"We're in a period where mediocrity rules the day," he says, his deep voice a controlled boom. "There's a lot of stuff that's not good that's touted as being good."
Fishburne has talked about "swing" in his performances, the notion of finding the right range and rhythms and notes for a character, and then swinging hard. "I mean it in the exact sense that jazz musicians mean it,"
For years, writer-director Doug Atchison shopped his script around Hollywood. He had been captivated watching a national spelling bee on ESPN in the mid-1990s, and in 2000 his script was one of five winners of a competition sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences -- but for years, he couldn't get it made into a movie.
"People are allergic to doing what they've never seen," says Atchison. They hadn't seen a black girl who wasn't an athlete carry a film. Studios wanted to make the Dr. Larabee character white, but Atchison resisted. "That story had been told too many times and it was important to reconnect Akeelah with her community. She had a negative impression of where she came from, and Dr. Larabee came from her own world and had gotten his PhD. This gave her the belief she could do it."