My Toussaint [Louverture] film is in limbo. We still hope after all this time that we can find another way to get this film done.

Freedom Summer, the massive voter education project in Mississippi, was 1964. I graduated from high school in 1965. So becoming active was almost a rite of passage.

Mel Gibson is my friend. I love Mel. He's not the person that I hear people are often trying to diminish. Whatever his challenges are in life, he still remains someone I'm very close to.

Art is about the dynamics of the human experience.

We all know Reagan's legacy, from the Iran-Contra affair to the funding of the Nicaraguan military in which over 200,000 people died. The groundwork for the move steadily to the right happened with the Reagan administration. People want to elevate him to some mythic level; they have their own reason for doing that.

It's a misconception to believe that the resistance ended with the civil rights movement.

There are things that make me excited about what I'm doing: Trouble the Water [the 2008 documentary Glover executive produced] on New Orleans, or something like Soundtrack for a Revolution, about the power of the music of the civil rights movement [which he executive produced in 2009]. Or Bamako, about the African debt crisis, a platform to discuss the experience of people who actually live it. All of these are important ways we can use film as a forum inviting people into a dialogue.