Kids made fun of me because I was dark skinned, had a wide nose, and was dyslexic. Even as an actor, it took me a long time to realize why words and letters got jumbled in my mind and came out differently.

I was able to do To Sleep with Anger, a very powerful film about African Americans, their spirituality, and the things that happened within a small community and a family.

My theatrical background was in the great work of the South African playwright Athol Fugard.

I never thought about being an actor. I was just going to play music and baseball. That’s all I was going to do. To this day, that’s what I do. I just added movies to it.

The Black Power Mixtape is a documentary, first of all. It brings us closer to the voices we heard at that particular point in time.

Whole ideology of consumption almost to the point of religion. Whether it's the consumption of entertainment or the consumption around buying things, we're so caught up with our appetites that we don't have a clear distinction about what we need and what we just want. Plus, the decline of trade unions is a factor. When you have powerful unions, you have a working class that is politicized.

Some of the most amazing stories are happening on the global scene. My extraordinary producing partner, Joslyn Barnes, she's just virtually changed my life with the way she constructed this company and how we go about telling the stories we want to tell.