I wanted to be Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton, Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and Hitchcock. I'd wanted to be a director since 13, and horror and the suspense thriller were the most powerful genres to me.
It's a no-win situation with politics; it's always going to be stressful. I'm more into the comedy of life.
I think the lesson is that when you give black voices a platform and the opportunity to tell our story, we will tell good stories just like anybody else.
Black people who want to do comedy go into standup, where our heroes opened a lot of doors. Improv doesn't have a ton of heroes that you can look to.
In the Trump era, it's way more obvious extreme racism exists. But there are still a lot of people who think, 'We don't have a racist bone in our bodies.' We have to face the racism in ourselves.
There is something transformative if you're a black person cheering in a theater and turn to see a white person cheering for the same thing you are.
Now that the black experience isn't viewed as box-office death, people are catching up to untapped auteurs.
African-American music tends to have, at the very least, a glimmer of hope to it - sometimes full-fledged hope.
I want to believe in ghosts. I love ghost stories.
I define 'social thriller' as thriller/horror movies where the ultimate villain is society.
You boil down your influences to a soup, and it all informs you.
When I talk about movies like 'Rosemary's Baby' and 'Stepford Wives,' I really noticed that these movies were able to address fears surround the women's lib movement in a way that was engaging, not preachy, but fun.
Obama was the best thing for black nerds everywhere. Finally we had a role model. Before Obama, we basically had Urkel.
I didn't know my father very well; I only met him a few times.
I was raised that emotion was a good thing.
As kids, there's somehow the fear that these bullies can end your life if they want to. Everything is blown up, and occasionally that kind of awful thing does happen.
Nobody wants to see sketch comedy that's the same sketch they've seen time and time again, or that's just a rehash of that thing.
You can track elections by who was playing that president on 'SNL' at that time. There's the theory that the more likable or charismatic impression would help get the president elected.
The best comedy and horror feel like they take place in reality. You have a rule or two you are bending or heightening, but the world around it is real.
I'd been taught from an early age that I was in the 'other' category on the standardized tests. You know, I had to go down the checklist - Caucasian, African-American, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, and then, you know, at the bottom is other. So, you know, very early on I was taught, in a way, that I was somehow this anomaly.
