If you have the material it will form itself as a kind of connective tissue.
Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.
I put headlights in Ford vans. I still drive a Ford.
Be kind to the living.
I wish all critics, no matter their color, were more sophisticated when it comes to the moral questions a film like 'St. Anna' is trying to raise.
I'd like to do something involving jazz. But books are how I earn my living, and I'd like to stay with the horse I rode in on.
It's the same old story. Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. And therein lies the problem of being a professional black storyteller - writer, musician, filmmaker.
Newt Gingrich wrote a novel, and he's a short story. Bill Clinton wrote a biography, and he's a novel.
Until you expose the cancer, you can't fix it.
The black church will accept anybody.
The question of religion in black America is something filmmakers don't want to touch.
First person narrative is a very effective tool but you have to know as a writer how to make it work.
