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I think it talks about the fact that there are black people in the world who have tremendous amount of talents and have no channel through which they can those talents.

I think that if we really want to break it down, that non-black filmmakers have had many, many years and many, many opportunities to tell many, many stories about themselves, and black filmmakers have not had as many years, as many opportunities, as many films to explore the nuances of our reality.

The studios gotta start making more stuff where black folks get quality stuff. But I can't trip about that because I've been making movies for 35 years, and I've played everything from an old lady to a donkey, so I can't be on here talking about, 'They don't give us enough roles' and diversity.

There are so few roles out there. And even if it is a film that could be led by a black actress, how many times is that film going to get funded? Let's just be real. But it's not just black people. It's Asians, it's Hispanic people if you're not Salma Hayek. It's hard. It's hard to get films funded.

I read the script, and I knew it was a good part. It was written for a white actor. That's what I'm up against - I have to try to make roles happen for me that aren't written black.

It's a dumb question, because I don't look at things as a black director, just as a director, so ask me as a director first and we can segue into the colour thing later.

I think a lot of black filmmakers have done very well.

There haven't been enough profound things written about what being black means and what a black character is. Nobody knows.

I believe that the American audience is not so dumb that they wouldn't be interested in a black story.