After all, the ordinary hero hiding in each of us is often the most powerful catalyst for change.

To write, you have to know how to act and know about directing. To act, you also need to know how to write and direct.

Everybody in the South loves the one closeted homosexual who's married. It's just too funny to not have in a movie about the South. It's an epidemic. You gotta represent!

I met this woman who was a hundred, this housekeeper, a hundred years old. I interviewed her. She just told me about her whole life. She's like, 'I can't read, I can't write; I can tell you who I was working for, and I can tell you the year, but who was president?

I don't steer towards anything. I steer towards character and truth. If it's funny then so be it. If it's dramatic, so be it. I just steer towards characters.

It's easy to forget history or give it a cliff notes. The cliff notes of history. But mainly, so much of what happens in 'Eyes on the Prize' happened in Jackson, Mississippi. Jackson, Mississippi isn't really known for any other touchstone to the movement, other than Medgar Evers being killed. There were sit-ins and riots and atrocities.

I love going back in time, and the only time you can really do that is on a movie set.