So many aspects of our life have disappeared from movie screens [...] And they're now appearing on cable. - Norman Jewison

The famous slap, where [Virgil] Tibbs retaliates against a racist landowner, wasn't improvised, though, as has been suggested. I kept telling [Sidney] Poitier that Tibbs was a sophisticated detective, not used to being pushed around. I showed him how to do the slap. "Don't hit him on the ear," I said. "I want you to really give him a crack on the fatty side of his cheek." I told him to practise on me. A black man had never slapped a white man back in an American film. We broke that taboo.

[On why he was not making a theatrical feature film for the studios] They'd say these films were too wordy, too cerebral, too much dialogue [...] They often want films with a minimum of dialogue and lots of action and limited adult themes to sell abroad.

I don't make social statements in my pictures [...] though I do feel a film should be about something—that it have a raison d'etre. It should not shy away from social problems.