Quotes from Rick Famuyiwa

I've always felt that 'Dope' is a big movie in a little package.

Everything about who I am, negative and positive, is what shaped me.

There's a hunger our there for different types of stories, and I think there's an audience that's waiting and primed to accept a vision of America that looks like what they see when they walk out of the door each day.

There are constant challenges about what's 'mainstream.' These kids in 'Dope' are as mainstream as the kids in 'Superbad' or 'The Breakfast Club.'

I felt like I was Ferris Bueller. I wanted to be those kids in 'The Breakfast Club.'

Broadway doesn't mean anything in Los Angeles.

Maybe I'm more suited to making small independent films.

When I was approached by Warner Bros. and DC about the possibility of directing 'The Flash,' I was excited about the opportunity to enter this amazing world of characters that I loved growing up, and still do to this day.

I don't know, my parents were pretty open about a lot of things, especially my mom. And any kind of little crazy thing I was into, she was very supportive of. You know, whether it was BMX bike racing or being in the Boy Scouts or surfing or anything else, she always seemed to sort of support it.

I'm not as cocky as I used to be.

These actors who were in 'Dope' are the actors I want to continue to collaborate and make films with from here on out.

What should be driving the conversation is: What's the story? What's the movie about? Is it a compelling story? And if it is, then you make it regardless of the color of the people behind or in front of the camera.

I met Forest Whitaker on 'Our Family Wedding' and we struck up a real bond and friendship.

Wedding films are always about the differences between people. But they haven't quite dealt with African-Americans and Latinos.

I really love weddings. You are surrounded by people who are strangers and then after you say 'I do' those strangers become family.

It would have been more comfortable for us as a society if Anita Hill wasn't as intelligent, poised, and credible as she was.

As a black man working in the business, it's a challenge sometimes to get some of these things and these stories told when they don't quite fit in a box or convention of what people expect of you or what you should be telling.

Love stories happen in communities outside of just the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

There's this responsibility you feel to present a certain thing that kind of respectability politics. I think that became the only accepted way of defining black culture. I started to become too aware of 'How does this look?' instead of 'Who are these characters?'

But at the end of the day, the lottery of birth shouldn't determine your value to the world.

I can understand being in such a public place and having your intimate private life examined.

I always wanted to make a coming-of-age film, or something about growing up, like 'The Wonder Years,' 'Stand By Me' or 'Diner.'

We don't discuss race, so just the discussion of race has become racist. We've been trained that it's such a lightning rod that we don't even want to say the word.

We're a country of many different cultures, and that's always what has made this country stand out. It almost feels like making diverse movies is the most American thing you can do.