I have a problem with superheroes in general because, politically, superheroes are cops. Superheroes work with the government to uphold the law. And who do the laws work for?
With a movie, you have the power of putting out an idea about the world and for people to take it seriously.
We all - even at a base level, even a Republican - understand that the people with the money are the ones with the power. We all learn that.
I think most people would love for us to be a socialist society.
The crux of our power isn't only in our voice. It is in our economic function in society.
That existential crisis is something you rarely see portrayed by black characters; the idea that people think about their own existence and that they have hopes and dreams is taken away from people of color in their representation.
I've always been about, how do I get my ideas out to the most people?
Making movies seemed so impossible as far as getting my ideas funded.
If you tell a story that's only allegory, then it doesn't help you at all. If it doesn't bring some emotional charge, then it's just talking about something.
My father is from North Carolina, and he got rid of his drawl really fast. He's very much about speaking correctly, enunciating in certain ways.
Sometimes my influences are really on my sleeve. So I just make sure to wear a lot of sleeves.
That punk approach of 'We don't wanna get big' is really a bourgeois thing. It's not a tactic of people that actually have been successful at changing things.
I was actually really good at telemarketing.
Going to school in San Francisco, you're not going to meet as many people that are making films as you would if you went to film school in New York or L.A.
What I like about music is that you make a song, you've got your ideas in it, and people make that song part of their life - they hang out with their friends to it, they get in arguments to it, they get married to it, they get divorced to it. It's in their world, and it takes on its own life.
Art can end up answering questions or asking questions. But when it's not connected to actual movements, it doesn't ask the right questions.
A lot of libertarians and ultra-capitalists like to put out this idea that competition makes for better creativity. But it's just because we don't see all the creativity that's been crushed.
I think art is communication. To that extent, it can be the words between the words. It has a possibility of communicating something more than people can do with prose or just talking.
There's the part of me that's the organizer, part of me that's the artist, part of me that's the person who, even with those two things, wants to figure out what my place in the world is. How to engage with it and whether my life has any meaning.
Oakland has always had artists attempting to define the immense beauty and ridiculousness around them.
