It’s easy to forget history or give it a cliff notes. The cliff notes of history. But mainly, so much of what happens in ‘Eyes on the Prize’ happened in Jackson, Mississippi. Jackson, Mississippi isn’t...

As a writer, as much as I try, I can’t stop writing female characters. They have so much more to offer; they have to wear so many different hats. There’s so much wonderful gray matter...

Everybody in the South loves the one closeted homosexual who’s married. It’s just too funny to not have in a movie about the South. It’s an epidemic. You gotta represent!

I don’t steer towards anything. I steer towards character and truth. If it’s funny then so be it. If it’s dramatic, so be it. I just steer towards characters.

I knew I had to write a good screenplay to be taken seriously, and I knew I needed to present Mississippi on visuals instead of just saying, ‘Hey I wanted to film it in Mississippi.’...

I met this woman who was a hundred, this housekeeper, a hundred years old. I interviewed her. She just told me about her whole life. She’s like, ‘I can’t read, I can’t write; I can...

There’s the movie you write, there’s the movie you shoot and the movie you edit, and often, you find that you’re getting the same information out of a scene that you already have and a...

After all, the ordinary hero hiding in each of us is often the most powerful catalyst for change.

In the South, we tell stories. We tell stories if you’re in a sales position, if you’re in a retail position, you lure your customer by telling a story. You just do.

People return my phone calls now, which is really interesting. I’ll tell you what I’ve learned that’s kind of bittersweet. So many doors have opened up. I’ve met everybody in the business. I’m fortunate people...