[ When I met Barack Obama] He says, I do a pretty good me myself - he said something like that. But he's - he is a close talker. He's a touchy guy.

What teenagers are ready to laugh at is the misery of other people.

You hear it said time and time again by successful directors: You have to make a movie for yourself. Don't make it for anyone else. My style of filmmaking happens to be give the audience what they know they don't want, but they want. Ultimately I have to write and direct in a way that let's just say, you don't want to regret making a choice.

A part of being black in America and, you know, I presume being any minority, is constantly being told that we're being too aware of race somehow, we're obsessed with it or we're seeing racism where there just isn't racism.

Everybody knows this legend in kind of African-American lore. There's always somebody in your neighborhood named Orangejello or Lemonjello. And that's spelled - Orangejello is spelled O-R-A-N-G-E-J-E-L-L-O.

Anyone who's really utilized collaboration has a philosophy like, 'Let's throw it all against the wall and see what sticks.' That's how we do it. At a certain point, we're cutting scripts that we love.

I look at racism as one of the social demons. And, in its worst, it's violent and it's a systemic commitment to oppression.