The Last Days of Left Eye (2007 TV Movie)

Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes: Self

Quotes 

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : Everybody is a product of their environment. So before I could get mad at my daddy I had to stop and think 'what the hell did his mama do to him? And what the hell did her mama do to her?' and so on and so forth. Somebody's got to be smart enough to break the cycle because I don't need my kids talking about me like that someday.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : If I don't love myself, I won't survive.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : [on living with her Nana]  Hiding the iron, so I have to go to school in wrinkled clothes. Can't wash my hair or it'll run up the water bill. She's telling me that the church clothes she bought me still belong to her because she paid for them, so I only look good in church.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : This is how a group can sell 10 million records and be broke, and everybody get ready to do your math. There are 100 points on an album, TLC has 7, every point is worth 8 cents. Alright, 7 times 8 is 56 cents, that means every time an album gets sold, TLC gets 56 cents. Sell 10 million records, $5.6 million, sounds like a lot of money. That's the addition, now here comes the subtraction.

  [note: This quote was originally made on VH1's "Behind the Music: TLC" 1999] 

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : I looked in the closet and there were all these boxes of sneakers all stacked up, stacked up, stacked up, stacked up... and I'm thinking 'alright, one of these BETTER be for me'.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : My father when he saw something wrong, it didn't matter if it was 3 in the morning, 'Lisa-Raina-Ronald! Lisa-Raina-Ronald! Get down here NOW!' We jump out the bed and run downstairs and he'd make us line up like this.

  [stands up straight looking terrified] 

  Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : And he'd be

  [marches back and forth] 

  Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : How many times did you see that pen on the floor and not STOP and THINK to pick it up? HOW many times did you step OVER the pen and not STOP and THINK! to pick it up?' And we'd be like

  [looks through the corner of her eye terrified] 

  Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : 'Now PICK IT UP!'

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : What? I didn't tell y'all about Nina? My evil twin, who came from within, on whom I blame all of my sins.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : As a little girl there were these gifts that I received from my parents. My mother's side of the family is more artistically inclined, and everyone in my father's side of the family is musically inclined. My father was in the Army band. My father plays almost every instrument known to man. It is amazing to sit here and watch him pick up a harmonica and put that down, go jump on the piano, put that down, go play the drums, pick up the clarinet.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : As a little girl, everything was natural for me. I could play the piano at 4, you know, I could come home from the movies and remember the theme from 'Close Encounters of a Third Kind' and figure it out. That bugged my mother and father out. Growing up, all the talents I had was almost like 'why can't everyone do this?'

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : When I want to say something, I should say it. See this is the hard part, of this documentary, trying to figure out something about myself, and getting things off my chest.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : Whenever I did bad in school, I got the heavy duty punishment: no TV, no radio, no front porch, no backyard, no boyfriends, no nothing. Just sit up in your room and think.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : When I met Tionne, you know, she had the big earrings that were in style, she had the latest hairdo, she had the fly clothes, she was beautiful, and she was real cool. She was down to Earth.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : When I was a kid, I wished all of this. People would say 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' And my answer would be: in the jungle, naked, friends with the animals. We're in the jungle, I'm naked, and I'm friends with the animals. It doesn't get any better than that. Drum roll!

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : [about the herbs they're drinking]  Every sip that goes down your throat, you've just got to say 'eff it, eff it, eff it'.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : [on drinking the herbs]  You've just got to psyche it out, like you're not drinking it.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : My father he was very dominant. He was the king of the castle, you know what I'm saying? Don't say 'why, Daddy?', 'Because I said so'.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : [about her disappearance]  It was funny, but man, you know the fans took it pretty hard, I didn't expect them to take it that hard.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : It was always like 'dang, why everything gotta happen to us?' 'Why does it always have to be us?' But on the other hand, if we didn't go through everything we did, the struggles and the hard work, we wouldn't be as close as we are, we wouldn't be as strong as we are, we wouldn't be as wise as we are.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : [about Creep]  Tis my take on it, instead of telling a woman if her man's cheating on her, to cheat back, why don't we just tell her to leave?

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : In the beginning I was real real real tiny for my age. My mom said when they first brought me out to her after she had me, said I scared her, all she could see was these big black

  [eyes] 

  Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : , like I look like a little alien, like,

  [moves eyes back and forth frantically] 

  Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : doing all this crazy stuff trying to see her. She took me home and she could not get me to sit down, I was self sufficient at like, 1. I was running at 7 months. No one really knew where I was going or what I was going to get into.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : Tionne contributed a lot to the music. Tionne's voice is so unique, we didn't sound like anybody and it's because of Tionne. Chilli was the person who did a lot of the dancing and the choreography. My thing, my biggest contribution to the first album was the baggy clothes with the colors and the condoms and the band-aids, and little neat stuff I used to do with my glasses and hat, you know, I contributed a lot to the image. So that's how we put this thing together.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : [on TLC's breakout]  Back in the day, we're like a bunch of kids at the playground, there was so much practical joking. We were having a lot of fun. But at the same time, we wanted it, we were hungry.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : We are very independent, strong, young women. Ladies, if you're ever feeling down in the dumps, go buy the first album and listen to it. I hope what a lot of females got out of is that independent feeling.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : There was this girl, I used to call her Nikki, everytime I got drunk, this girl named Nikki would show up. But when I got drunk, I was just a different person, that was just somebody that, 'that's not Lisa, that's Nikki'. And all of a sudden, whenever there was something that happened that Lisa didn't want to take the blame for, she blamed it on Nikki, and this is a totally different person than Lisa. And then, when these two started to battle it out, I had to create a third person to come in and you know, straighten the two of them out.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : Man, it is amazing, how the mysteries of life work. I mean after every dark night, there is a bright day, and that always gives me hope.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : TLC sold countless number of records, but record sales to me aren't what success is in my eyes. The most important thing to me is that I take my experiences and the knowledge I have and share it with the world.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : I never shut the camera off. The camera follows me into my dreams. You get to see it from my point of view. Part of the purpose of this documentary is so people can get to know me, up close and personal.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : Throughout my career, I've gone through several things, and you know, I've been called crazy. I pretty much just want to set the record straight, and try to dig into myself as well.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : So, that's the plan, but I always say that's the plan, because things change.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : I kind of feel like I'm on a journey sometimes, don't really know quite where I'm headed.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : Let's just say I'm gonna take you all on a magical journey. The wonderful world of Left Eye.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : According to numerology, number 1 is about knowledge, and birth. Learn about Lisa. Learn about yourself.

• Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes : Andre is a pretty giving person. He gives out his money, his cars, clothes, you know, but one thing that he is very protective of is his girl. You know, 'You can use anything, but don't even THINK about looking at my girl'. He was very jealous and very possessive, I didn't have any freedom. That's the problem, freedom. Anything, ask first, I needed permission to do things.