INT: Ernest, you’ve directed many genres, procedurals, crime, horror, drama. Would you say that the work differs from genre to genre? And if so, can you elaborate on how and is there particular--sci-fi? Is there a particular genre that you enjoy the most?

ED: You know, I guess I like genres that ask for a certain amount of experimentation and different ways of telling stories, you know, which usually might be horror or thriller, just science fiction. I mean that’s something that Spike [Spike Lee] and I were always trying to do in film school. That’s one of the things that Scorsese impresses with, you know, always finding ways of telling story, you know, telling narrative, exploring different ways of getting the audience to feel certain ways, you know. And I like genres that allow me to make it more immersive for the audience as opposed to just sitting back and looking. But you know, I’ve been reading science fiction since I was a kid, since I was much younger. And in my personal writing, the films that I’ve written, they’ve pretty much mostly been science fiction or horror. And I still love a good science fiction story, you know, ‘cause you know, the best science fiction as well as the best horror are interesting ways of talking about the human condition or what it means to be human, you know, or talk about our political situation, or talk about where we’re going or where we could be going or where we should be going, or where we could’ve gone, you know. It’s always interesting to explore, you know, subjects in that way, you know. So, and that’s the great thing about science fiction and horror. You know, you can tell stories in a different way that way without hitting the subject like head on. You know, you could hit it a little bit more obliquely.

INT: Can you talk about the landscape of diversity as it pertains to race in the film and television business, particularly Directors from the time you started and what it looks like now and what direction you see it going in the future?

ED: Yeah. Diversity, it’s come a long way since I started. And I mean, you know, when I first started working as a Cinematographer, I knew of other Black Cinematographers because they have been covered in Ebony magazine. But other than that, I didn’t know anything else about them. They weren’t covered in "American Cinematographer" or anything. There was a brother named LeRoy Patton in New York. And I remember seeing an article in Ebony about him and his wife [Jessie Maple] who is an AC [Cinematographer]. And that was the first article outside of technical journals that told what that craft is, told what Cinematographer does, told what the AC [Assistant Cameraperson] does. And the fact that these are two African Americans was really something else. We always just wonder if there was life after film school. And when we got out of film school, which was about 1982, there weren’t hardly any Black folks working in the business. That’s why, you know, Spike [Spike Lee] and I on our films, we always had trainees. You know, we always have people to come in and train to try to get more Black folks into the unions. On DO THE RIGHT THING, one of my camera PAs was Darnell Martin, who eventually went to NYU Film School and now she’s now a Director. So, we started seeing more and more people coming in. And I’m gratified to see that we’re seeing a lot of African American women, you know, moving up, you know. For a while, there was only the brothers, now the sisters are getting their chance to do it, too. But we’re starting to, it is getting much, much better. I mean the fact that I met you on THE WIRE and over martinis and other things, we were talking film. And now you’re, you know, you the man, you know. You one of the men. And actually, it got really gratifying especially when I was doing RAISED BY WOLVES because it’s an eight episode season, four blocks, two episodes each. I directed the first two. Another brother’s directing the second two, Sunu Gonera, who’s from Zimbabwe. He’s there now shooting away. So, I think for Ridley Scott’s company to hire two Directors of color who are directing half of the shows of the second season I thought was pretty cool. And, you know, I think especially with the advent of streaming, streaming services, now we’re starting to see more and more movies that never would’ve been made for theatrical release. Because the great thing about streaming is now you don’t have to worry about that opening weekend. Remember, you had to, you know, a lot of times movies will get made solely on the basis of whether or not they would make enough money that opening weekend, if the studio thought they would make a lot of money on that opening weekend. Now, you know, we’re seeing a lot of interesting films by Directors of color, you know, on Netflix and Amazon and stuff like that. We’re seeing Indian horror films. You know, we’re seeing, you know, British thrillers, you know. It was a great show talking about, you know, the different times of race progress in London. I think it was called LITTLE AXE [SMALL AXE,] which was great. Yeah, LITTLE AXE was beautiful. You know, something like that would never have been made into a theater. There was a great horror film, I think it was called HIS HOUSE, you know, about these African immigrants who move into this house and how it’s haunted. And it’s beautifully done, young brother's first time film, and it was really, really well done and well received.

ED: So, I think because the market is changing because of the streaming and everything, do I miss the communal experience of sharing a film with an audience? Yeah, I do. I do. But, you know, I tell myself, you know, most people have flat-screen TVs which are pretty big anyway in their living rooms. So, the small box is no longer in existence, you know. People’s living rooms are almost like miniature screening rooms. So, you know, you can play up the landscape on something that’s gonna wind up on television where you couldn’t play that before. You can play a landscape where you have like the main character, you know, a small person is being overwhelmed by this place, you know. So, it’s changing and I think more and more people of color are coming in, from all over the place, from all over the world. We’re seeing some really, really interesting I think groundbreaking stuff coming up. [INT: Word.]

INT: When did you join the DGA as a Director? And do you remember what project you joined on and who sponsored you, who signed your application?

ED: Yeah, I remember who signed my application. Yeah, it was Robert Wise and Joe Dante. No, cause JUICE was ’92 [1992]. [INT: Yeah, that…] So, it was yeah, it was like ’93 [1993], ’94 [1994] that I first got in. Yeah, it was ’93, ’94. Yeah, it was ’93, ’94, somewhere around there. I was going to direct a TV series, a pilot for a show called THE UNTOUCHABLES. And I had to get into the DGA. So, I got in. And I remember my Agent, ‘cause Robert Wise was represented by same agency and so was Joe Dante. Yeah, but Robert Wise did it, man. [INT: That’s amazing.]

INT: Do you attend Guild meetings and if so, can you describe the first meeting you attended? Who were the notable Directors, Assistant Directors and UPMs [Unit Production Managers] active in the Guild when you joined?

ED: I don’t remember, ‘cause you know, I’ve gone to gosh, yeah, some of them, some of the dinners. Gosh, I forgotten. The more recent ones have all been Zoom calls and the steering committee meetings. But you know, for a long time, I didn’t go because I wasn’t in town, you know. There were several years where I was always out of town, where I wind up being out of town for six to eight months out of the year. That was the runs when I was doing like several WALKING DEADS, THE WIRE, all that stuff was happening, you know, around that time and I was never here to go to meetings. I wasn’t even here to go to ASC [American Society of Cinematographers] meetings. Vilmos Zsigmond, who was one of my signatories to get into to ASC, whenever he saw me, he said, “You got to come to the meetings.” You know, and I said, “I know, Vilmos, but I’m not, you know, I’m not home most of the time.” Yeah, so I don't remember a lot of that.

INT: Do you remember of any issues or concerns addressed by the Guild, either Creative Rights, financial rights, production incentives, Internet theft or any issues where the Guild has been meaningful to you in your career?

ED: Yeah, well definitely, Internet theft and definitely affirmative action, you know, bringing in more people of color, definitely. That's something that, you know, that we always dealt with. Yeah, those were big issues that always came up, yeah. Yeah, I remember the whole Internet theft thing because when JUICE came out, Gerard [Gerard Brown] actually went and found a bootleg copy in Chinatown, you know. And it was obvious that somebody had sat in the movie theater with a camera and shot it because the movie started and you could see silhouettes of people trying to find their seats right in front of the camera. So, and then I got a friend of mine came from Hong Kong and bought me a copy of a movie I did called NEVER DIE ALONE just to show me the bootleg of it and the bootleg looked actually a lot better than the American DVD. So… [INT: What?] Yeah, yeah. And he got it from Hong Kong. So, yeah, you know, always getting, you know, always the problems with that stuff, yeah, the limiting the number of hours shooting, you know, because of the accidents some people had had, Crewmembers had had coming from sets, those are some things that the DGA and the ASC [American Society of Cinematographers] were dealing with, you know, limiting the number of hours, so you're not exhausting your Crew. So, yeah.

INT: What film, show, or TV movie that you directed are you most proud of?

ED: Probably my next one. Probably my next one 'cause I'm very critical of my stuff. I mean, you know, after I'm done with it, I don't watch it anymore. Yeah, I was really surprised to find out that JUICE had the life that it’s had because I couldn't watch it anymore. I mean, you know, I look at my stuff and I keep seeing my mistakes. Or I keep seeing stuff that I would do differently, you know. There were a lot of things in JUICE that I would have, you know, probably done differently, you know. So, I think it's probably gonna be my next project. I think my, you know, some things have been happening recently which look really interesting for the future. So, I'm really looking forward to that. I like to think that my best work is still ahead of me. [INT: Amen. That said, you know, I told you me and my brother watched JUICE 17 consecutive nights in a row.] Yeah, I couldn't do it. [INT: Over and over again.] I couldn't do it. You know, a lot of times people would come over to my house and say, “Let's watch one of your movies.” And I say, “Nope, nope, I can't watch any of my movies.” Although, you know, sometimes, you know, at night, before I go to bed, I'll be flipping channels and I'll see a film that I shot, you know, and I'll sit and watch it and look at it or, you know, distance, you know, having not seen it for a while helps a lot. But I'm still pushing for that good one, the one that really makes me feel really, really, really good. [INT: Word.]

INT: Do you have any, or what advice would you offer to new Filmmakers, aspiring Filmmakers, aspiring Directors that are starting out now or that are in the middle of their journey?

ED: Well, first thing, know why you wanna get into film in the first place. You know, why do you wanna be a Filmmaker? I think that's really important, why do you wanna be a Filmmaker? Is it because you think, you know, you can make a lot of money doing it? Or are you in love with the craft? Do you love movies? You have to love movies, you got to love the craft of visual storytelling. So, ask yourself that, why do you wanna make movies? And then also it's become easier to make movies nowadays than it ever has been with the digital technology we got. You can shoot a movie on a cell phone and still get 4K and download it onto your computer and edit it with effects. I'm continuously amazed. I saw some young brothers in Nigeria who shoot science fiction films on their cellphones. They got their own green screens. They were able to get old computers and they do their own composites and visual effects on the computers. They teach themselves computer graphics. And they're doing stuff like that. I'm continuously amazed, you know, and inspired, you know, by that kind of stuff 'cause that's just amazing stuff. So, I think, you know, with that in mind, write a script that you can do and make the movie you wanna make and try and get it into a theater or get into a festival, you know, get it seen. I think now with the streaming services it's easier to get a film, some films seen that could never get seen before. So, I think do that and know your film history. If you answer that question, you know, why you wanna make films in the first place, you know, look at other films. You got to know film history, you can't go into it without knowing any of that, you know, because that's where a lot of inspiration comes from, seeing how somebody else did something, you know. You look at all musicians, all artists, they all have their inspirations, they all have the people that they look at whose work inspired them to help them get to where they are now. And, you know, every film maker should have hers or his. [INT: Word.]

INT: What is the best part of directing and what is the worst part of directing?

ED: Well, the best part of directing is being the first audience for whatever it is you're making, you know, being surprised by what an Actor, by someone you cast pulls it all together, you know, and takes whatever you imagined further, you know, than you could have ever imagined it. So, that's the best part of it, you know, when you come home and realize you did a, hey that really worked, yeah, I think that'll be pretty cool. That, to me, is the best part of directing. The worst part of directing, I don't know. I guess, for me, it's getting up early in the morning. It's getting up at 4:30 in the morning, you know, it's just that trip from the bed to the shower. After I get out the shower, I'm okay. Beyond that, the worst part, I think, having to work with people who don't love it, who don't understand it but think they do and think they know more about it than you do when actually they know absolutely nothing about it and unfortunately, sometimes those are the folks that pull some of the big strings. That's the most difficult part.

INT: What are your top five, five favorite films?

ED: Okay, my five favorite films, all right. Now, it changes. Probably my favorite movie of all time is 2001 [2002: A SPACE ODYSSEY]. Okay, that's my favorite film of all time. I also love Hitchcock's VERTIGO. I also love Kurosawa's RASHOMON. What is that, three? [INT: Yep.] I also love Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER. The next one is anything by Orson Welles. Because it's liable to change. Because I love CITIZEN KANE, I love AMBERSONS [THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS], but I also love the CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, you know, which is an amazing piece of work and I love TOUCH OF EVIL. So, anything by Orson Welles, I'm good with it. [INT: Word.]

INT: It has been an honor and I'm so flattered that you asked and I mean, I did wanna say before we break, man, you have been such a tremendous inspiration and mentor to me and thank you because I would not be where I am without your example, without your generosity, and without your instruction. So, Master Ernest, it means the world that you asked me to do this, man, I can't even tell you.

ED: Well, you the man, you know. I mean, it's obvious you knew where you wanted to go and how to get there, so that made it easy. [INT: Thank you, brother.] It's been a pleasure, man. [INT: My pleasure, thank you.] No, my pleasure. [INT: No, my pleasure.] No, my pleasure.

INT: My name is Seith Mann, today is May 14th. I have just completed an interview with Master Ernest Dickerson for the Directors Guild of America's Visual History Program. We are conducting this interview virtually. I'm at The Marmara Park Avenue and Ernest is at the DGA in Los Angeles, California.