Joe Berlinger's documentary 'Whitey' is so hard-hitting and compelling, you can't take your eyes off the screen.

I teach at USC. I have a big class of 360 kids, only about a fifth of whom are film majors. I don't just show the Hollywood blockbusters. I show independent films, foreign films, documentaries.

Television is what made It's a Wonderful Life the classic it is today.

A Christmas Carol is such a fool-proof story you can't louse it up.

You want to make an impression. Being clever helps.

Dumbo... makes me cry. Every single time and in the exact same spot. I just have a special affection for Dumbo.

Hollywood executives believe that money is both the be-all and end-all to the moviemaking process.

Los Angeles has the greatest concentration of surviving movie palaces in the United States, yet most residents have never been inside one of them.

If I were less than honest as a critic, I think people would spot that right away, and it would destroy my credibility.

Movie theaters still exist in spite of all of the alternatives that are available, video and video-on-demand and DVD and streaming video and all of these things.

NBC anchor Brian Williams is a standup comic in disguise.

At it's highest level, the purpose of teaching is not to teach—it is to inspire the desire for learning. Once a student's mind is set on fire, it will find a way to provide its own fuel.

After all, the more women are developed internally, the more this is threatening to a society that insists on seeing them merely externally.

My soul is not satisfied with an inert universe. The gods may not make a habit of speaking to me personally, but I can't help but whisper comments to them.

Writing about race and crime was not new territory for me. But it can be treacherous. So here are my rules: No stereotypes. No generalizations. No explanations. No apologies. Just the facts, ma’am.

Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God.

Patriotism is an instant reaction that fades away when the war starts.

When a kid can understand that a word can mean two things, there's some real thinking going on. They have a vested interest in finding out what a word means, because it's the punch line to a joke.

I would not be surprised. The voter ID, they're fighting as hard as you can fight so that that they don't have to show voter ID.

I don't want it to appear that I'm standing up and saying I'm the expected one. That's a dangerous, ego-driven kind of thing.

Moving around is good for creativity: the next line of dialogue that you desperately need may well be waiting in the back of the refrigerator or half a mile along your favorite walk.