Antoine Fuqua

What's it like finding out Denzel Washington wants you to direct his next movie? It's like getting a phone call from Muhammad Ali or Michael Jordan saying they want you to coach them.

I think that the dialogue between police officers and the black community has to get better, but not better in a way where, 'Oh, let's talk about it when something horrible happens.' The dialogue has to be going on consistently, every day.

I don't understand why we give up genres, and the Western is a great genre. It's a part of the rich history of cinema and who we are as we've evolved as people, as a community.

If you want to be in Hollywood, and if you want to make big international movies, you have to be able to make movies that don't have anything to do with social status or politics. To limit yourself to just do these little small movies and call it black cinema itself is a mistake to me.

I take them seriously but I try not to read them. I take them personally, that's why I don't read them. I think people are lying when they say they don't care, that's not true. I take them personally.

So it's hard to be an artist and be true to the reality of the world you want to create and also make it entertaining and successful financially.

The simple answer is I'd just be a guy trying to feed my family, like everybody else. The complicated answer is, I think I'd be in some sort of military or government world of some sort.

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.

People in Hollywood go home to their wives and children who look like they do. If you're in that position, your natural thought pattern is sometimes to think, 'Superman, oh yeah he's white.' You can't get mad at somebody for doing that. It's the world they live in and for some, they only live in that bubble.

Cause movies are human drama, that's it.

I don't know if Prince even really paid attention to time. The moment of creativity is the moment, and you go at that moment.

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.