I'm sat reading the rest of this and there are so many good little bits. Like this from Whoopi Goldberg:

I had originally written to Alice Walker, who lived up in the Bay Area where I was living. I said if they ever thought about making a film of The Color Purple, I would like to play dirt on the floor, and I left it at that. Six or seven months go by, and I’m about to go to New York to do my first one-person show off Broadway, and my mother says, “There’s an envelope here addressed to you.” It was from Alice Walker, who said, “I know who you are. I’ve already passed your information on to Quincy Jones and Steven Spielberg.”

Then I did my show on Broadway, and at the end of that run, I got a message saying that Steven wanted to see the show but could not get to New York. Would I bring it to Amblin, where they had a little stage? I get to Amblin and I meet him, and I’m really freaked out. I did the show, and the next day, he said, “Quincy Jones and I are doing Color Purple, and I would like you to do Celie.” I said, “Oh, I don’t think I can do that.” And he was like, “I’m sorry?” I said, “Well, I’ve never made a movie before and I don’t want to stink in your movie.” He said, “I don’t think you’re going to stink.” I said, “But I stunk before.” He said, “Yeah, but not with me.”

And dang, this part from Tony Kushner (italics mine):

Not to reduce it, but in some ways it turned for me into a film about somebody who uses art to gain control over the world because it’s so overwhelming and he doesn’t quite have the faculties to handle it. And because of his gifts, he actually discovers that art can organize the world for you. But it does it at a great cost, which is that it will pull you through the safety zone into an unknown that’s scarier than the thing you were trying to control. And I feel like that is a metaphor for his career.