The enormous success of 2009's 'The Blind Side,' in which Sandra Bullock makes a black teenager one of the family, demonstrates that America isn't post-racial. It is thoroughly mired in race - the myths that surround it, the guilt it inspires, the discomfort it causes, the struggle to transcend it.

I don't see a lot of studio executives caring at all about what the culture is telling us. They think they make the culture. They're not out taking the temperature of things and using the results of whatever sort of cultural surveying they're doing to make movies. They're interested in doing things that people are already comfortable with, and taking those properties and filling them.

Anything produced and then exhibited for public view is open to interpretation.

I have a pretty good sense of when to express misgivings. And white critics are just as capable of pointing those things out and noticing them as people of color.

I don't need the audience, but sometimes it's nice to have a gauge - not so I know how I feel, but so I get what is or isn't working for moviegoers.

The enormous success of 2009's 'The Blind Side,' in which Sandra Bullock makes a black teenager one of the family, demonstrates that America isn't post-racial. It is thoroughly mired in race - the myths that surround it, the guilt it inspires, the discomfort it causes, the struggle to transcend it.

Poor decisions and bad luck are contingencies of most horror films.