George Tillman, Jr.

These guys at Fox knew that as a filmmaker, I could always tell different types of stories and each can emotionally connect to a universal audience.

I realized that food was actually a metaphor for bringing us all together. It's about us communicating and being like family.

I think it's important that a director be able to know his characters inside and out.

Filmmakers are always in a bubble; along with our crew or writer, we don't really get to socialize with other filmmakers, so the great thing about Sundance is you can see many other filmmakers doing the same thing you do.

Food was a labor of love you felt by cooking it and eating it.

I love telling stories from a kid's point of view because they don't really see all the obstacles in front of them. They're resilient, and sometimes adults can steal that from them.

You can't make an action movie without action, and so, you can't make a romance movie without romance.

Even looking at my last film, 'Notorious,' you got a perception about B.I.G. and who he was, but there was a different side to him.

I wanted to make a movie about a black family in Middle America. I wanted to make a film where everyone can look at them and say, 'This is my family.'

I call it soul food, and I call it compassion food because it kind of bonds loved ones together. It kept families together for a long time.

There was a group of six women in my household. My mom, aunts and grandma. I watched them in the kitchen.

Several hundred years ago, the only thing that slave families had was cooking and their family meals.