Melvin Van Peebles

The key to empowerment is no more complicated than what Jesse Jackson said, 'We are somebody.' But the 'We are somebody' I would like to be in the larger sense: not just the urban African-American but homo sapiens in general - We are somebody.

Many times, I get young people asking, 'What do you think about black movies?' And I say, 'What are you talking about? You mean Hollywood movies that have black people in them?' It's gone back to that, and that's not the same thing as a black movie.

If I was just a creator, I would still be back in the Lincoln annex in the Post Office.

When I was a kid, from 10 years old, I worked every day for my dad, huh? Never played basketball. I never played tennis - never did. We worked so that we could eat.

No one - black, white, or any different - walks away from a three-picture deal with a studio. That's every filmmaker's dream. But it wasn't mine.

Sweetback' represented an economic tour de force because I had no partners; I own it.

What happened when 'Sweetback' made all that money, the studios were in a very difficult position. They wanted the money, but they didn't the message. This marked the advent of the caricatures which became known as blaxploitation.

I graduated from college when I was 20. To get enough money to finish college, I went into the ROTC, and I was an officer in the Air Force before I could buy a drink.

Whitey is uptight about offending blacks without really knowing what offends blacks.

Blacks are tired of seeing whites saying, 'I understand you.' You need a black to direct a black film.

In trying to cross over to the mainstream, some people stopped writing what they witnessed.

I'm not a normal director. You can't look at me that way. What's kept me alive is my technical skill at doing other things.