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" When I was in my 20s, I was out of control in terms of what I would do to defend my vision. There are black film-makers and storytellers who take a back seat to just get it done. It's good, but it's not right there. It's been compromised. "

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" I already have legitimacy as a filmmaker and now I'm trying to do stuff that's just fun. Until I find a cool tangible subject again that I want to tackle. "

John Singleton

Find

Want

Trying

" I'm a huge DVD fan. "

" One of the biggest regrets of my whole career was turning down an offer to direct on the first season of 'The Wire.' That would have been so perfect for me. "

John Singleton

Season

First

" I try to keep focused on the things that really make me happy and just do those same things. "

John Singleton

Same

Happy

" When I was small, in the early '70s, my mother took me to see 'Cooley High.' "

John Singleton

Mother

High

" I'm not a Beverly Hills dude. "

" Crunk music is the music of the South, it pervades every club and nightclub not only in America, but all over the world. "

" Now, I'm so relaxed that I have to make myself nervous. I feel better when I'm second and third guessing myself over everything. I play with the mice in my head, all the time. "

" Producing, in television, we're in the business of voyeurism. "

" The freshest moments in my films have always been with unknown actors. "

" The cinema saved me from being a delinquent. I could have been, but I didn't get caught up. I never was going to get arrested or anything. "

John Singleton

Never

" I like John Hughes movies. "

" I love comics. I like to do everything I used to do when I was 14-years-old. "

John Singleton

Love

Everything

" There's hardly any precedent for a guy like me to have the career that I've had. Because I grew up the way I grew up, I'm an in-your-face kind of guy. I developed that as a defense mechanism to survive in the streets. I do that in Hollywood in the service of my passion. "

" There's this guy: his name, Sedik Ali. He's like the African Kurosawa. You know how Kurosawa does stuff from feudal Japan? This guy does the feudal system of Africa. "

John Singleton

You

System

" The more people who see a film, the more life it has. But I don't like when people watch DVDs and look at two scenes, but they don't look at the whole movie. Or they sit and talk to each other. You should always watch a movie all the way through. "

" It's cool for me because I'm a director, but I'm also a teacher. I'm a lover of cinema, and I love working with people who are hungry and have the energy to really do better work. "

John Singleton

Teacher

People

" I met Tupac through Queen Latifah in New York at this party that we were at, at a place downtown called Big City Diner. "

" We have these rules, the 'hero rules.' Like, a hero doesn't slouch. A hero walks proudly with his head up. A hero walks with a purpose. A hero's always a gentleman. "

" As a storyteller, when you see somebody who is the character you envisioned, you feel this energy in the room. "

" I just try to make the best film possible, and once the movie's done, we deal with the DVD. "

" I wanted to dress cool, and get all the ladies. "

" All the kids looked up to my father because he was known to be that dude who knocks people out. "

John Singleton

Out

People

" The plain truth is, 'Fruitvale Station' was made totally outside the Hollywood studio system, and every ounce of the picture feels authentic. The lives of the people involved in the movie will never be the same. "

" I really took filmmaking very seriously... It was an honor and then a crutch also, because at a young age, I was like, I guess I'm a serious filmmaker. I never set out to be a serious filmmaker. I just set out to make movies. "

" I can't watch a movie and watch just two minutes and turn it off, then go talk to my girlfriend. "

John Singleton

Girlfriend

Two

" What's interesting when you see 'Black Panther' is you realize it couldn't have been directed by anybody else but Ryan Coogler. It's a great adventure movie, and it works on all those different levels as entertainment, but it has this kind of cultural through-line that is so specific that it makes it universal. "

" In 'Boyz N the Hood,' every female character was three-dimensional. "

" I've become more relaxed. When I was younger, I had more erratic, nervous tension when I was working. "

John Singleton

Become

Nervous

" Ja Rule not doing '2 Fast 2 Furious' changed Ludacris's life. "