When you look in one direction where Troy's chair was, you could see out through the yard across the street, there was an old cork bar advertisement for five cents. We wanted it to feel like this was real life [in Fences] and that it extended blocks and blocks.

The last few years I've been saying I was ready to quit. It wasn't that interesting to me. Now that I'm directing, it's all new again.

[Martin] Scorsese probably could have directed Schindler's List and [Steven] Spielberg probably could have directed Goodfellas. But it's as much to do with the difference in culture as it is with race.

Religion to me is when man gets ahold of spirituality: "My god is right, yours is wrong." Religion to me is the human condition. "If you're a Muslim, you can't be a Christian." That to me is religion.

I always think it's not what we know that's terrifying; it's what we don't know. That's sort of pervasive with everything in life.

When you trust the director you want to trust his or her choices. I don't want to say, 'No, I don't like this girl or that guy," when the director really loves them. No, you want to go with what the director likes.

In fact, someone was telling me that Gladiator was the one film where Ridley Scott didn't take a producer's credit. And it won. But this guy changed the industry twice; with Aliens which was a whole new way of looking at things and Blade Runner that was also a whole new way of looking at things.