Director

The world we live in is like a Benetton ad. It's changed, and we have to appeal to a broader audience. You want younger kids of every race to be able to see themselves in the movie.

You don't just have to see superhero movies. Ultimately, those movies are westerns - superheroes are good guys fighting bad guys in a landscape. In westerns, that divide couldn't be any more clear, but the only superpower you have is that you're a quicker shot than the other guy.

At one point, there wasn't a black quarterback in the NFL. When you start winning, then you start seeing more. Jumping up and down and screaming and calling people names is not going to change anything.

Each time you see a Western movie, it's a good reflection of where things are in the world at that time. It's probably one of the purest forms of cinema that really tells you where the world is.

We've been fighting our whole lives to say we're just human beings like everyone else. When we start separating ourselves in our work, that doesn't help the cause. I've heard it for years: 'How do you feel being a black filmmaker?' I'm not a black filmmaker, I'm a filmmaker. I'm a black man, I have black children. But I'm just a filmmaker.

The story is also about the battle between Arthur and the Saxons. The Saxons were destroying everything they came across and Arthur was left when Rome was falling because this movie takes place in 400 A.D.

I only pay to take my son to the movies, because most of the time I only watch European movies, independent movies, or screen them privately. But I like to go to movies with my son because it's still fun; it reminds me of why I make movies.

Bruce Willis. Pain in my ass, no problem about that. We just didn't get along. We got along off camera, but shooting we just didn't get along.

Making a movie to entertain people, that's just as important as telling people about our stories.

I grew up on the East Coast, and we always used to say, 'Go get your hustle on,' whether it was playing sports or making money. You do what you have to do to do what you want to do.

I box every day. I have a gym built wherever I go, so I still got my gym. Every day, I try to get in there and work out the mitts.

Kurosawa is the sensei, the Shakespeare, of filmmaking.

I grew up an athlete, growing up in Pittsburgh. I played basketball. I played football. I played a little bit of baseball in my earlier years.

It's not worth it, it's not about money, especially when you're dealing with a culture. It should be about elevating the idea of what we are and who we are as people in the cinema, and that kind of stuff keeps dragging us back down.

If you are wearing the right jersey, people rallying in around you, and hugging each other when you win, and there's so much love and excitement when you're together. And then people seem to walk away, take their jerseys off, and start focusing on the color of your skin. It didn't matter for that couple hours at the game - why does it matter now?

Anyone who's done their homework knows that the West was a pretty rough-and-tumble place. People from all over the world were there - and when you were there, you had to be tough as nails.

I grew up watching 'Rocky.' I still love that movie, the original one.

When you're sitting ringside, there's a primal thing there that hooks into violence and excitement. It's just two guys going at it in the ring - there's no team, no one to pass the ball to - and there's a certain excitement to that.

If Prince decided that he liked you, or he liked your art or what you brought to the table, it wasn't something that ended. It was a continuation of that thing until he went to the next thing.

I watched the 'Seven Samurai' a lot because I loved it growing up. I can't describe to you how powerful that was. When you're a kid, you can't watch an almost-three-hour movie, but this was a war I just never saw before, with these samurai. I could relate to it, just being poor.