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.

The audience's imagination will do a better, more personalized version of the horror than you can actually paint. So that just, you know, with something like "The Blair Witch Project," which is, you know, whatever, it's 89 minutes of people running through the woods and one minute of, you know, a guy standing in a corner.

We haven't done enough work to encourage minorities to strive to make movies. Hollywood is a place full of white male directors - there are many good ones. We just haven't nurtured our voices.

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.

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.

[Barack Obama] will touch you on the shoulder and, you know - in that big brother or father figure kind of way. And you really do feel sort of shepherded by him.