'Straight Outta Compton' is my first biopic, my first period piece, and I got a chance to kind of get out there like some of my idols, you know, like Scorsese, Spielberg, Spike Lee, the guys who came before me. You know, I'm feeling good about it.
From F. Gary Gray
My parents separated when I was 2, and my dad always lived in Chicago and my mother in L.A. I'd go back and forth and sometimes spend the summer with my dad, but L.A. was home.
Success is really about your mindset.
I was doing well in TV as a freelance cameraman, but it wasn't the direction I wanted to go in. I directed videos and tried to put something cinematic in every one. Dialogue, action sequences, helicopter, Steadicam.
You have to enjoy yourself when you go to the movies. People don't want to spend their hard earned money to simply go see a history lesson.
Hip hop has been an integral part of my life and my whole career. I started off doing videos with Ice Cube and Dre and Mary J. Blige and TLC.
We didn't have much money growing up, so we hopped around L.A. a lot in the '70s, '80s and '90s. I'm very familiar with the shifting culture there.
If I were to do a movie about Apollo 13, I'd be at NASA studying what it took to go into space. It's part of your job to go deep, to interview the right people.
When you start directing movies at the age of 24, you're just a kid; you don't necessarily even have the experiences to add to the story. You're working off of instinct and raw emotions and raw talent, and hopefully it's the same trajectory as growing as a person.
I always direct next to the camera and watch my actors, and so you can see the small things that you can't see on the small screen but you can definitely see on the big screen.
4 perspectives
3 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives