that image ought to look like and how it integrates into the story and only about 25% of our time figuring out how to do it because there's so much flexibility in the computer that it's incredible.
Having said that, one of the things you have to do is you have to keep going back to the touchstone of reality to make sure that the images that you're creating don't look synthetic. And that's tough.
Computers don't do chaos very well, and most of the world that we live in, especially the world of X-Men powers is made from organic things, and organic things are chaotic just by their very nature.
Q: In your work on X-Men -- could it rival the effects in Rise of The Planet of the Apes which was one of the great technological steps forward for sci-fi films?
JD: It's a bit like apples and oranges. I feel like X-Men was a character-driven film, but the characters that we generated in our film were more about the personalities that came from the original source material. The Planet of the Apes thing they had to create a complete cast of characters from scratch, and that's not something that we approached doing, so I think they're two different things.
At this point technology is a one trick pony to me. We've got the virtual environment of the computer and the ability to create virtually anything you want to from scratch. So it really comes down to be less about what the technical advances are and it's really more about what you did with the storytelling and the artistic aspect of the creation of the characters.
Apart from trying to distinguish our film from another film, I think it really comes down to saying the approach that we took in X-Men makes it unique in the sense that our director took each of the characters through the arc that you always take the characters through, but we explored a huge number of options as to the way they can be portrayed.
The thing that separates X-Men: First Class from the other X-Men films is that there's more character development. Now that's not a visual effect, but visual effects tie into it.
Q: There’s so many franchises -- X-Men, Batman, Spider-Man, Star Wars, Star Trek -- that you’ve worked on. How many have worked on both Star Trek and Star Wars? You must have some great collectables! At home, do you have stuff or is most of what you keep stored digitally?
JD: You know what's funny? I actually didn't collect a lot of stuff. The truth of the matter is the pleasure was the doing of the work. And it's an odd thing but I think that anyone who's creative does it more for the experience than they do for the payoff, so to speak.
You keep the things that mean something to you. They all have memories attached to them, but you can become a hoarder if you're not careful. We don't fight that issue trying to keep the quantity of stuff in our life down to a reasonable level.
Memorabilia is great, but it really comes down to keeping things that have a specific attachment for you. I had some little bits and pieces from the original Star Wars and shared them with a couple of people on the crew of X-Men who were absolute Star Wars fanatics, so maybe I ingratiated myself to my new collaborators with artifacts from the past.
There's a huge change that's transpired in that transition between what I like to consider effects --where you had to put a subject in front of a camera and photograph it -- and the world that we currently live in where you can generate the subject or the character from the computer whole cloth.
I think that has to do with a feel that we brought to X-Men -- an effort to make the unreal a little more real, and to make sure that the personality of the powers that individual directors had was appropriate to what their personality was as it was defined by the script. That's what I bring from the past.
Maybe that's an advantage I have because I'm more familiar with the world in a pragmatic sense than a lot of the new artists are who have worked primarily in the computer.
Q: Years ago, when I wrote a story on the Heavy Metal movie I got some of the concept artist drawings. Do you have things like that.
JD: No, I don't. So much artwork now is generated in the electronic realm. Even material that is generated in other media to begin with ends up being scanned, distributed and published electronically. So sure, I've got tons of files of sketches, and sketching is a means of communicating between visual artists that is still critical.
The ability to sit down and draw a sketch of how things relate to one another in terms of their scale, of their position, even their color and sharpness and focus is an essential talent to have if you're going to be working in a visual medium like film.
But having said that, it still becomes the beginning point. On the film I'm working on now and on the X-Men and all the way back to Star Wars, the illustrations and storyboard artists were the people who initiated the conversation. I mean Joe Johnson and Ralph McQuarrie in the days of Star Wars.
We had tons of board artists on Spider-Man and the whole business of how that storyboard represents the action and how the illustrator creates a visual palate, and that's done in conjunction with the production designer, the director, and the director of photography to create a look for the movie is still critical. And a lot of that is still done with a brush and acrylics or sketches done with charcoal. It's still very much alive.
Do I have a bunch of that stuff? Not so much. I've got lots and lots of digital media, but digital media is digital media, and the key to it is that the experience is what it's about.
The emotional content that gets generated over the creation of that image or through the creation of that image is the really valuable part, and that's intangible, I can't give that to anybody.
Q: What franchises do you still want to work with? Of all these characters what was your favorite?
JD: Wow, that's tough.
Q: You've done Spider-Man, Batman, Star Trek, Star Wars, Inglorious Basterds.
JD: Inglorious Basterds was really fun. In terms of a character that I really enjoyed working on I actually had a great time working with the range of characters on the X-Men movie because there were so many different personalities with so many different powers that the challenge was to make each one unique, not overlap, and not have them either go against what's already been established or change immutably what they're going to do in the future.
It's funny, but sometimes constraints tend to make the execution of something more satisfying, and in a way that was really fun. I loved working with Spider-Man and creating him from whole cloth, but basically what we were doing was making a duplicate of a human being with extra capabilities.
With the X-Men stuff when they changed their form, they changed their personality; they changed every aspect of themselves when they manifested their powers. So that's a non-answer but that's the answer.
Q: Are there franchises that you'd like to work on that you haven't had a chance to, or directors you’d like to work with? What about Tim Burton or James Cameron?
JD: It's a big issue of chemistry, and I'm usually brought into environments where the director hasn't had a huge amount of experience with visual effects. That's usually where I come in; I become a provider of options for them and an interpreter. So I enjoy that role.
I think with Tim Burton and with Jim Cameron those guys already know it inside out. So I don't know, that may be a telling admission, but I enjoy working with people who are less experienced in that realm because I end up being more helpful to the final production that way, and more of the creative component of my thinking gets on the screen rather than the pragmatic practical solution component.
Q: Do you get involved with aspects of the storytelling or narrative?
JD: I actually wrote a couple of lines for Spider-Man. In the sequence in Spider-Man 2 Doc Ock had the power of the sun in the palm of his hand, which was mine, which I thought was really fun.
And different directors collaborate in different ways, but I feel as though certainly visually I've made a contribution to all the films I've worked on. Not in any selfish way, it's just that's what I was hired to do. It’s always a pleasure to work with other people who have visual senses that are different than yours because all of a sudden you get to expand your horizons.
Q: Will there be a sequel to Inglorious Basterds? And will you work on the next X-Men?
JD: Well I don't know that there's a sequel to Inglorious Bastards, but they are working on a picture called Django right now. Quentin's working on that. I don't know whether I'll be able to work on it or not because there may be a scheduling conflict, but it will be a great picture.
Working with Quentin was a real pleasure. He's a great filmmaker and he just eats, sleeps, and breaths movies; it's terrific.
Q: Do you have a favorite character that you would like to see on the screen that people haven't even thought of? Even if it's so obscure that nobody else would ever imagine financing it are there any you can think of?
JD: The Stars My Destination.
Q: I had been reading a book about its late author sci-fi legend Alfred Bester. I interviewed him once.
JD: To me it is a great movie but it will never get made; it's got too much money against it. But Gully Foyle would be the character I would bring to the screen.
Q: I loved The Stars My Destination. One of the great sci-fi books of all time. Do you read science-fiction yourself?
JD: Sure.
Q: You didn't just get into this field because you were a tech nut, you're really a true fan.
JD: Well, I don't know that I'm a true fan. I read science-fiction, I read lots of stuff. I consume a lot of literature. I'm eclectic; I read everything.
Q: Would you like to direct one of these franchises or do your own story?
JD: I am working on a project right now called Tales from the Farm, which is a very simple story about a kid and his unusual coming of age in a small Canadian town. That is a real challenge because it means working with actors, and although there is a visual effects aspect to the film, obviously or I wouldn't be doing it, it really is more about the creation of characters.
That’s a challenge for me and that's what I look forward to doing, and I look forward to working on these franchises. I had a great time working with Matthew Vaughn and with all the people and Fox on the X-Men series, and I look forward to doing more of that.
Q: The real question is… Can you get George on the phone any time you want?
JD: No, I don't think so. I haven't tried. I have to admit, the possibility exists that he might take my call, but I haven't tried.
Though 62-year-old Richard Gere has had a life of being both a sex symbol and controversial, he mixes the two with a steadfast wit and sincerity.
That spirit was sufficently displayed when he appeared this month for a special screening of An Officer and A Gentleman in celebration of Paramount Pictures’ 100th anniversary at the Academy Theater at Lighthouse International in New York City -- part of the Motion Picture Academy's monthly series that plays past Oscar winners.
Born in Philadelphia, Pa, on August 31, 1949, Richard Tiffany Gere began acting in the 1970s, and, after his breakout the 1977 thriller Looking for Mr. Goodbar, won a starring role in director Terrence Malick's well-reviewed 1978 film, Days of Heaven.
As the rail-thin Jada Pinkett Smith bounds into the Waldorf Astoria suite for a friendly chat about life and family, she exudes energy and an intensity that makes this petite 40 year-old actress a lot bigger in the chair than she seems.
Opening at Cannes Film Festival 2012, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted -- the third installment of the billion-dollar franchise -- stars Central Park Zoo refugees Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), Gloria the hippo (Pinkett Smith) and Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) who are determined to return to New York City.
Leaving Africa behind, they detour to Monte Carlo on a hunt for the penguins and chimps who had left them stranded.
After their pals break the bank of a local casino, the animals are soon discovered by dogged French animal control officer Capitaine Chantel DuBois (Frances McDormand) who doesn’t appreciate these foreigners running wild in her city and is thrilled by the idea of hunting her first lion!
Once they’ve surfaced, quite literally, in Europe — the Zoosters hide out in a down-and-out traveling circus where they plan to reinvent it without humans, discover a few new talents and make it home to the USA alive.
For the first time in 3D, the Madagascar crew are doing death defying tricks with a wild bunch of new friends.
Both as hippo Gloria and in her many other roles, Pinkett Smith has proven to be a versatile star both on and off screen. She has amassed an impressive array of film and TV credits, including Hawthorne (the TNT medical drama that ran from 2009-2011; she also served as an executive producer), Reign Over Me (opposite Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle), and in Michael Mann’s Collateral (where she had pivotal role opposite Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx). But she’s probably best known as the take-charge Niobe in the iconic sequels, Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions.
Through her production company, 100% Womon, Pinkett Smith wrote, directed and co-starred in The Human Contract opposite Jason Clarke and Paz Vega. She also put pen to paper resulting in the New York Times bestseller Girls Hold Up This World, published in 2005.
In 2010, Pinkett Smith assumed executive producer duties for the feature film The Karate Kid, starring her son Jaden Smith and was also an executive producer on The Secret Life of Bees. Together with husband Will Smith, she created and executive produced the CW Network’s All of Us.
Beyond the medium of TV and film, the Smiths have collaborated with record industry mogul Jay-Z to produce the Broadway musical hit Fela! which earned three Tony Awards.
Focusing on her musical interests, Pinkett Smith became the lead singer of the rock band Wicked Wisdom, which opened for Britney Spears during her Onyx Hotel Tour. Her most recent musical project, a sensual ballad entitled “Burn,” was released on iTunes on Valentine’s Day 2012 and was dedicated to her husband.
Born and raised in Maryland, Pinkett Smith studied dance and acting at the Baltimore School of the Arts and North Carolina School of the Arts. Her big break came when she landed a role on the long-running NBC series A Different World.
Though Madagascar 3 is her latest high-profile project, this actress/producer/writer is constantly developing or producing for various media including now a web series, Red Table Talk.
Q: How was it channeling your inner animal.
JS: Well, for the inner hippo in me -- this is our third installment so it’s like putting on an old jacket, shirt, or a pair of old slippers that you are very familiar with. So it’s not difficult at all.
Q: Do the animators give you pointers as to how your dance moves should be or or do you have a certain strategy around your moves?
JS: No. I mean…. You know it’s funny because while we are actually recording they have a video recorder, and they are actually recording us while we are doing the voices.
Whatever movements that we are doing at that time, they actually use them in the film whether it’s facial expressions, actual physical movements or what have you. So that’s always interesting to see their interpretation of what you’ve done.
Q: At least they didn’t make you wear the suit with all the little sensors.
JS: Oh yeah. No, didn’t have to wear that this time. That was for Matrix, but not for this.
Q: Is it easier being in a studio talking to a microphone, than it is being on set as an actress performing in a regular film?
JS: It’s not actually. It’s difficult when it’s just you and a microphone because you are so used to interacting with other actors. And yes, it can be challenging because you are there alone all of the time, and so you don’t know… the directors tell you, “Oh, you know, Chris did this.” Or, “David did this, and we would love for you to try and do that.” But you really don’t have a reality on what it is.
Q: Chris Rock made a few comments last year about his work in animation that a black guy can play a zebra and white guy can play an Arabian prince, as well as, someone feeds you your lines and you get a million dollars. Is the process of animated film really just that easy?
JS: It just depends on how you come and approach it. It wasn’t that easy for me because I found it took me three installments to get the swing of this.
Okay and because Chris is a standup comedian, he’s used to being a one man show, right? I was so used to interacting with other people and didn’t have a set or clothes, and you just have people telling you all of this stuff. I’m like, “I don’t know what I’m doing right now, and I don’t know what this is. So let me just… I’m just going to give what I got.”
So I found it to be a very trying process because also you have to be able to reenact. Like if you see Gloria running, I actually have to run, I’m screaming, my voice is hoarse and I’m [heaving]. They’re like, “Okay we are going to save this section because after this you aren’t going to be able to talk. I was like, “We will do this at the end of the session.” It was like, “Okay. Cool.”
It’s a lot of work. But for somebody like Chris he’s probably like, “I do this every night.”
Q: Have you seen the finishing product yet?
JS: Yes.
Q: What are your favorite parts from the film?
JS: I love the bear, Sophie the bear and Sacha Baron [Cohen who voices King Julien]. That is probably the most adorable aspect of the story line to me. I just I love it. I don’t get enough of it. That bear is hilarious.
Q: What did your family think of the film?
JS: They haven’t seen it yet. They won’t see it until the premiere.
Q: So are there obligations to see each other’s films when they open so near to each other like Men In Black 3?
JS: We try, definitely. It’s like when you create that’s just being part of a creative group like we are, you have to check out each other’s products.
Q: So you don’t worry that the kids might want to see Dad’s film versus your film anything like that?
JS: Oh no. No you don’t have any of that. Oh no you don’t have any of that.
Q: You recently released an episode of your web series The Red Table Talk on Mother’s Day and that was so empowering.
JS: Thank you.
Q: A lot of what you do is empowering women. Why is that so important to you and when will the next installment happen?
JS: It’s funny because it was really something that I did organically -- I just wanted to offer it as a gift to women, especially mothers, for Mother’s Day.
I get asked a lot about how do I communicate with my daughter [Willow], and about my relationship with my mother [Adrienne Banfield-Jones] being that we’ve had very humble beginnings as far as our relationship and what we have overcome. Because of Red Table Talks I am now in discussion about creating a television show. I have a couple of people coming after me for a television deal for it. And also a couple of web deals which are interesting.
So I will continue it, and want to focus on issues in regards to relationships that will eventually and extend into other areas. But not just relationships in regards to familiar or even love relationships but also like we have the Human Trafficking Report is about to come out.
I don’t know if you know this, but African American women and Latino women hold the number one and number two spot as far as women who are trafficked in the United States of America. So I want to do a Red Table Talk with a fantastic beautiful woman, Rachel Lloyd, who heads the GEMS organization here in New York which works in regards to this issue.
I have another special project coming out on June 19 with Salma Hayek that I’m doing in Spanish with regards to that particular issue as well.
I want to use Red Table Talk as a forum in which you can come and be real. It’s really that simple. I think that any relationship that you have with anyone you have to be able to put it on the red table. Meaning it has to be raw. So whether you are dealing with love, with family, a social issue, or whether you are dealing with creation, it has to be raw.
I think that now in this particular culture people go so hard at artists. So to be able to create a place where people and artists, can come and feel safe to just be raw and not feel that they are being attacked or stripped down. That’s the only way that we can keep our authenticity as people, as human beings, to be able to keep those genuine relationships to ourselves and to whomever we are interacting with. So to me that is the reason for the red table.
Q: It’s exciting. Real and raw are two very appropriate adjectives for watching it. Your openness was inspiring.
JS: Thank you.
Q: Even watching Willow she displayed a lot of vulnerability and strength, and it was very interesting to see you interacting with her and kind of getting her to put words to her emotions. What was it like for you in that moment?
JS: I have to be honest with you, I don’t know which segments you watched because there’s been so many segments dispersed but there was a segment where Willow comes to the table and says, “I just want to tell you how much you mean in my life.” And she bursts into tears. The Red Table Talk was over, okay. And we’ve gone to the other room, and she goes, “Mommy, I still have something that I need to put on the table.”
I was like, oh the lights, the guys, the technicians, had taken the lights. The cameras were down, but she was so adamant. Because you can see it’s dark outside, right, versus when we started it was light, right? And I was like, “I’m sorry guys but we’ve got to put these lights back.”
And she got on the table, and I didn’t know what Willow was going to say. And when she started to cry I was like, you know, I was just like, “Okay. Just let this flow. This is her moment. This is what she wants to express.”
But it was challenging because as a mother you want to go, “Cut. Cut it. Okay. Cut it.” You know what I mean? But she wanted to come to the table, and her expression and words…like the things that she said, I was in utter shock. I had no idea. I was just like…and just her perspective I was just like, “Willow, I never even thought about it like that.”
You know, so the red table for us was just as I meant to be because it was… You guys saw, it was a bowl with questions. You know what I mean?
I learned more about my daughter and my mother in that day, and I think that Willow learned a heck of a lot about us. I still have probably… We were at that red table for about two and a half hours.
I think we’ve shared with you maybe 45 minutes of that. But she has another segment that’s crazy. She has another segment that’s out of sight. You know I had to just figure out when to, but she was just amazing throughout the whole thing.
Q: How do you balance your career and raising your children? Obviously they are top notch, how do you do it?
JS: Balance?
Q: The career and motherhood?
JS: It’s not separate. I never stop being a mother and I never stop being an artist. You understand? Which is probably why my kids are so creative, because it’s not separated. You see, when I’m with my kids I’m creating, and I’m still a mom.
And when I’m creating I’m still a mom. It’s not like… I don’t wear two different hats. My kids will be on the set with me.
That’s one of the reasons that I had my mom on. I had that segment where my mother was on because I was breastfeeding so she had to sit on that set. Like literally, like on a chair while I’m sitting up there doing karate she’s sitting up in that chair with Willow in her lap and walking Willow around because she can’t go anywhere because I’m breastfeeding.
None of my kids took a bottle. They would not take a bottle. Do you hear me? So they couldn’t leave my side for a very long time.
So I’m sitting up there doing Kung Fu, the movie Kung Fu, but I still have to do the mommy thing. There’s no separation and if I’m at home with my kids and feeding them... I remember talking to Latifah and she’s like, “Girl I remember coming to your house and seeing you dancing in front of them kids. Feeding them kids, rapping, and signing, and all that.”
And I said, “That’s why, that’s how they got all that.”
I was like, “That’s just what you call good genes. You know what I’m saying?” You get with the artist, you make artists. You know? So. Yeah.
Q: One of the things about Gloria is that in all three movies she never apologizes for her appearance and how she looks. How can we use that to empower little girls as far as positive body images?
JS: That’s why I love Gloria. The idea that she’s a lot of girl, and she loves it. I try to give her that sass and swagger. It’s not even about necessarily talking about it but sometimes just showing it, that it’s about how you look at yourself and how you carry yourself.
I’m dealing with this issue very deeply right now in dealing with the idea of romanticism in this next video that I’m doing, that comes out on June 19 in regards to human trafficking because how most women and girls get caught up in this is the dream.
You get sold the dream, that whole romantic idea that you are going to find the perfect person, you are going to find the perfect situation.
A lot of times it steals…we give away our power in thinking that we have to look to someone else to have acceptance for who we are. And that our images of ourselves are based on how other people see us.
Anytime that you do that you are going to be a very unhappy person because it varies too much. He might be happy with something that she might not be happy with. So now you are stuck in between the middle in trying to figure out, “Well who am I supposed to be?” versus focusing on, “Who are you happy with? What are you happy with?”
At the end of the day what she thinks and what he believes has nothing to do with your existence. I tell you what, the moment that you understand your power and your beauty, your life changes.
When we get out of expecting him to accept you, her to accept you, or anybody else to accept you, okay because it’s too varied. It’s too varied. But I’ll tell you what’s not varied, how you feel about yourself. And if you can carry that with you, you are going to be okay.
Q: When did you understand your power and beauty?
JS: Listen, that’s something that you continue to…because you learn it on so many levels. You find one aspect… I look at even my daughter Willow, and she’s way ahead of the game now than I was at her age.
I can only imagine who she’s going to be as a 40-year-old woman because it’s a journey. It’s a journey. It’s something that you continue. You don’t get to a destination of it because the more you start to grow, and the more you start to understand, you never stop. So you never get to a place like, “Ah, here it is.”
You might get to a place like, “Okay, I’m finally glad to be here and be comfortable in my skin no matter what.” But the lessons don’t stop.
Q: You are known for balancing business and your artistic side. You have your own production companies, and take your own ideas and actualize them. How do you know what to do from this business point of view or that creative one.
JS: Even now I’ve learned how to separate art from commerce. There are certain things I do creatively for commerce and there’s certain things that I don’t do for commerce like my music. I don’t do it for commerce at all. I just do that to be creative, so I separate that from business completely. That is strictly art creation.
And so depending on what I’m trying to achieve really depends on how I will approach something from a business standpoint. It’s like, “Okay if I want the masses, how do I get masses of people to gravitate to this particular project?”
Then you have to strategize creatively, and you have to strategize business wise also, like what partnerships you create or what have you. Like Fela for instance. Jay Z came to us about that particular project. So here you have three very recognizable African-Americans that are behind this Broadway show Fela!
Q: Great show by the way.
JS: Right. So when you look at it from a business point of view, for us that’s something that we did creatively and something that we did for business as well.
We joined forces and I have to say one of the things that I love about Jay Z, and love about the relationship that I have with him business-wise, I think Roc Nation and Overbrook Entertainment [Will’s company] are maybe the only two African-American entertainment groups that I know of that merge together all the time, on all kinds of different projects -- and we have such wonderful success.
I’m hoping that, that will set an example for African-Americans. We don’t always have to be in competition.
There’s more power in numbers. That goes for everybody, not just African-Americans. That goes across the board for everybody. Everybody just want to have…just be a law. Forget about the power of the groups.
But I’ve learned that over the years that to really be able to create alliances on a business side to encourage growth and prosperity on the whole for everybody.
Q: With the summertime coming up who are some of your favorite artists that you are listening to on your IPod?
JS: Oh my gosh. Who am I listening to right now? Probably not many people you would recognize because I like a lot of…. You know I’m a metal head. I like a lot of metal music.
That’s really what I listen to a lot. Or off the cuff, I listen to a lot of… I love artists like Santigold or GoldFrapp. Yeah. And Pelican. That’s kind of where I’m at right now. And I like a lot of old Police. A lot of throwbacks. What else am I listening to?
Q: A Police song like “Roxanne” would seem appropriate of course with the sex trafficking issue in mind.
JS: Yeah. Of course. Of course. Of course.
Q: A lot of people have been vocal about negative images on reality TV particularly with Basketball Wives and the Housewives. People like Star Jones and even Nicki Minaj have come forward saying how negative they are. As a mother, and as someone who is in the industry, what do you think about these shows?
JS: Listen, I think there’s room for everything. You know? I think there’s room for everything, and I think what we have to focus on is balancing. I don’t think we have to focus on, you know, listen everybody is trying to create.
Everybody is trying to make a living. Don’t be mad, don’t come down on them. Talk to the people that are actually putting these shows on and ask them to balance it out. It’s not that those shows shouldn’t exist. It’s not about coming down on people.
It’s just about creating a balance. But also as a community, we have to be more responsible about what we are willing to watch. Now how about that? Okay? And that’s really…that’s what people really don’t want to talk about.
I’m going to tell you something. It’s not that people try to put on programming for us that’s varied. It’s not that people don’t try to create movies for us that are varied.
I’ll tell you what, people we need to be more responsible about what we are going to see. Because people only create what we are going to watch. So don’t you come down on them. Folks need to be looking.
Take responsibility about what you have you have on your TV and about what you are out there supporting. People need to check their own individual selves on that one.