Phone calls are much more personal than texting and then when you get a girl on the phone, it's like you ask a question and you get a response back. For a text message, they can read it and get back to it whenever they want to. So that makes a difference, almost like a power play in a way.

You know, you can try and plan [filming] as much as you want, but you get there on game day and you get thrown a curve ball, I guess, hey, the game plan goes out the window. You've got to adapt.

Acting for me sometimes is taking whatever personal experiences I have and try to apply that [to a role].

How are people who are young and look like Oscar [Grant] portrayed in the media? You gotta think about that. And somebody given a badge and a gun and told to go police in those communities, all of a sudden they got to protect and serve and talk to people they never even spent time with [and] they might have formed opinions about.

Watching a really good movie excites me, because it makes we want to get up off the couch and go shoot something and act in a scene. And music excites me because it puts me in a mind state, whatever that may be.

You substitute certain things from your own personal life to get you to that mental place and that emotional state. At that time [Brian Robbins] went for the home run, the grand slam [in "Hardball"].

My forever mission is to take the best elements of both commercial and independent films and bring them together. I learned so much about the art of independent films and I have so much fun in commercial ones. I think that a mix of both is good.