For me, it's always filmmaker and then character and then story. They're all equally important but if you don't have a great filmmaker, you will not have a great film unless you just get lucky.
Music is, for me, a great tool of a filmmaker, the same way cinematography, the acting, editing, post-production, the costumes are. You know, to help you tell a story.
Tell me a story.
In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.
Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.
The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.
Tell me a story of deep delight.
I never make a distinction between doing a film in Hollywood or doing a film independently. It's just the story. It's always the story for me. The constants are that it should challenge me and I shouldn't repeat myself. And the story should always be a story worth telling.
Being an African filmmaker, Africa is what's important for me. If I were to shot a film in France or elsewhere it would only be because the story that was being told was something that concerned me, and that really called me or needed to be shown on the screen.
I don't get the great story line, action, mystery scripts; I get comedies. And relationship comedies are what I do. It's what attracted me to American Pie.
I'd seen a great many partial eclipses, but a partial eclipse has the same relation to a total eclipse as flirting with a man does to marrying him. It's completely different.
As a documentary filmmaker, 'Meru' was an irresistible challenge. You can spend years searching for the right story, but this one had all the elements: the obstacles, the characters, and the drama.
Previously, someone would interview me, and if they liked me, it'd be a great story. If they hated me, it'd be a horrible story. I had no way to say anything. Social media changed things for people who didn't have a voice.
It's a great challenge to me, playing someone who is supposed to be absolutely normal and not remarkable and contemporary and yet at the same time does have a lot of fantastic power. As an actor it's a great challenge to bring reality to that.
It's gut instinct that helps me determine how to write a story. I love the surreal because I am faced with the challenge of making the unbelievable believable. That challenge is thrilling.
I'm not an activist. I'm a filmmaker. I'm a dramatist. My strength is to tell a story, to find a way to tell a story that makes it exciting. Our Untold History was a huge challenge. Snowden was no piece of cake, because writing code and breaking code is some of the most boring stuff you've ever seen.
The aggressiveness of it attracted me to hip-hop because I was angry inside. I was an angry kid because of the sickle cell. So I liked the anger in hip-hop. That's what attracted me to it; that's what made me want to do it. It helped me get my aggression out.
For me, whether or not a film has some kind of massive budget or is an independent film, or however it's getting made, it's always about the filmmaker and, hopefully, being a vessel for the filmmaker's vision. That's what really attracts me to projects.
The first total eclipse that I witnessed was in 1970. I was an amateur astronomer. But after I saw the total eclipse, it couldn't be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, because it was too spectacular. I needed another eclipse fix, because I got hooked on the shadow.
Coaches don't sleep for a reason. They don't sleep because it's a danger zone every night. Very seldom do you ever get two or three days off... The lifestyle of coaching in the NBA is a tremendous challenge that gives you tremendous highs but also tremendous lows.