100 Quotes by Rick Famuyiwa

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

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

Gangs are a part of living in Los Angeles, but you can exist in Inglewood or Culver City or anywhere else, without joining one.

You might go into 'Dope' feeling you already know what this movie is because, all right, there's kids, they're from Inglewood, oh, it's drugs.

I was fortunate to write pretty much a year out of film school and start making movies in the Hollywood studio system. But with each progressive film it became more frustrating not being able to speak and say things I wanted to say.

As filmmakers and as actors, you have to find truth.

I think Black cinema is thought of in small terms. That's where most of the problems come from. When there's a film that has success, like in the '90s with the crime hood films; when one of them does well, it becomes the replication, or there's a romantic comedy that breaks out, it becomes a singular way of looking at it.

Because of technology, there's no longer the social shaming that goes on if you're a black kid walking into a record store to buy Nirvana.

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.