But it all came, and for me, hip-hop has done more for racial divide and racial sort of bringing together than anything in the last 30 years. Seeing people like Eminem sounding like somebody like Jay-Z and just the racial aspects of it all.

Honestly, I'm not listening to much of what's going on today.

I grew up in New York City in the '80s, and it was the epicenter of hip-hop. There was no Internet. Cable television wasn't as broad. I would listen to the radio, hear cars pass by playing a song, or tape songs off of the radio. At that time, there was such an excitement around hip-hop music.

Positive doesn't mean unflawed: It means human and vulnerable. If you make a film and you're portraying the subject with respect, you're gonna do it in an honest way.

Being a part of independent-film world, the independent-film community, that's what you do. You support each other. If someone's doing a movie and you trust them, you roll the dice. Sometimes it's gonna be good, sometimes it's gonna be something that's like, "Oh I don't know what the hell that is." But I've been more fortunate than not to have it work well.

To make independent films, you can't think about them too much, ponder on them too much, get overwhelmed by the enormity of it.

My favorite part is just being able to say and do things that you can't do in real life, and behaving in a way that's just not really acceptable, in the real world.