I don't dictate, you don't dictate to Stevie Wonder, not successfully.

Fight the power that be. Fight the power.

I'm not the go-to guy. Everybody is trying to tell their story and have different ways of telling it.

It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are.

I'll be vilified if I shoot a film in Toronto for New York. And rightfully so!

Any film I do is not going to change the way black women have been portrayed, or black people have been portrayed, in cinema since the days of D.W. Griffith.

If we became students of Malcolm X, we would not have young black men out there killing each other like they're killing each other now. Young black men would not be impregnating young black women at the rate going on now. We'd not have the drugs we have now, or the alcoholism.