Antoine Fuqua

“My experience of test screenings is that you don't know what kind of mood people are going to be in, and sometimes the studios accept what Joe Blo says - and this guy could just be a frustrated filmmaker, or not paying attention.”

“What's it like finding out Denzel Washington wants you to direct his next movie? It's like getting a phone call from Muhammad Ali or Michael Jordan saying they want you to coach them.”

“In our culture, I think that there is no markers anymore. Young men don't really have something that says you're a grown up now, until you have a baby.”

“I take them seriously but I try not to read them. I take them personally, that's why I don't read them. I think people are lying when they say they don't care, that's not true. I take them personally.”

“People in Hollywood go home to their wives and children who look like they do. If you're in that position, your natural thought pattern is sometimes to think, 'Superman, oh yeah he's white.' You can't get mad at somebody for doing that. It's the world they live in and for some, they only live in that bubble.”

“You don't just have to see superhero movies. Ultimately, those movies are westerns - superheroes are good guys fighting bad guys in a landscape. In westerns, that divide couldn't be any more clear, but the only superpower you have is that you're a quicker shot than the other guy.”

“I like making movies.”

“I grew up on the East Coast, and we always used to say, 'Go get your hustle on,' whether it was playing sports or making money. You do what you have to do to do what you want to do.”

“I became a director just for the love of movies, because of the power of cinema.”

“It's a dumb question, because I don't look at things as a black director, just as a director, so ask me as a director first and we can segue into the colour thing later.”

“My responsibility is, I'm always trying to look for new people of color or even artistic people who need a chance.”

“It's a hard line to walk, man. Cause you know you want to make this movie, you want to make it dark and real, you want to show all this stuff but unfortunately you can't always do that.”

“What I learned is, don't forget who you are, because that's what's going to make you a filmmaker.”

“If you disagree with the way a colleague did something, call him up, invite him out for a coffee, talk about it. But don't do it publicly.”

“If you win, if you make money. If you do quality work, then other people of color, whatever color that is, can get in the door.”

“Westerns are simple stories where there's good and there's evil and where people had a sense of space and freedom. Growing up in the city, as a kid, you've never really seen that before. It's a beautiful dream to go from concrete to big skies, dirt and horses.”

“I'd like to think that the door is always open for just the best actor for the role, you know? Race or gender shouldn't have anything to do with it, unless the character or story is focused on that for some particular reason.”

“Some men don't gel when it comes to work - you have different work ethics, different opinions, different points of views, different methods of filmmaking - and we didn't gel.”

“I grew up watching 'Rocky.' I still love that movie, the original one.”

“I don't understand why we give up genres, and the Western is a great genre. It's a part of the rich history of cinema and who we are as we've evolved as people, as a community.”