ED: So, we were invited to the premiere, the Crew as well as the Cast was invited to the premiere [of THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET]. And outside the theater, John [John Sayles] and Maggie [Maggie Renzi] were standing there with their envelopes paying off the Crewmembers as we walked in to see the film. Which was amazing, you know. You know, it was a really, really, really beautiful experience. 'Cause, you know, they really appreciate what a Crew does. So, it was an interesting experience 'cause, you know, Spike [Spike Lee] tried to get on as an AD [Assistant Director]. But John wouldn't hire him. And basically his attitude was, "Would Coppola hire Scorsese as an AD? No." He was actually paying Spike, you know, a big compliment. So, it was... [INT: That's beautiful.] And I mean, you know, I know Spike took it hard because he was trying to figure out a way of how to get into the business, you know. And you know, all through film school that was our big worry, "Is there life after film school?" And then, couple of years later he made SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT.

INT: So, can you talk about that a little bit? Can you talk about, you know, your work as a professional Cinematographer after BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET and then, when and how you made the transition into directing yourself?

ED: Well, after I did BROTHER, John Sayles invited me to shoot a music video he was doing for Bruce Springsteen, “Born in the U.S.A." So, I shot that video, which was cool. [INT: I did not realize you shot that video.] Then I got a job on a TV show called TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, and there were two film Crews working on that. There was the New York Crews and the LA Crews. And I was one of two Cinematographers doing the New York stuff. And shot that show, which was interesting because it was produced by the same company that was producing George Romero's stuff. And so, one of the episodes or actually maybe two of the episodes were directed by Michael Gornick, who was George Romero's Cinematographer at that time. He had shot, he didn't shoot NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, he shot MARTIN, then he also shot DAWN OF THE DEAD and he was getting ready to shoot DAY OF THE DEAD. And, you know, we got along great, you know, he's, you know, a Cinematographer who's now directing this little anthology show. And I'm DP'ing, we got along. And he invited me to come down and shoot second unit on DAY OF THE DEAD. So, that was interesting 'cause that was a chance to meet Romero and go down to Florida and shoot this opening of the movie that sets the tone for the whole thing, showing, you know, the world after the zombie apocalypse as it was back then. You know, which was kind of cool. So, I did that and then, I did TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, the first season, then TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, the second season. And then, I got a chance to direct a... no, shoot a movie called KRUSH GROOVE, which was a rap musical. And that was the job that got me into the union. You know, that got me into NABET [National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians]. And so, I got into NABET and, you know, that was good 'cause, you know, that was, you know, a really good paying job. And then, right after I was finishing that, you know, Spike [Spike Lee] had been trying to do this movie called THE MESSENGER. And he wanted me to shoot THE MESSENGER, but I wasn't gonna be available 'cause I was doing KRUSH GROOVE. And what happened was that the funding, he was gonna do THE MESSENGER, the funding for THE MESSENGER fell out at almost like the last second. And, you know, the financier pulled out, the whole production fell apart. And he didn't know what he was gonna do. And so, he didn't want to spend the next two years, you know, trying to raise money to do THE MESSENGER again, so he wrote another movie. He wrote a movie that he could do with hardly any money, you know, low budget. And something that he could shoot in basically one neighborhood.

ED: And by the time he did that, I finished up on KRUSH GROOVE and he [Spike Lee] says, "I got this movie called SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT, you want to shoot it?" And I said, "Yeah, I'm in." And so, that's how I got SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT, shot that in 12 days. We shot it in two six-day weeks. Our Crew was made up of, you know, folks we had gone to NYU [New York University Tisch School of the Arts] with. You know, we had a great relationship with TCS [Technological Cinevideo Services], which was a camera rental house, because they had serviced all the cameras at NYU. And so, when Spike and I were in film school we were Technical Assistants. And so, we had a great relationship with Carl Schietinger, who ran that place, ran TCS. And so, he was able to get the cameras for a low price. We decided to shoot it in Super 16, eventually for a blowup. Decided to shoot it in black and white. Why? Because RAGING BULL was still an influence. But also, you know, at that time before there was a lot of VHS or the ability to see movies on video, movies were showing on HBO. And a movie that we were looking at at that time was RUMBLE FISH, Coppola's RUMBLE FISH. And that was really hitting us. So, you know, Spike and I are talking about it, I forget who's idea it was. We decided to shoot SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT in black and white with one color sequence in the middle, you know. And so, you know, that's how we did that. And I didn't expect it to blow up the way it did. I don't know if Spike did either, you know, but I think it premiered at the San Francisco Film Festival. And he called me up the night after, the morning after the premiere. It premiered the night before. He called me up the next morning and said, "Ern," he said, "Five minutes into the movie, there was a citywide blackout." He said, "The projector went out, all the lights went out." And he said, "There was a blackout for like 25 to 30 minutes." He said, "Nobody left the theater." [INT: Oh wow.] And then when the power came back on everybody was still there and watched the movie and, you know, that's how that started.

ED: But the thing about it was that Spike [Spike Lee] had another Actor in mind for Mars Blackmon, 'cause Spike never acted in his films in film school. You know, Spike as an Actor was the last thing on anybody's mind, especially his. And he had an Actor who was gonna play Mars Blackmon [in SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT] and then at almost like the last second this guy got a real movie, you know. He went to Hollywood to shoot a real movie. And so, Spike was left high and dry, you know, without an Actor for that role, a pivotal role. And he said, "Hey, I know this character better than anybody, so maybe I should play it." And so, that's how he wound up playing Mars Blackmon. And it was kind of like a devil's bargain because I think for the next several films that he did, part of his agreement of the contract was that he had to have a role in it, you know. So, you know, that's how he wound up in SCHOOL DAZE and then DO THE RIGHT THING and then MO' BETTER BLUES, you know, and everything else. It was interesting 'cause now you see Spike doesn't act. He's not acting in too many of his films anymore, you know. But what was interesting was that whenever he was in front of the camera, I had to be the Director. And that put me in those shoes. And then I'd worked with a Chinese Director, Peter Wang, movie called THE LASER MAN, and I was the DP [Director of Photography] on that but he also acted in front of the camera. So, that also forced me to be the Director when he [Peter Wang] was in front of the camera. And so, I was getting all this, you know, I guess rehearsal, you know. And plus, you know, I always had a healthy respect for the craft of acting, and so even after shooting, you know, I remember on doing SCHOOL DAZE, sitting in the hotel bar after a day shooting with Giancarlo Esposito and talking about what I saw him doing with his character, you know, the choices he was making and what was in his head was what I was seeing what he was thinking, you know, really getting into the whole hand-eye coordinating of Actors and stuff. So, it was really, really interesting.

ED: And during that time, after I graduated from NYU [New York University] until I got BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET, when I was starting to think about getting that cab driver's license, a buddy of mine and I, brother named Gerard Brown from Howard University, I decided to write a film. And, you know, living in D.C. [Washington D.C.], after my first year I used to, I worked at the post office, my summer job was working at the post office. And you always had to check in by 6:59 in the morning, you know. So, I'm on the bus going to work and it's dark. And there are these little kids on the bus who look like they've been hanging out all night long. You know, I wondered what had they been doing? What were they getting into at night? What kind of adventures were they getting into at night? And then one of my favorite books has always been “Manchild in the Promised Land” by Claude Brown. And even he talked about, you know, there would be days where he just would not go home and he and his boys would be hanging out and getting in all kinds of mischief. And, you know, growing up in the projects of Newark, New Jersey, you know, we used to get into all kinds of mischief, you know, whenever I left my house my mother did not know what I was doing. And, you know, sometimes I would come home with a black eye and she'd be, "What happened to you?" You know. "Oh mom, I got into a fight." "What!" "Yeah, don't worry about it, mom." You know, it was, you know, that kind of stuff. She would've had a heart attack if she knew some of the stuff that me and my friends were doing. You know, the whole thing of jumping from rooftop to rooftop that I put in JUICE, you know, we used to do that, you know, when we were growing up as kids. You know, our own mortality was the furthest thing from our minds, you know, "Yeah, I can get over there." You know, so, I always thought that, you know, just that kind of a setting, you know, would be ideal for a thriller, a thriller involving kids who get involved in a deadly act. And so, started writing JUICE. And Gerard and I had, you know, the idea that maybe we could debut it ourselves as a Writer-Director team, you know. And this is the kind of thing that happens, you know, where my wife is pregnant, you know, and then the baby's coming. And I get one job and then I don't have a job and I'm taking care of the baby during the day and still writing the script, you know.

ED: So, we wound up writing JUICE and it wound up being called JUICE, you know, Gerard [Gerard Brown] and I were going through all kinds of names, you know, 'cause it was about power. It was about, you know, young men trying to find out their power. What is their power? What kind of influence can they have over their lives or over their environment, over their growing up. And so, we wrote, you know, this thriller that was about they inadvertently get involved in a murder, just trying to rob a store and one of 'em goes off. And so, we wrote JUICE and then I did BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET and that got me an Agent and, you know, I started, you know, getting occasional work here and there. And I showed my Agent the script to JUICE. And he said, "Take my advice, throw it away. You're never gonna make this. Nobody wants to see this, man, it's too dark, it's too... this is not, you know, there's no market for this kind of a movie." So, I was like, "Yeah, really? Shoot, okay." Gerard at that point was, you know, he had been a playwright at Howard [Howard University], he had a play that did really well. So, because of that he became a writer in residence at Joe Papp's [Joseph Papp] Public Theater in New York. And so, he was doing that, he wrote a new play that they were showing then. And then my career as a Cinematographer started to take off, so... and you know, I showed JUICE to several other people in the business, you know. And they just said, "Nah, forget it, you'll never get this made. You know, this is... it's too dark, it's too rough, man. You know, just kinda like forget about it." So, that's why JUICE wound up sitting on a shelf for like nine years. Because I got no encouragement at all. Showed it to good friends who were in the business, you know, whose opinions I valued, you know. And they said, "No, no, no. No. I would not see this movie, I would not go to see this movie. So, you know, if I'm not gonna go see it, you know, nobody else is gonna go see it. So, I think, you know, you'll never get it made, just forget about it." So, that's what happened. Meanwhile, I'm shooting, you know, shooting movies, you know, for Spike [Spike Lee]. You know, DO THE RIGHT THING and MO’ BETTER BLUES and those films.

ED: And it was while I was shooting JUNGLE FEVER I think, Gerard [Gerard Brown] got a new Agent. Or he was auditioning a new Agent or she was auditioning him. And she says, "You know, what movies have you written?" And he says, "Well, really only one, you know." I mean, we were working on a science fiction film, but it wasn't completed then. So, he showed her JUICE and this was about 1990. '90, '91 [1991]. And she said, "What's going on with this?" And he said, "Nothing." He said, "We got no traction on it at all." She says, "It's just sitting there?" He said, "Yeah." She says, "I can set this up right now." And he said, "Oh really?" She said, "Yeah." So, you know, I talked to her and she said that she could set it up. And, you know, when like I said, you know, we were hoping to set ourselves up as a Writer-Director team. So, next thing I know there's several production companies that are really interested in doing JUICE. You know, and one company that seemed the most interested, they sent me a list of Directors. A three-page list, my name was the last name on the third page. And so, it was like, "Okay, all right. Well, all right, well kinda thought that would happen but we can sell the script, right." "Yeah." Then we started getting notes. Script notes. Things like, "This is way too dark. Have you thought about making this more into a comedy? More of a comedy about, you know, growing up in Harlem and, you know, the trials of young African American manhood. You know, stuff like that. You know, really and you know, lighten it up, you know, funny banter, you know, really make it a fun comedy kind of a movie." And Gerard and I are getting these notes and we're like, "Nah. Nah." And the production company that wanted it had produced some pretty big movies. I probably shouldn't say, you know, but they were pretty big movies, you know, like... [INT: You can say, it's a Visual History.] Like LETHAL WEAPON films and, you know, it was actually somebody who I met years later and just fell in love with the guy, Dick Donner [Richard Donner], Dick Donner's company. They wanted nothing, you know, they said it would be better as a comedy, you know, and we basically said, "Thank you, but no thank you." Because, you know, we had been talking about movies that looked like, you know, that was a good, basic idea for a movie, it looked like it could've been okay. This character could've been okay, but it looked like it just got developed into a piece of shit. You know. And we just felt that that was happening with JUICE. And I said, "Hey, the heck with it, you know, my career as a DP [Director of Photography], I'm okay." I just got offered to get into the ASC [American Society of Cinematographers], you know. Gerard, you know, he's doing pretty good. So, we said, "Thank you, but no thank you." And we took the script back. Life goes on.

ED: Then I get a phone call. I get a phone call from a young British guy who says he read my script; he really wants to talk to me about it. His name is David Heyman. And so, we made an arrangement to meet at the Pink Tea Cup for brunch in the Village. [INT: Oh!] Well-known place. Is it still there? [INT: I don't know.] Wow. [INT: I don't know, I haven't been the Village yet.] I gotta find out. But it was a soul food place, you know, for those who don't know. But so, we met at the Pink Tea Cup and he said, "Tell me how you see the movie?" And I said, you know, "This movie has to be real. It has to be raw. I mean, that's what was scaring people about it, that I wanted to make it raw. It's not a studio film, it's got to be shot on location." And I said, "And there are no Actors that we know of who can play these roles." I said, "We gotta go after, you know, new, young, dynamic, unknown talent." And I said, "It's got to be shot in Harlem, you know. The music has to be the music of these kids' lives, so it has to be a great soundtrack that also works dramatically with the film." You know, and I told him all this, bah-dah-bah-dah-bah-dah-boom-bah-dah-boom-bah-dah-boom. And he says, "I like what you have to say about it. Do you want me to get funding for it?" I said, "Yeah." Turned out David Heyman's father was partners with Chris Blackwell in Island Records and their offshoot was Island Pictures. And, you know, Island Records was the company that made Bob Marley. And Chris Blackwell was Bob Marley's Manager. And so, and Island Pictures, you know, they were a little independent film arm and so he basically raised three million dollars. And that was my first film as a Director and it was David Heyman's first film as a Producer. 'Cause a couple of years later, I think it was a couple of years later, maybe around the same time, he found out about this book, the galleys of this book that hadn't been published yet about a young boy that goes to this school for wizards. And he bought the rights to that book and all the sequels in perpetuity. So, he wound up producing the HARRY POTTER films and he also directed GRAVITY. Oh no, he produced GRAVITY, he produced all those films, he produced 'em.

ED: And it [JUICE] was a great experience. And, you know, looking for unknowns. The only Actor of my four leads who had done anything was Jermaine Hopkins. He had been in the film LEAN ON ME with... yeah. So, and plus he was a homeboy, he was from Newark, New Jersey. [INT: Oh, you knew him?] Yeah. Yeah, 'cause I wound up shooting a pilot for a TV series and he had a small, he had a role in the pilot as a young arsonist. This young kid who was setting fire to, that was being hired by a corrupt landlord to, you know, burn up buildings so that he can get the insurance money. But we started going after unknowns. And my Casting Director, Jaki Brown-Karman [Jaki Brown], you know, I told her, I said, "You know, I think you should go to all the high schools of the performing arts, you should go to, you know, neighborhood theater groups, church theater groups, you know, and you know, just put a wide net out." And that's what she did. She went through hundreds of applications, if not maybe thousands. And, you know, she narrowed it down and then brought me in. And, you know, looking at different people, you know, I found out there was some people who I looked at and rejected who have since gone on to become, you know, bigger Actors, you know, now, you know, in their own right. But, you know, that's the way the ball rolls, I guess. But, you know, I was closing in on who I wanted for my main cast. And the character that we wrote of Bishop was the person I was having trouble finding. You know, 'cause Bishop is an angry young man but he's also the catalyst for a lot of the problems that our young protagonists have in the movie. And, you know, he's the one that's always questioning, you know, really putting that questioning thought in their heads, you know, what can they do to get juice? What can they do to get more power in the neighborhood? You know, they're being bullied by the local gang, they don't have any money. You know, they really feel like they're low men on the totem pole. And juice is something they want to get. And so, I was having a hard time finding that person, you know, finding the guy to play Bishop. And one day, you know, we were looking at rappers, you know, we were definitely looking at rappers. And one day, Treach, from Naughty by Nature, came in and did an audition. Did a pretty good job, but he had this guy he was hanging out with. It was this young guy who was hanging out with him. And I'm starting to get desperate by this time, you know. You know, to me casting is the scariest part of putting a movie together because you just have those weeks where you just don't think you're gonna find that right person. You just don't think you're gonna find him. And I was at that point. I was like, "Fuck, you know, where am I gonna go find, you know, when am I gonna get my Bishop?"

ED: So, in desperation [to cast Bishop for JUICE] this guy, I say, "Hey, what about you, man? You want to read?" He said, "Me?" I said, "Yeah. You know, what are you doing? Are you busy?" He said, "No. I'm cool." I said, "Can you stay for a little while and read this?" So, I gave him the sides to the character of Q, the role eventually went to Omar Epps. And he went away and he read it and did a reasonable job, a pretty, you know, interesting job. It was obvious that he was an Actor, you know, or knew acting. You know, and again out of sheer desperation but just something in the back of my head said, "Try him out for Bishop." And I said, "Man, can you stay longer? And can you read for this role?" And I gave him the sides for Bishop. He went away, I think came back about 45 minutes to an hour later, did Bishop and, you know, I don't know about you, but when it hits me, I don't let the Actor know it right away. You know, I'm like, "Oh shit, this is...," and I said, "Okay, very good, very good. What's your name, man?" He said, "Tupac." "Oh really? Tupac, it's an interesting name." He said, "Yeah, I'm named after a Mayan deity." I said, "Oh. What's your last name?" "Shakur." I said, "Okay, Tupac Shakur. Okay. Do you... are you any relation to Assata Shakur?" He said, "Yeah, that's my aunt." I said, "Oh man, she's still in Cuba? How's she doing?" You know. He said, "She's cool, you know." He said, "We talk to her whenever we can, you know." I said, "Yeah, well just, next time you talk to her, tell her that, you know, we're thinking about her, you know, and praying for her and stuff." And I said, "Okay, we have your information how to contact you?" He said, "Yeah." "Okay." Walked out, door closes. "That's the man. That's him." And we looked at each other, "Yeah, that was pretty serious." 'Cause the thing that he was able to capture that nobody else did, all of Bishop's bragging and braggadocio and wanting to be a gangster and, you know, all that posturing comes from pain. And he was the person that kind of understood that. Come find out later on that Tupac had studied acting at the Baltimore School of the Performing Arts. Not only had he studied acting, he'd also studied ballet. That's one thing a lot of people don't know about Tupac, he had trained in ballet. [INT: I didn't know that.] Yeah.

ED: And so, at this point he [Tupac Shakur] was a background singer and a roadie for Digital Underground. And he became our Bishop. And the rest is history. You know, because what was interesting is while we were shooting the movie [JUICE], he always had a notebook and he was always sitting over on the side, you know, in between setups, you know, writing. And I never saw what he was writing, you know, I didn't know what he was writing. I didn't know. I like to think that a lot of what he was writing became a lot of the music that we heard about a year later. And I'd recently found out that actually while we were helping, we're pushing him up as an Actor with our film, his management was also simultaneously pushing him up trying to get him to record, you know. So, and we were both pushing him up independent of each other, working with each other without even knowing each other. Which was an interesting way because when Tupac hit, he hit big. And so, you know, he created that character and what was great was that the four guys hit it off because the concept was that the four young men together had to create a fifth person, the group mind. And they did. And so, that was Omar Epps' first gig and he's gone on to an acting career and Khalil Kain's first gig. And come to find out that Khalil's father was Kain [Gylan Kain] from The Last Poets, you know. So, yeah. Yeah, Black history, man. Black history right there in front of my camera. It was amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, for a first film it was a great experience.

INT: Can you talk about, you know, what was the rehearsal process? How did you help these four strangers become this fifth person? You know, how did you cultivate that camaraderie, that you know, seemingly real friendship that they had [in the film JUICE]?

ED: Well, what I did, I actually narrowed the candidacy down to 12, 12 guys. Then I did mixing and matching, where we would do readthroughs, you know, and read through the certain scenes. And I would try different guys with different guys. And that drew me to those final four guys. And the other guys that were part of the 12, they got other roles in the film like, you know, when Q walks in and the guy's holding up the bar. He got a role. He was like one of those guys, you know. So, you know, everybody even though those 12 guys, everybody got a role. But it was actually how those four guys wound up getting together, you know. Seeing them, you know, playing the different people against each other, try this combination, that combination, that combination, but when that one combination came together you could just see the magic, you know. And I was already convinced that Omar [Omar Epps] was my Q. And Tupac [Tupac Shakur], you know, was gonna be Bishop. Steel in the script was not a heavyset kid, he was a little skinny kid. He was supposed to be kinda like the opposite of his name, you know. This little skinny shrimp. But Jermaine [Jermaine Hopkins] just brought so much humor, you know, just his improvisation that he did, you know, bringing the humor to it. And Khalil [Khalil Kain], when Khalil did that, you know, he looked like a teenager but Khalil I think was about 31 years old. And so, the idea was to have somebody, you know, he had that gravitas that I wanted the leader of the crew to have, you know. And so, it was great.

ED: You know, and I was fortunate enough, you know, I had met... I became, you know, I knew the members of Public Enemy from, you know, having done DO THE RIGHT THING and the “Fight the Power” video and stuff like that. So, that was the sound that I wanted for the movie [JUICE], so I went after Hank Shocklee. And Hank and Keith [Keith Shocklee], you know, they supervised the score and also helped bring in a lot of the other talent in the film. And what was interesting was that in the script, the original script, the role that eventually went to Queen Latifah, actually was written for Afrika Bambaataa. But when we went to him to offer him the role, he turned us down. He said, "No way." And so, I had met Queen Latifah when we were shooting JUNGLE FEVER, when she played the waitress in Sylvia's Restaurant. Yeah. And so, one of the Producers said, "Hey, you know, we got a line in to Queen Latifah, you know, how about her?" And you know, turned out Latifah was another, you know, homeslice, you know, she's from Newark, New Jersey, too. So, you know, a lot of Newark in the house. So, she came in and she had fun with it. And that was cool.

ED: And I actually put my mother in the film [JUICE]. My mother has an acting role in the movie. [INT: Which one is your mom?] She's the lady that sells Bishop the gun. [INT: The guns?] I mean, sells Q the gun. What had happened was that she had just retired, she was a librarian. And, you know, she's, you know, one of the people that got me looking at movies since I was a kid, you know. And, you know, when I was a kid, you know, I would, you know, really get her to take me to see the latest Japanese, you know, monster movie. You know. I remember her taking me and I know she just had to humor me, but you know, going to see RODAN and THE MYSTERIANS, you know, and movies like that. You know, always loved the fantasy films. And so, she was retiring and my mom always had projects for herself. And so, she was gonna retire and then I forget how that happened but she decided to come to the set one day and it was her first day on the set. And I think I talked her into it or Spike [Spike Lee] talked her into having a little extras role, an extra role in JUNGLE FEVER. And there's a scene when Wesley Snipes and Lonette McKee are having an argument in Bloomingdale's. And in the background this lady is kinda like, you know, listening to the whole conversation. That was my mom. [INT: Oh wow.] And so, that was her first day spending on set and you know, she just loved the atmosphere, she just loved the whole thing of it. She says, "Wow, you know, I'm gonna retire. Maybe I can do this when I retire. How can I do this?" I said, "Well, mom, you gotta have a SAG card." She said, "Well, how am I gonna get a SAG card?" I said, "Well, it helps to have a role in a movie." She said, "How am I gonna have a role in a movie?" I said, "I don't know, mom. I don't know." So, when I'm in the middle of casting JUICE in pre-production, there's a character named Sweets, who in the script was a man who sells... I think it was a man with thick glasses who sells Q the gun. And, you know, sometimes I get the best inspiration in the shower. In the morning, you know, the morning shower, that's where sometimes you get some of the best inspiration. And I think I dropped the soap and I'm reaching for the soap and I said, "Bing. My mother." 'Cause I had thought about giving her a little walk-on role as one of Q's teachers. And writing a line for her, you know, like, you know, "How long has it been since you've been to school," or something like that 'cause he'd been playing hooky for a long time. But then I, you know, knowing growing up in Newark, New Jersey, in the projects, I knew that a lot of my mother's friends and associates were gangsters. You know. Gentlemen gangsters, you know. You know, so I knew that, you know, that she just knew a lot of people that were kinda like in that, you know, that part of life. So, I figured she could do it. So, she did. She was so cute, she really sat there practicing with the automatic. You know, I said, "Okay, mom, I want you to say, 'Are you Lorraine Powell's boy?' 'Yeah.' 'Tell your mom, Jacqui says hi.'" I said, "So, you gotta hit it with the heel of your hand and drive the clip into the handle." She practiced it. And did a great job. Now, she's immortalized forever, you know. [INT: That's beautiful.] Of course, you know, after that whenever I got another movie it was always like, "Okay, what's my part?" And I would say, "I don't know, mom, I don't know." She said, "Listen, Marty Scorsese always puts his mother and his father in his movies." And I said, "I know, mom. I know." "Let me figure it out." So, for the next couple of films, yeah, she always had a little role. Which was cool, you know. It was, you know, a way of hanging out with her and you know, just kinda giving back, you know, for having turned me on to movies. [INT: That's dope.]

INT: Tell us about your next couple of films. What were your next features and how did they come about?

ED: The next... Yeah, I was looking for a thriller. And I had actually been meeting with the great writer, Richard Matheson, about adapting this classic horror novel called the “Conjure Wife”. And it's a tale of witchcraft and actually, you know, I had conversations with Denzel [Denzel Washington] about it, about playing the main character. It's a great story. It's actually been made into a movie a couple of different times. But I wanted to do an update on it. It's about this college professor who's, you know, he believes in logic, he believes in what could be seen, he believes in, you know, what can be quantified by, you know, touch, sight, sound, you know. And one day after he's written his latest novel and he's just kinda like wandering around the house, he finds that his wife has all these charms throughout and he doesn't understand what's going on. When she comes home he says, "What is all this?" And he basically finds out his wife has been practicing witchcraft for years. And you know, and he thinks it's stupid, it's ridiculous, it's superstition, "You gotta get rid of this stuff." She said, "No, listen. There are evil forces that have been trying to get you and I've been keeping it away from you." You know, and he says, "Look, you're a logical 20th century woman. You gotta get rid of this stuff." And she says, "Please, I can't be responsible for what's gonna happen to you if you make me get rid of my charms." And he makes her burn all the stuff up. Then his life starts falling apart. And that's when it all starts. So, it was really weird because we were really tracking down the rights to it. And there was this one lawyer who was on it, I had a great meeting in England, you know, with a production company who was interested in funding it. And we were really tracking down all the information. And then the writer and all of, I mean, the lawyer and all of his information was killed in a car crash. He was killed in a car crash. The car burnt up, all his information burnt up. So, it's that movie that I've always wanted to make but never could, you know, and he was tracking down the rights. It had really... the short story, no, actually it was a novel, it was a novel, had a whole convoluted history and then, you know, one movie that had been made, it went through all these different companies. And the rights, it was like a really, you know, twisty-turny maze of information. So, he wound up dying in the car crash and his, the research that he had found, 'cause we heard he was getting close, burned up with him.

ED: So, I was looking for other material. And I was able to find this script. I guess I can tell this story. Yeah. I got sent this script called SE7EN. And I read it and it was... Andy Walker [Andrew Walker], why do I know that name? It turned out that Andy had been a PA on a film that I had photographed in New York called ENEMY TERRITORY. And Andy wrote the script and it was a hell of a script. Changes had been made. It was originally set in New York. And it was set to be this little film and my Agent at the time said that, she said, "Okay, if you're interested just bear in mind, they're getting ready to throw the script away 'cause they think it's just too dark and too bloody and there's no way anybody's gonna want to make this thing." And so, I said, "Well, let me try and sell it." So, I figured out how to make it. Because yeah, it's a macabre script. You know, it had some pretty macabre, you know, images in it. And one of my big visual influences was KLUTE, the movie KLUTE. Which was directed by Alan Pakula and photographed by Gordon Willis. And so, that was kind of like my visual role model going in to try and pitch it. And, you know, I'm a strong believer that sometimes, you know, making the audience think they're seeing something when you don't actually show it to them, you know, is better, you know. The movie THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE has this reputation for being this bloody, gory, you know, massively bloody film. But there's none of that in it. It's all suggested. It makes you think you saw that, but you didn't. And to me that's, you know, how to make it. You know, you had the body in the body bag just before, and you zip! And before it opens up enough to actually see what's going on, you know, you cut away. And so, you know, that was my approach. You know, and I went in and I had a meeting with the Producers. And I thought it was a great meeting--