Being a kid growing up with Kurosawa films and watching Sergio Leone movies just made me love what it could do to you, and how it could influence you - make you dream.
Bruce Willis. Pain in my ass, no problem about that. We just didn't get along. We got along off camera, but shooting we just didn't get along.
But I like to go to movies with my son because it's still fun; it reminds me of why I make movies.
Cinema Paradiso, because it reminds me of why I make movies, the magic of movies, the romance of movies.
I became a director just for the love of movies, because of the power of cinema.
I believe in God, absolutely.
I dislike the fact that every once in a while you have a sort of dictatorship that happens, you don't have the money to make some of the films that might want to make or some of the statements that you want to make. Because it becomes more of a commercial business, and it's just a business.
I have a lot of people in my book who are pretty famous - but there's the famous ones and then there's the powerful ones.
I like making movies.
I like the opportunity to make films.
I like the platform to show your art and everything that goes along with that. To show your voice and hopefully find films that are more politically driven, films that maybe inspire.
I love all of those spaghetti westerns with Clint Eastwood. I love those movies.
I only pay to take my son to the movies, because most of the time I only watch European movies, independent movies, or screen them privately.
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.
I've become friends with Michael Mann and Oliver Stone; I've seen those guys work and that was great to see.
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.
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.
It's not worth it, it's not about money, especially when you're dealing with a culture. It should be about elevating the idea of what we are and who we are as people in the cinema, and that kind of stuff keeps dragging us back down.
Off camera we were friends - Bruce is great - but we just don't get along when it comes to work, and that's pretty much it.
So I pick Nigeria, not to pick on it specifically, but it could be any place in Africa. But I needed it to ground myself.
So it's hard to be an artist and be true to the reality of the world you want to create and also make it entertaining and successful financially.
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.
The directors I would have loved to have seen were Kurosawa or Leone - I would have loved being on their set to see how they worked.
The simple answer is I'd just be a guy trying to feed my family, like everybody else. The complicated answer is, I think I'd be in some sort of military or government world of some sort.
The story is also about the battle between Arthur and the Saxons. The Saxons were destroying everything they came across and Arthur was left when Rome was falling because this movie takes place in 400 A.D.
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