At school, film-making had been the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me. Then I get to L.A., and it's this whole other thing. I checked out.
Growing up, I wasn't the most vocal kid in the world. I feel like I learned through observation, and usually, when you're watching things, you're not speaking. That sort of metastasized in a way that I began to participate less and less in the world.
It's interesting because I think class is a heavy, heavy part of 'Moonlight,' and I think, in a certain way, through the sum of all these parts, it's become a commentary on the black experience in America.
To me, no matter who you're casting for what role, if something's authentic, usually you can mine something good there.
In hip-hop, sometimes that pace is so fast that you miss things. I don't mean literally miss lyrics; I just think there's an emotion in what these cats are saying that gets by you. When you slow things down, there's this emotion, this yearning.
There's nothing in Hollywood that's inherently detrimental to good art. I think that's a fallacy that we've created because we frame the work that way too overtly. 'This is Hollywood.' 'This isn't Hollywood.' It's like, 'No, this is actually all Hollywood.' People are just framing them differently.
The way I work, things are very nuanced; not everything is explained.
I'm so damn boring. I like reading and writing and making coffee. And walking. Barry Jenkins likes long walks.
I got into film school. I went and didn't know anything about it. Over the course of two years, I kind of got kind of good at it. You know, I had a brief moment where I wasn't sure if I could do it. I didn't know you needed light to expose film.
I've worked at this film festival in Telluride called the Telluride Film Festival. Been there since 2002. I used to make popcorn. I was an usher. Cleaned toilets, everything. Grew up there as a kid.
I wasn't known as a neighborhood tough or anything like that. But yeah, I was, like, a scrappy kid. You know, I kind of kept to myself, you know?
I really sort of kept to myself. I kind of just watched the world. And I think to keep people from messing with me, yeah, you know, I went out to run track. I went out for the football team. Not because I love track or love football.
I was hiding behind athletics and all my jockitude, so I didn't have to deal with being ostracized as the weird art kid.
I'm process-orientated. Awards, by their nature, are results-orientated.
A month alone would make me so happy. Not good for my dating prospects.
I don't choose to make movies as small as the movies I've made. The combined budget of my two films is far under $5 million, but it's just by necessity that it ends up being that way.
Whenever I tell people I'm from Miami, they always ask me about the beach. But I can count on one hand the times I went there as a kid.
There were times when we didn't have hot water or a phone line. But I guarantee you, we always had cable, and it was always on.
I have friends who I consider my peers, who have done amazing work, particularly in the film and television space, who came up as independent artists and who have been - to be brutally honest - much more prolific than I was able to be.
Not all my work features black actors. I mean, it's funny: someone was reading back to me all the languages that have appeared in my films, whether they were shorts or features. They span Arabic, French, Mandarin, Cantonese - all kinds of languages. I think it's really cool.
