“We’ve had this discussion back and forth. When John Singleton [made Boyz in the Hood], people came out to see it. But when he did ‘Rosewood,’ nobody showed up. So a lot of this is on us! You vote with your pocketbook, your wallet. You vote with your time sitting in front of the idiot box, and [Tyler Perry] has a huge audience. We shouldn’t think that Tyler Perry is going to make the same film that I am going to make, or that John Singleton or my cousin Malcolm Lee [would make]. As African-Americans, we’re not one monolithic group, so there is room for all of that. But at the same time, for me, the imaging is troubling and it harkens back to ‘Amos n’ Andy.’”

“The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn’t do that. It’s not accurate….If I go ahead and put an African American actor in there, they’d say ‘This guy’s lost his mind.’” “A guy like him should shut his face.”

“Does he know anything about American history?” “The U.S. military was segregated til the Korean War, and the blacks in World War Two were totally segregated. The only black battalion on Iwo Jima was a small munitions supply unit that came to the beach.
“The story was about the men who raised the flag and we can’t make them black if they were not there. So tell him: Why don’t you go back and study your history and stop mouthing off!”

“I always treat life and death with respect, but most people don’t. Look, I love the Coen brothers; we all studied at NYU. But they treat life like a joke. Ha ha ha. A joke. It’s like, ‘Look how they killed that guy! Look how blood squirts out the side of his head!’ I see things different than that.”

“Hopefully this shines the spotlight on the city and lets people know we’re still trying to recover … and we still need support,”

“I’m actually here for meetings with Spike Lee about his new project – and I signed the contract last night so I can talk about it at last. I haven’t been able to tell anyone else yet. ”
‘It’s a very very small role but it involves subject matter that I’m really passionate about.
It’s about a regiment of black soldiers based in Tuscany in the Second World War –
It’s a subject that nobody has ever touched upon.
There are all the war time films of course but you never see a black soldier in any of them.
I’ll do anything for Spike and I really think we should be more educated about the role of people of color in our history.”

Expect to hear more about the film in the coming weeks which could even be out as early as next year.