Rick Famuyiwa Quotes

Rick Famuyiwa

Profession : Director

Birth : June 18, 1973

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

Rick Famuyiwa

You can't control where you are born, and when you're growing up, until you've seen something else, you're just living your life.

Rick Famuyiwa

Good or bad is what we tend to want to affix to people, but we're all complicated.

Rick Famuyiwa

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

Rick Famuyiwa

I'm a first-generation American. My parents are from Nigeria. I had this weird last name that looked Japanese, and then people would see me and go, 'Oh. You're not Japanese.'

Rick Famuyiwa

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.

Rick Famuyiwa

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.

Rick Famuyiwa

Lots of people knew who Kevin Hart was a decade before he hit it big.

Rick Famuyiwa

I was in high school and college as hip-hop was really sort of coming into its own as a, you know, creative force, as a sort of cultural voice. And it really spoke to me.

Rick Famuyiwa

In high school, I was into a lot of different stuff, and I did ride skateboards.

Rick Famuyiwa

I'm first generation American, and my parents were both from Nigeria.

Rick Famuyiwa

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.

Rick Famuyiwa

It wasn't that long ago that I was coming up, but it feels almost ancient that you had to go to the library and you had 'World Book Encyclopedias.'

Rick Famuyiwa

I wanted to try and change the idea of what we call mainstream. So many times what we call mainstream is upper middle class white suburbia. And anything outside of that is considered niche.

Rick Famuyiwa

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

Rick Famuyiwa

I grew up on Spielberg and Lucas. That was sort of what inspired me to make movies.

Rick Famuyiwa

When I watch films and it becomes just about the reference and not necessarily a flow with how people naturally speak, that's when you're just saying, 'Okay, I'm trying to be cool and show off.'

Rick Famuyiwa

I feel like geek is about obsession. I feel like I geek out on certain things and that just means it's a mad devotion or obsession to something.

Rick Famuyiwa

I was a political science major before I transferred into film school.

Rick Famuyiwa

The biggest part of what Anita Hill did was take away the stigma of coming forward, and it took a lot for her to do that. We don't have these conversations, because of the fear that people won't believe you or you'll get attacked if you come forward. She came forward anyway and continued to tell her story.

Rick Famuyiwa