When people get together, we are capable of the most beautiful, amazing things. But we are also capable of genocide.

For me, the social thriller is the thriller in which the fears, the horrors, and the thrills are coming from society. They're coming from the way humans interact.

Back when we were Neanderthals or whatever, we evolved to think along tribal lines. Survival was based on this idea of who are we and who are the others who will come and take our resources. I think it's an animal and a human thing that we all see in terms of us vs. them, and race is a very easy way to separate who is us and who is them.

With a horror movie, you want to know where the engine of the fear is coming from. Like in comedy, you want to know what the engine that's going to make the comedy - where that's coming from.

I'd been taught from an early age that I was in the other category on the standardized tests. You know, I had to go down the checklist - Caucasian, African-American, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, and then, you know, at the bottom is other. So, you know, very early on I was taught, in a way, that I was somehow this anomaly.

I love dipping into worlds at a fast and furious pace. A little glimpse allows the audience to put together the rest of that world in their brain. I love sketches that require the audience to piece together the comedic engine themselves. Give them all the information but not tell them what the scene is about so they can have that eureka moment of, "Oh my God, he's only used to the way urban students pronounce their names. That's what's going on here.".

You never want to be the whitest-sounding black guy in a room.