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The film 'Black Hawk Down' paints the Somali people as wild savages.

There was a movie called 'Hawk the Slayer' when I was a kid. I think only three people saw it, but me and my brother saw it. I remember when I was a kid thinking that's kind of cool. It was just this sort of action adventure-y sort of thing.

'Black Hawk Down' has such distinctive visual aplomb that its jingoism starts to feel like part of its atmosphere.

'Black Hawk Down' wants to be about something, and in the midst of the meticulously staged gunfire, the picture seems to choose futility arbitrarily.

I'm not going to be labeled a black filmmaker. I am not here to just tell black stories. I'm here to tell all kinds of stories, musicals and dramas.

Did you know I staged the first performance in America of At the Hawk's Well?

I'm proud of 'Black Hawk Down' because I think it told a provocative story and it was honest. It could have had more opportunity to tell both sides of the story, but I'm still proud of it.

I made three films with Douglas, two with Charles Boyer.

'Raiders of the Lost Ark' made me want to make films. I am wild about the films of John Carpenter, Ridley Scott, Howard Hawks and Sam Peckinpah.

There have been so few decent films involving Negroes that right away everybody expects every film to do everything. But when you make a flick, there are maybe two things you're trying to put into that flick. You can put the other things in another time.