When we shot at night, parents would come out and tell me ‘We don’t usually let our kids out after dark, because there are no street lights, but since you all got your movie lights, it’s a lot safer.’ Kids would come on the set and sit at the video monitors and watch me work and point at me and tell each other ‘He grew up here!’ I could tell from their faces that seeing me — this black dude walking around all this machinery, calling action — was an eye-opening experience.
“It was just as eye-opening for me, because I realized at that moment that maybe if I had seen somebody walking around a movie set like this in my neighborhood when I was a kid, I would have gotten to filmmaking a lot sooner.
As I look back on my life, I realize that every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was actually being re-directed to something better.
