Original subtitles

- And, sir, who are you? - Dmx, aka king David.

And I'm Ernest dickerson, the director.

- And also here is... - Jim Gibson, the screenwriter.

So this is where we meet king David.

I'm a little older, older there,

but you can't really tell how much I've aged in this.

You know, I think that, you know, in person, you saw better that I looked older in person

than I come across... than I look on film.

Yeah, but black don't crack.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Could be about 50 in that, you know?

This is where we find out that he's writing a book.

That's what the talking is all about.

So, tell us about this car that we found.

You guys found the car. I initially found a carjust like it, you know,

at a dealership on sunset.

We went there together.

I went and saw the car. I was like, "come see this car",

'cause I went looking for a Cadillac.

Way in the back, they had a stutz. And I was like, "whoa!"

You know, I remember seeing it on TV in one movie... what was that? Night shift?

Mm-hm.

I remember seeing that. I was like, "that's a hot car." That's the car of a king.

I mean, 'cause it's not about being a pimp.

You know, a hustler, a player, a fiend.

It's about being a king, you know what I mean? That's what he was, man.

I'm not gonna say he was, you know, the best king,

or the most righteous-ruling king.

- Yeah, he was a king. - He was still a king.

So, king David was originally created by Donald goines.

Jim had the task of making it into a screenplay,

'cause even in the book, king David's pretty vivid.

- Bad, bad. - Cold-blooded, cold-blooded.

Yeah, this is Mike ealy.

He was good. It was good to work with him, you know what I mean?

Serious... serious actor. You know what I'm saying? And played a serious character.

His character was serious.

Yeah, he's intense. I mean, his audition was really intense.

It actually made me, you know, want to... research my thing a little more.

Like, okay, I mean, this is, you know, this is not

"just do what you do" type of thing.

This is "learn a little more about what you're gonna do"

type of thing, and carry it like that.

Remember how he wouldn't go to the table read?

He said, "I don't want to meet x. I don't want to get to like him."

"I don't want to get to know him because I want to hate him."

"Afterwards, I'll be cool with him."

Didn't want to have any connection with you at all.

- It works. - I seen him at casting.

But it was bunk talk, 'cause I kind of felt the same way about him.

"This is the nigga that's gonna kill me."

I'm like, just out of respect for him, you know, off the screen,

man to man, it was "we”, what's up? How you doing?" And that was it.

We'd pass in the hallway. "How you doing?" We kept it moving.

Not to say that there was any animosity there, but I guess that helps.

It's that method, you know? It's like living the role.

If you'd had a connection, it would have been harder.

If I'd been friends with him,

it would've been harder for me to try to kill him.

"You're a regular Tony Montana."

You know what I mean? I can say that and almost feel it.

And be two strangers, coming together.

We didn't spend much time together on the set.

Afterwards, you know, it was, "okay? Yo, what up, dog?"

"I liked you in this, I liked you in that." You know?

That's Antwon Tanner. He's amazing in the movie, as blue.

That scene before, he was just kicking the shit out of that guy. It's amazing.

You know, he reminds me of... these two guys remind me of the dudes in belly.

The one that had to kill the other one, in the restaurant.

One was bald-headed and the other had a little bit of hair.

It was like opposites, but they were partners.

I love that little touch.

It's almost like a Laurel and Hardy kind of vibe, the silent look between 'em.

We were lucky to find this location, this bar.

Worked out really well, 'cause we only had 18 days to shoot this film in.

A lot of the success of working it out on the schedule

was having no company moves.

We were always trying to find all the locations pretty close together.

It made working easier.

A lot of locations in this are in the same building,

different rooms in the same building.

One of my favorite shots is coming up. This is my gq shot, right here.

- See how clean that car looks? - That's a gq shot.

That's the picture they showed me yesterday.

I was, "damn, I look hot in a suit."

I just didn't feel comfortable. That was one of the first days, too.

Had to slow the walk down. Couldn't walk like I normally walk.

- "Enter the motherfucking dragon." - Gotta give a shout out to luenell,

who was amazing as a Ernest dickerson discovery, her first movie.

- Her first movie? - She'd done bit parts.

- She was in the rock. - Was she?

Yeah, she was captured. There she goes. Luenell.

Really funny. She's funny in stand-up. She stands up, man. She's hilarious.

Could you turn the TV up a little, without stopping the recording process?

Yo, it up. All right.

So we see that she's not happy to see king David.

They got a lot of history.

You got some really cool shots in this joint, man.

And this... her nails, you know? You know, that's great.

So we're doing a lot of talking about moon in this film so far, so we'll meet moon.

They're just dripping contempt for each other. It's beautiful.

This was a great set that my production designer

was able to pull off with nothing.

This bar was actually undergoing renovation.

They let us do some of the renovating and keep it in there for them.

I think our first day was here.

I remember I walked on that set and I said, "this movie's gonna go like silk."

- First day's always the hardest. - Here's David arquette.

She just called him Hemingway.

Clifton Powell.

Clifton Powell is one of the great underappreciated actors in america,

but he's in a lot, he works a lot.

He plays this kind of person well.

He's got a lot of range, too. He played cutty in dead presidents.

And there was a horror film I saw.

He played a general of an army troop

that comes in to protect a town or something from an alien invasion.

And he loves to riff too. He's great.

Yeah, you know, there's something to just, you know, cursing. You can't just...

It's the combination and the emphasis you put on certain words.

- It's the rhythm. - Yeah, everybody don't have that.

You know, every movie that I do, when iwatch it,

I say, "I could have did that better, I could have did that better."

It's always, "I could have did that thing right there better."

What's that old saying? A poem's never finished. It's walked away from.

I think every artist feels that way about everything.

After a while, I can't look at my films, the films that I've directed.

After the premiere, I'm not gonna look at this for a long time.

I'm the same way with my movies, you know?

The whole house would be in there watching it on TV, and I'm like...

"I'm going outside."

Let's give a little shout out to tiny lister, who plays rockie.

- See him in a second. - Tiny's great.

Tiny's also one of the underappreciated actors. He's done some great stuff.

He played everything from a thug in Friday

to the president in the fifth element.

Not of the United States. President of the federation.

The world federation.

He was in charge of the earth.

The way he plays it on his face.

I love this scene. And you did that amazing setup.

I was talking about that in one of the interviews, the way he pauses, like...

He goes off on the side with him alone. It's all in his eyes.

Mike's character probably has the least amount of dialogue.

Absolutely. He's silent and determined.

A movie that I gave him to look at in preparing

was a French film, le samourai'.

It's about the day-to-day life of an assassin, how he lives alone. Butjust to focus.

I told Mike he's one person, one bullet.

You know, it's very precise, very precise.

And there you go.

Tiny.

I didn't want to give him much dialogue.

I was so happy it was an actor like him, so he could seem like a killing machine.

You just got such a performance out of him.

Now, drew sidora as Ella is great in this.

This is the little sister.

Yeah, it's funny, she looks like my actual sister-in-law.

She looks like my real-life sister-in-law.

Night falls.

I wish we'd done more between these guys.

- To show the relationship. - Yeah. Luenell is great.

Great at improvising.

In the deleted scenes they'll show stuff that sets up him,

but it wasn't necessary.

He comes in the middle and you get a little mystery about David arquette's character.

But he lives in the neighborhood, she's comfortable around him.

He's just sort of observing life and seeing things, and then it goes crazy.

We're watching a lot of the movie.

This is one of my favorite parts.

Matthew libatique was my cinematographer.

- Who? - Remember Matty?

Yeah, Matty. What up, Matty?

It's beautiful lighting here.

I'm sorry.

No, you not. He don't mean it.

The thing is, it's so intense and people get freaked out by that.

But when you realize the context of it later, you know what was going on with him.

X, you just nailed this, man.

Thank you. I felt this whole scene, too.

'Cause you capped it off great.

I wanted this to be like "dueling banjos."

When I wrote the dialogue for it,

just riffing off each other, back, back, back, thrust, parry.

"Grizzly Adams-looking motherfucker."

- You made that up, didn't you? - Yeah. No, the grizzly Adams...

That was in the script? Okay.

I thought he would be wearing more

like Kim's and look a little more camping.

But it was great. But that "excuse my back..."

So disrespectful. It's beautiful.

And the real shit is, that really is some real shit, you understand that?

You know, that's some jail shit. You don't just turn your back on a motherfucker.

If they fuck around, you get snuffed or something, banged up, you know?

That uneasiness there. Does he recognize her?

"How old are you?" Yeah, she's from some place.

"Shit, grizzly."

You know what it's gonna cost to fix?

That's what I love. He's so cool, he's just concerned about the car.

He licks the blood like a samurai.

I'm asking you a question. Do you know who the fuck I am?

Nigga, do you?

Heavy, big statement.

The scene we're talking about, I don't think Mike and x rehearsed it

until a few minutes before.

Mike was saving it all.

- I had to tell him... - Oh!

I really had to find that sound of it breaking apart, to get the right effect.

I had to tell him, "use that motherfucker, man."

Bang, you know? That's how you bang a nigga, man.

I appreciate the respect. It's like, "you know how hard..." And I'm like, "nah."

Pop, pop, pop, pop. You know?

I have a polaroid of me and Antwon.

He's got his arm around me and he's got the pick coming out of his eye.

It looks like it's from a zombie movie. It's amazing.

Yeah. It was tough doing that. I remember we had to shoot it in reverse.

I had to make sure I couldn't poke his eye out.

So it was done in reverse and speeded up just a little bit.

Then there's a hidden dissolve in there to make it work.

Shit.

Now it's all coming down.

I love the lighting in this scene. Matty did a great job.

I love the lighting in every scene.

It's like a different kind of movie.

I love the look on tiny's face coming up.

This is supposed to be New York?

In the original draft of the script.

Right. I came back to New York.

But I took out all references to New York. We were shooting in la.

Being from the New York area,

if I see stuff that ain't New York, it don't work for me.

Like movies shot in Canada.

We shot the whole thing in la, but it's sort of undetermined east coast Metropolis.

Yeah, it could be Detroit, it could be Cleveland, it could be Chicago.

It looks amazing. You pulled it off.

I don't think anyone questions it when they see the movie.

Yeah, that scene right there.

Some people thought it was New York.

Maybe I could have gotten away with it. But I like stylizing it like that.

Not being definite about where it is.

This was from the book, details goines would have,

that the character would have behind his wet bar an arsenal behind a mirror.

That was the kind of stuff, you know?

That's goines. Goines wrote about stuff he saw.

For fans of the book, there were some liberties taken.

But I tried to be really true to the spirit.

X, I think you and David played this scene beautifully.

This was the last night of shooting, too.

- It was? - The last stuff before you split.

That coffin, I did that the same night.

- That was the night before. - The coffin wasn't the last night?

No. This was the last night. You were getting ready to cutout.

Remember we did this and the drug dealers?

Yeah.

This is a poor man's process. The car is standing still.

It's not a moving shot. It's a handheld camera.

A masterful lighting job by Matty libatique, to give the impression of movement.

This is a moving shot.

I was gonna say, this kid is incredible!

- The cut helps put it together. - Here comes Mr. Eric Payne.

All available light.

The lighting that was there. This is available light.

We were really able to test the limits of Kodak's vision stock.

And shoot a lot of available light stuff.

He works in the w.

Or he did. I don't see him there anymore.

Did I tell you the story how in casting he came up to me and said...

You know, mentioned that I had dated his mother when I was in high school?

Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"You're my father. Dad!"

He's good, though.

This garage is amazing. It had those old lamps, that beautiful yellow cast.

Now, the score here, this is all silent in the score. This is George Duke.

- The master. - The master.

Working with Damon blackman. "Grease."

The orchestration is very eerie.

- These guys are supposed to be very silent. - So unsettling.

So it took us a night and a half to shoot this whole scene.

Everything you see coming up.

- How you did that... - I had to storyboard it.

I know you did, but still...

We selected the location 'cause it had enough light for us to shoot there

and not have to do a lot of lighting ourselves,

just bounce from setup to setup.

Do some lighting if we had to, like here inside the car,

but outside it's what's there.

And I really do like the coloring. Like I said, it's a whole other kind of movie.

The styling, man, it's...

It's colorful but not corny.

And here we go.

Oh!

That shot freaks people out.

Turned his shit into spaghetti.

- Mike doing his rolls. - Yo, I loved this. This shot is crazy.

That's fucking bananas, man.

Every time somebodyjumps on a windshield, all they do is hold on.

For, like, 20 blocks. It's like,

"why you just don't shoot the motherfucker, man?

When Mike did that, I think the...

What do you call those damn things?

The blank went off real close to his ear.

When he rolled off the car, he was actually stunned, because he couldn't hear.

We were lucky nothing happened, but...

Mike had never used guns before.

- For real? - Yeah.

Oh, poor guy.

This is fucked up. He lifted his sister off her fucking feet, man.

Sis flew about eight feet.

This is the most beautiful shot.

Did this like the pieta, and then it pulls back

and you see all the carnage and the aftermath.

Thank you, but while we were shooting it, she was freezing.

'Cause she had the blood all over her, and it was cold and the floor was cold.

We were shooting in February, you know? And it was a little chilly up there.

Shit, I had to take a bath in that fucking blood, man.

You talk about freezing?

Yo, I was like, "get me the fuck outta here."

Oh, my god, I forgot about that.

When you got stabbed, there was a pool hall across from the location.

You go down there... it wasn't a pool hall, it was a taxi-dancer place.

They pay to dance.

X says, "I'm gonna shoot pool."

He's covered in blood, looks like he's been stabbed. No one batted an eye.

"Let me get some change."

Nobody asked what happened, nothing. Got the table.

Eric Payne in the house. That's my cousin, man.

The guy playing the orderly, that's my cousin.

He lives across the street from me,

literally like counter-corner to my apartment.

I see him sometimes in the neighborhood.

I love him in this scene.

The perfect tone, you know?

- I seen him before. - Oh, he's been in a lot of stuff.

He was in my first film, juice. He's been in a bunch of stuff.

- School daze, with spike. Drop squad. - What was the one before that?

- School daze. - Oh, okay.

The bequest is from the book. A lot of people think it's unconvincing.

They'll say in the movie that doesn't make sense. Why would he leave it?

But that's the thing, it's like this curse he's inherited.

And I love the way Eric plays this.

This kind of drama you have to stylize it because it is, you know...

Goines wrote about what he saw but it was pretty extreme.

But this is where the movie takes its turn, because it's been real time till now,

and now the odyssey's gonna get really weird.

"Very well."

Now, this shot here, this is your car. This is a second-unit shot that we did.

We were shooting car stuff to tie all this stuff together.

Man, this car is great, right?

I'll show you what's gonna happen.

Okay, he's sitting, thinking about what he's gonna do.

Trying on your ring.

- Thinking. - This is a really good movie.

Then he starts doing the blinking on the blinkers.

He's gonna go the other way.

Man, we could not get the blinkers on that car to work for nothing, man.

It wouldn't work, you know.

The blinkers wouldn't work, the simplest shot in the world.

The arm for the blinkers is hanging down now.

The electrical system was shot. You know?

So the blinks are actually digitally laid in. You know?

It was supposed to be the simplest shot. Do it, get out of there.

Just the car sitting there with the blinkers going. Left-right.

Wasn't that easy, man.

I had to lock it off so we could do it digitally.

When you're shooting, you just never know what's gonna happen.

David is wonderful. It's all about the face.

It's not about the lines. You get the sense...

That's a mean fucking car, man. I should show up to the premiere in that car.

- Oh, you should. - That would be sick.

- You got it, right? - Yeah, I got it.

X owns that car.

I'll show up to the premiere in that. I put a banging system in there already.

And here's daddy.

I just saw moon as just like this old corrupt gangster, you know?

Borderline pedophile.

A little more than borderline.

- Just this corrupt, decadent guy, you know? - With no morals.

Seen and done it all,

so he was trying to find his experiences in weird places.

Who knows where he would have gone if he had lived?

Tiny's great.

Tiny's a so much better dramatic actor.

An intense brother.

I think we cast the two little girls in the background pretty well too.

They really are creating a character back there, two characters.

So, this is gonna be playing while the movie's going?

You can alternate onto this track.

You can watch the movie with its sound.

And then, if you wanna hear us talk about it, the creators of the movie...

And the star and producer of the movie.

Folks might want to talk about little things that went wrong.

There's a market for it.

Film students. I wish I had this when I was in film school.

- I wanna go to film school. - Miles in the back.

But David arquette did a fabulous job in this.

- I mean, it's all in his face. - What's up, bazzi?

- I'm just gonna talk to them quick. - The man's on the phone.

All right. How you doing, bazzi? All right, love you, bazzi.

- Who's buzzy? - Bazzi, my sister-in-law.

She's immortalized on DVD forever.

And this is the transition into the first flashback.

This is what you been writing.

We did these voiceovers several times.

It starts off in the casket, right?

We watched it from the beginning just now when it says...

Oh, okay, well, yeah, we watched a lot of the movie, though.

When knew you were in the casket, that's when you were rapping.

- That's how I tell the story? - Yeah, you were singing that.

It's all been in real time up until this.

Now it's back and forth from past to future.

- We get all the context. - We go back ten years.

Yeah, we watched... This is another movie.

- In la. - Oh, yeah.

This is america.

All you need is a dream and the will to make it happen.

And some big-ass shades.

The way it's out right now,

this is where we really find out that David's a writer.

Before, in an earlier cut of the film,

we had some scenes you'll see in the deleted scenes.

- The editor... - Wait, that's not in the movie?

With him and the editor?

- Just the end where he... - When he brings him the story.

But the beginning where he first talks to him, gets the challenge...

But that's important. What comes across is that he's a good samaritan,

but he also sees a story, something where

you get a perspective into a world, you know?

How does that change his perceptions of it?

Maybe in the beginning he thinks king David is a cool, glamorous guy, or interesting.

And by the end of the journey his opinion changes 180.

What was interesting is that, in the book, David's character, Paul,

never really gets involved in the action, he just gets king David's diary and reads it.

He never leaves the apartment. That was one of the changes I made.

It seemed it wouldn't be interesting

to just cut back to a guy sitting in his apartment the whole movie,

complaining about neighbors banging on the doors.

It works in the book. It's a literary thing.

He's sort of a vessel through which you get David.

One of the changes we made was to make him a more active character.

Yeah, you need to involve him in it and really be the audience's guide.

That's what I love about what you did with the screenplay, Jim.

A lot of themes that goines hinted at and started to go in some directions and didn't,

maybe he changed his mind, you went there, you explored some of those things

that were suggested and hinted at in his books.

- That's the same kitchen, right? - Same kitchen.

This is Mike going back to his place. You'll see later it's his childhood home as well.

Little picture of his sister and this other woman.

Remember in the beginning of the film, Mike has a tattoo on his chest that says "edna."

A clue for you.

Again, he's very like the samurai. He's just on his mission.

He's not thinking of anything right now,

he's just gotta get revenge and he's gonna go out.

What was that? We'll find out later.

And there's Ella, Ella's picture as a little girl.

That horrible shot.

Do they show page at all in there? The sister?

Oh, yeah.

She's up there with little x. Aisha Tyler.

She really does talk like...

She's great. We were really lucky to get her.

Considering we kept her waiting almost all night.

For this scene, yeah. Five in the morning?

She was there in the daytime.

She stopped by and we hung out in the trailer for a while, you know?

But she was really cool. Really cool lady.

She's doing more stuff. She's doing a television show.

Yeah, she was shooting friends the day after this.

She worked with David one day

and then six hours later was working with David's wife.

Did you say friends? Get the fuck... for real?

Playing David schwimmer's girlfriend.

And she wrote a book that just came out.

- The first black person on friends. - I was gonna say.

That was a landmark.

Aisha's funny, man. I wanna read her book.

She just came out with a book.

Probably be in paperback by the time this DVD comes out.

Okay, he's been rejected.

He's gonna listen to some more king David diary.

We get further into his life here.

Shangri-la hotel in Santa Monica.

I love this scene.

There's Jennifer sky on the right, on the far right,

playing Janet, that he'll get to know and love... maybe.

- Great to work with. - She's great.

Great actress, a lot of fun.

- I love this device. - And boom.

Oh, shit, my ass is out!

I thought I had the covers on!

No, you said it was cool.

You must've asked me after a few heinekens.

- You didn't care. - My god, my wife is gonna kill me.

Those are your real tattoos. There was talk about covering them up.

- The body makeup would take so long... - We couldn't take that time.

I made a connection, all right.

Yes, you did.

She's rubbing a little coke on her gums, and ready for round two.

That's fast.

Got me tricking her.

A lot of these shots, we just grabbed them.

I think we grabbed that...

Right after we shot this scene here.

Or in between setups, I believe.

We were down at will Rogers beach, I think.

We did one take, and while waiting for you guys,

that cloud formation was there. It was, "oh, grab that."

I remember you saying that.

"Pan over and get them. Okay, let's shoot."

I love this. It's so quintessentially la.

It was just the total opposite of the back-east stuff.

The best line in the movie. Everyone freaks out.

Difference between coke and heroin.

Fuck, it's all I had. And I didn't have the heart to tell her.

Cold-blooded, you know?

That's when you get the window into him, if you had any doubts before.

We have a lot of cameos in this montage. We should probably just shout them out.

A lot of folks here.

There's one lady in the back,

but coming up here, there's Elliot rosenblatt,

who was our line producer.

The guy in the hat behind the camera, that's Jim Gibson, our writer.

Boy, did I look fat that day!

And he's in the back there, taking a meter reading.

This is our stunt coordinator for the day. That's him being flipped in the water.

It was just for the day 'cause our main stunt coordinator on this film

was Henry kingi Jr., son of the great Henry kingi, one of the great, legendary stuntmen.

I saw him... He took a big fall in truck Turner.

He got shot off the top of a hotel and tumbles five stories into a puddle of water.

And he was great. He was great in car wash too.

Who?

The father of the guy who did our stunts.

He was the Indian cat in car wash.

Making jokes? He was the one in car wash?

Yeah.

How about that little thing you did with the sniff?

You just look at her and go...

- Here's my son again. - Maybe.

Nah.

We should be good, right? Don't you think?

Yep.

We'll talk through the movie.

So... he sees the aftermath of something.

The same garage where the hit went down at night.

Now, this shot here, this scene here, is beautifully lit by Matty.

This was really dark. We had not much light at all.

It's just a couple of highlights.

You have to know how play the dark for a shot like this.

Sucker!

Wasn't there a guy with a little fishing pole, with bells?

Yeah, we had the bells, yeah, and we took this... digitally, we took it out.

At this point, I'd like to mention my out master, the cut doctor, Steve lovejoy.

Big ups to Steve.

Edited this film, I think our 12th film together.

His father was a great actor. His father was a great b actor, frank lovejoy.

- Really? - He did some serious films.

Some major serious films, a lot of war films. His father was frank lovejoy, yeah.

Meet McGraw.

I love that move.

A shot like this one is where I'm really happy

that we're shooting at a 2.35 aspect ratio, just the framing.

Him and the gun just composes very nicely, and tiny is really great here,

'cause he knows what's going on.

Almost the whole movie is handheld but it's so beautifully composed.

This is the last shot we shot in the movie.

We shot it right as the sun was coming up in the background.

The sky was blue and digitally we made it black.

This is the cameo montage I was talking about.

A lot of faces, coming up.

It's all the different people. He's trying to find the right kind of heroin.

Coming up is...

Our producer on the far left.

Alessandro camon and Ali samii, who's x's aide-de-camp, on the right.

Two actors.

The look he gives.

She did this very well.

It was basically mushroom soup and some chicken soup mixed up in her mouth.

She was game for really going at it.

Janet's a tragic character.

- At least at the end she's still alive. - Yeah, exactly.

If you're listening to this, I'm assuming you've seen the film,

so you know that the survival rate in this movie isn't very high.

- But Janet... - The title gives a little clue.

This was actually our whole campment. Those were our trucks.

We filmed out of a real trailer.

It's like no-budget filmmaking, man.

That little guy that walked by was Matty.

And that's one of our ads, playing the sound guy.

David. A lot of Davids in this movie.

Sitting as a sound man. Posing as a sound man.

Now, one of the secrets that... Not secrets,

but one of the reasons we were able to make this film in 19 days

is because we found a lot of places where we had more than one set in a location.

We shot at a place called the conga room on Wilshire boulevard in Los Angeles.

This is one place in that building.

I think out of this one location we got six or seven sets.

Yeah, I think so.

If you wanna do a film quickly,

you have to really eliminate company moves

to give as much shooting time as possible.

You lose a lot of time moving a company.

And here's Reagan, Reagan Gomez-Preston, playing juanita.

She's amazing in this movie.

You might recognize her from having been one of the daughters on the parent 'hood,

but now she's all grown up.

What was interesting is that, in casting juanita, it was...

We had to find someone that x could actually build a real emotional rapport with.

So, you know, there were several attempts,

several tries to find out who would be juanita, and it was down to...

If the chemistry was there - we really went for the chemistry here.

And having an actor's instincts - x is not a trained actor,

but he has an actor's instincts - and that was what was gonna make it work for him.

- And there's grandpa. - He's been with x for a long time.

Reagan has so much range too.

She starts off all bubbly and innocent like a college girl.

As you'll see, she kind of takes a ride down to the depths,

and she just was able to nail it.

She played Robert townsend's daughter on the parent 'hood, right?

- Robert was her father, right? - I believe so.

God, what's he gonna say to me when he sees what I did to his little girl?

Don't kill me, Robert, please.

This is the conga room. We used another room in this place.

This is actually right across the hall from the nightclub area.

This is miss rhoda Jordan, young greatjazz singer.

It was an original song by George Duke.

Rhoda and George worked together and really created a song.

I'm sorry we had to cut it up.

Sounds like a standard from the '40s.

Sounds like a classic song on first listen.

I love the costumes. I love her dress and his suit.

Marie France did a great job on the costumes

and the girls' glasses, their shades, sparkle shades.

When I first saw Clifton in that purple suit, I almost lost it.

- He looked good in it. - He could pull it off.

It looked good on him.

This is Larry McCoy, a brother I met on Malcolm X.

He played one of west Indian Archie's right-hand men.

I'm hoping George is able to get a soundtrack album released

with this whole song in its entirety on it.

Submit it for best song for the oscars.

There aren't a lot of original songs written for movies

that are an integral part of the scene.

This is outside the conga room.

So this is the third location we've gotten out of this one place.

Mike knows he can't get in there. He wants to ambush moon.

He's gotta lay in wait.

Yeah, 'cause the metal detector will give off that he's got some guns.

Now, this scene here, originally...

One of the reasons for Paul's being nervous, in the script and an earlier cut of the film,

he's gotten mugged on his way there.

So he's got mugged, so he's unnerved.

But that's something we took out of the film.

You set a trap for him there.

He's not aware of it. It's kind of a Hitchcock thing.

But I think the tension still gets across.

He doesn't even know he's hunted.

The audience knows but he doesn't know.

This shot was the beginning part of the mugging scene originally.

It's in the deleted scenes.

Hemingway on the wall.

He lives in that neighborhood. He's not a carpetbagger there.

And here we go back in... And we're back in the conga room again.

Only in the daytime. But it's supposed to be the same spot, so we lit it for day.

We were there one day.

The thing about it, we switched up extras,

so sometimes you can see the same extras in several different scenes.

And here's the conga room again.

This is one half of the restaurant on the ground floor.

This is one half of the restaurant.

Then we used the other half in another scene later on.

Christiaan wagener did subtle changes.

There was elements of one set that he emphasized,

but he took the other elements away, and then the other set, right next door to it,

he'd emphasize those elements de-emphasized in the previous set.

So, it was, you know...

Just getting little bits and pieces of details to put in there,

just to make it a different place.

One's a day scene, the other's a night scene.

That point about company moves, it's not the shooting that takes time,

it's hauling all the trucks, hauling all the people over.

- Oops. - A great beat.

You're wondering, is she gonna call him on it?

Makes them kinda freaky too. Truth be told...

That's a goines line. Anyone who wants to accuse us of misogyny,

it's straight from the source. But it's his point of view and it's his character.

At a screening,

we had a lot of comments about the treatment of women,

and yeah, they are victims, there's no doubt about it.

Victims to this man who has preyed on them.

But that's what it's like. We're not glorifying his actions.

This is a portrait of a sociopath.

People who think, "you're glorifying this, you let him get away" - he's not a hero.

We're showing him as a man, warts and all, and people like this exist in the world.

They screw up people's lives, they intersect with people,

and to deny that there's people like this and people fall prey to them, that's delusional.

And we think it's great that we were able to be so honest in this movie and so raw.

And it's disturbing to some people.

Well, this is the part of life that's sometimes referred to as "the game."

Exactly.

And boom, cut to...

Yeah, the juxtaposition of these two scenes was intended to be rude.

- It was supposed to be a rude cut from... - One's coming in, one's going out.

He said, "don't you think you ought to help?" He's so cold.

They have a great dynamic.

But then you see there is something there.

It's interesting. Janet is the only person he can be honest with in the whole film.

Now, this location is still the shangri-la.

We were able to get this apartment to be his crib.

This is the conga room again.

This is the other side of the restaurant, but you see we changed the color scheme.

This part of the room had these vertical windows in the back,

so we lit those and colored them blue,

went for a blueish-greenish color design.

That's Michele shay, who's actually the sister

of someone I went to high school with.

Arthur shay, an old friend from high school.

I love her in this movie. She seems like what her mother would be like.

Yeah, she's great.

I remember when we were little, when I was like 17,

and Arthur was talking about his sister who was an actress.

It was like a major thing then, you know?

Here's the conga room, but upstairs.

This is the bathroom.

This is a cold-blooded scene in the movie.

- Reagan's amazing. - Yeah.

Now, in this scene, something that was really a creative thing between x and myself

was the deodorant under his arm.

I thought he should have taken it off,

and he said, "no, man, this is what he would do."

"This is what king David would do."

I said, "okay. Interesting. Okay, I can look at it that way."

- It's... - It's real.

It takes a little bit of the glamour out of the character, though.

- Makes him more hardcore. - Absolutely.

He also was trying to be courteous to his actresses too.

I think it's great. Just a little detail, a little thing where it's not Hollywood.

It's not airbrushed out, it's like...

But that's a character beat, an acting thing.

Actors can come up with stuff you never would have thought about.

- Absolutely. - You know?

But that's their job.

X did a lot of interesting stuff with this role.

He'd get in a zone.

Once the cameras were rolling, he'd become a different person.

It's interesting. Other actors are coming from a different place.

He may not be as trained, but when those cameras are on, he becomes someone else.

It was interesting. We were shooting so fast,

he didn't have much time to himself, so he had to stay in character.

He stayed pretty close to king David throughout all the days he was there.

He didn't have much down time, you know?

I remember the first day, we finished the first shot.

I said, "I'll call you for the next one."

He said, "what's it gonna be, an hour and a half?" I said, "ten minutes."

And, yeah, it was. But I think he appreciated working that way.

He doesn't like to wait. He doesn't like to turn it on, turn it off.

When he lets it go, he wants to be in a zone for a while.

"Still good now. Still good now."

The mystery unfolds.

1 moon.

This guy here is great.

- Don't shoot. I'll give you... - Shut up. All I need is a ride.

What else is he gonna say?

Don't argue with a man with a gun.

There's my son.

Kidding!

So the tape gave him a clue. He's found all this money.

He's finding more things he didn't expect.

George Duke's music is kicking in.

That other tape comes in later, the tape he was recording before he died.

It wasn't part of the Bible stash yet.

George is such a master musician.

If he comes to your town

and you get the chance to see him play, do not miss it.

If you ever get a chance to listen to his muir woods suite...

That's a piece that he did that...

There are some amazing orchestrations in there, some pieces done all with strings.

Now, this scene, Ernest was operating, back to his roots.

We had to get this quick. Ernest said there was no room.

Ernestjust hopped in the cab, camera rolling.

That was the advantage of shooting the movie 16mm.

Small cameras.

Almost every shot in this film, in the car, is when it's moving,

it's sitting in the seat next to the driver, or sitting in the back seat.

Sometimes it was Matty in the back seat and me up front directing,

but crammed over against the door so you couldn't see me.

Or me in the back seat, Matty in the passenger seat, shooting the driver.

I wanted to stay away from the traveling circus you get when you have car mounts.

It's hard to get a good performance.

The immediacy you get in return is so much more important.

It's like back to film school.

This shot, we got like in five minutes.

All of this was done very, very, very quickly.

The idea was to have a kind of place harking back to Plato's retreat.

A movie I looked at to get inspiration for this

was black lizard by fukasaku kinji.

You know, interesting how he was able to do a lot with not much.

I love filmmakers that are able to bring a lot out of nothing.

Might even be a little bit of bava in this. Mario bava.

"Son.

Oh, my god, he had a gun in the water with him.

That's how cold moon is, man. He doesn't mess around.

We found out that if a gun was underwater,

the only problem you would have is firing it too deep, too far below the surface,

because the water adds to the pressure that the bullet has to push against

and it could cause the gun to explode.

So it's better - we actually consulted on this. The gun won't get hurt.

You just gotta bring the barrel up so it's almost level with the water, then fire.

So, it's... not as impossible as you might think.

Plus I got it out of the good, the bad and the ugly.

- Tuco did it, man. - You never go wrong with tuco.

Yeah, this is the beginning of the fog.

Now he's picking up, listening to the tape

where we first saw dmx in the beginning, and he rewinds it.

We get the whole sordid tale,

answering a lot of the questions to the puzzles, the mysteries.

He's so cold.

You know damn well what the problem is. You did this to me.

I did this to you? I didn't put a gun to your head and make you sniff no coke.

You didn't give me coke, you fucker. You gave me heroin.

That was an ad lib of x's, actually. He really just cut to the chase on it.

Yeah, we had to do a lot of that in this, which was cool.

It's like jazz. I just created a structure that everybody could improvise within.

You hear about writers who get hung up if someone says a word wrong.

Every time someone improvved in this movie,

and I was proud of the dialogue I wrote, but they took it to another level.

You want actors to be able to do their thing. It's like jazz, like you said.

This, to me, was one of the toughest scenes.

We had to shoot it real quick.

It's up to you to figure out what's going on here.

The green light was uncorrected fluorescent.

There probably was some plus green on it.

Played it real harsh and nasty.

That scene really gets to the device

we were trying to pull off with the narration.

It's so against the grain of what you're seeing.

And then George's music

with the drums pounding in rhythm to the pumps.

I like rude movies. I like movies that aren't afraid to get in your face and yell at you.

I personally like films that scar me. You know? Films that hurt me.

You wanna get a rise out of people. They should affect you emotionally.

As in-your-face as this might be,

we pulled back considerably from what goines wrote in his book.

'Cause juanita's ultimate death in the book is...

One of the nastiest scenes I've ever read, and his attitude towards her.

And I don't wanna ruin it for anybody, but anybody who reads that part of the book,

it's pretty raw.

We knew we had one shot at these scenes of juanita here against the setting sun,

so we scheduled our day perfectly.

We went out there on a location scout. We knew what day we were gonna be there.

We had a sun mechanism which would show us

the exact angle the sun would be at on that certain day,

when it would set, where our camera had to be to put the sun where I wanted it to be.

We had to be there and just bank on California weather. And it paid off.

Earlier it was cloudy. We were freaking out. "Are we gonna have it?"

Well, we had three days total at the shangri-la.

I think all three of those days we were setting some time open to shoot that shot,

and seeing that scene, and it was just gonna be play the day.

If the day looked better one day rather than another,

then that's the day we went for.

And there he is, putting battery acid in heroin.

It's called a hot shot. That's goines.

That's the kind of detail you get.

This is keesha sharp. Great young actress, great actress.

She did a fabulous job here.

This look here is different 'cause it's a flashback within the flashback.

We went for a bleach-bypassed look.

All the color grading in the film that we did, that Matty and I did,

was all done in the digital intermediate.

From film you go to hi-def video,

and you're able to have an extraordinary degree of color-correction control.

It allowed us to play... we weren't sure what this look was gonna be,

so we worked it out on the stage there.

So now we're back before the scenes we've seen in la.

This is before we came to la.

This was what made him leave town. That's why he left home.

- He is doing it again. - The same thing.

He only knows one way to handle a crisis.

I love the idea there's this underlying tension.

It's like the bomb under the bench, the Hitchcock thing. Is she gonna do it?

Please don't do it, 'cause you know what he's bringing to her.

She said she was straight. Was she?

Nope, but he said he decided to test her.

Or maybe what happened was he drove her to it.

But if it's a test... little x.

- Xavier Simmons. - X's son.

- In real life. - Playing his son.

Her, I love. You, I don't even like. Find my money.

- X is amazing in this scene. - Little x had blue contacts.

We gave him blue contacts to make him look like Michael ealy.

Tough scene.

- He kicks her and he calls her "boo." - That's amazing.

And now we see that's how Mike got his scar.

So we see now he's leaving for la.

We're full circle with the scene we had at the airport before.

That started the flashbacks.

That's Paige hurd. She played x's daughter in cradle 2 the grave,

and so she's playing the young version of Ella.

There's the young Mike and the young Ella.

She's the daughter of one of the co-producers of the movie, Cheryl Martin.

There she is, young Ella.

Four knocks in Chinese mysticism, it means death is at your door.

Daavu

all over again.

Paul's just horrified at this point.

I don't think yogi berra ever anticipated that saying being used like that.

Or there was this sick intent for the bag of the spiked dope

to be like the Madeleine cookie in proust,

but that triggers him to finally confront his past.

He's doing it to the one girl and now he's gotta do it to another one.

So we figure maybe he was two years in California,

and maybe eight years he spent on the road, just wandering.

He's coming back to face things.

And the irony now is that doesn't matter,

and the question is: Could he really be redeemed

or is he just a guy who's delusional and thinks he could be redeemed?

But this is the day of his death. He's not gonna get a chance to find out.

Larry McCoy with his gun at David arquette's head.

Matty and I really...

I guess we went a little head-to-head together on that fog back there.

He didn't wanna do it 'cause it was hard to keep it consistent.

The fog machine kept messing up.

It was just that it kept blowing.

I had to make that place look like something.

Oh, absolutely, 'cause the plan was originally to do it outside of the garage.

We had to do this outside on a stage and it gave a great look,

but the machine kept malfunctioning.

It was really hard, not just on Matty, but on David arquette and Mike ealy,

'cause every time they would get into the groove of the scene,

the sound of the engine would run over them,

and that they were able to keep their focus despite all the difficulties

and give this performance

is a testament to them and to you, Ernest, for getting that out of them.

They're just great professionals.

You know, 90% of directing is casting.

Here's the great moment. "Why did you kill him?"

Had a big discussion as to whether or not we really needed these flash cuts.

I still don't know. I think the audience would've gotten it without it.

That's when director-studio politics get into play.

I think, as a rule, filmmakers like to assume

a certain amount of intelligence in the audience

and, as a rule, some studios like to assume that they need it spelled out for them.

They like to play it safe.

But, you know, it's not the place of art to play it safe.

And, you know,

I think the audience is with your story, you know?

If they're not with it and don't know how to figure it out for themselves

with the clues you give them,

then they weren't in it in the beginning.

There's two mysteries solved here.

Why did king David get killed? Sort of the rosebud of this movie.

But Mike didn't know that king David was his father.

He knew him as the guy around. A lot of people are confused by that.

We wanted a Greek tragedy element where...

He just found out.

That's what's interesting about a lot of Donald goines's work.

There is a Greek element, a very shakespearean tragic element,

in some things like daddy cool, like the book daddy cool.

In the book,

Paul and David never meet,

but I wanted to bring it together.

In the narration, king David alludes to the fact

the kid could be his son, and he's not sure.

I thought it'd be interesting to have the son find that out.

It just seemed, you know, so clear.

You know, in the original cut of the film we had it so that...

David arquette says, "the man you killed might've been your father."

The studio wanted it to be... we actually had to dub it into David's mouth,

"the man that you killed is your father." You know?

I kind of like the uncertainty of it.

The clues are there, you can make that assumption but...

Paul doesn't have proof. He's extrapolating from the tapes.

This is the amazing, amazing art Evans.

I love this guy.

You'll see, in the deleted scenes, originally it was a bookend,

him going in for the job interview and getting the job.

We had x in the coffin here. Very strange. I think he took sleeping pills.

He was freaked out. This was the second-to-last night.

We did like an 18- or 19-hour day

and x was freaked out by being in a coffin.

So he got himself a little, you know... loaded,

as a euphemism, and he was asleep.

- This man here is my father, Henry Gibson. - Your dad!

From laugh-in and Nashville and the blues brothers and magnolia.

- And he came down... - "Write the check, Roger."

I wanted to write a part for him. They said, "how about a cameo?"

- And he came down that night and did it. - Great to meet him.

X was sleeping in the coffin, then we finished shooting.

Your father was standing there. X sat up, his eyes opened, he said, "hey, it's you!"

It was great. It was a weird night, it was a very strange night,

'cause even x's stand-in had a hard time laying in the coffin so we could light it.

He laid in the coffin. He was freaking out. We had to get him out of there.

Then when x came in he was so drugged up, you know, on sleeping pills or whatever,

that he had to be carried in.

That last sequence, with the death tableaux.

I love the way you composed those. They look like ouija photographs.

You used an old-fashioned flash on them too.

We had to. It has a longer burn time. Chances are, you'll capture it on film.

And here he is. He's in a cardboard box.

We found out that is what they do to you when they cremate you.

'Cause the wood won't burn.

You're going to hell in a cardboard box, buddy.

That's where you're going.

And then... Mike.

- Going where? - No one really knows.

Kind of got a little bit of the idea from the ending of a film that I love

called dellamorte dellamore.

It was released in america as cemetery man.

A great horror film.

And that's it.

- That's Ernest. - That's me.

- That's you. - That's me.

I don't know what else we can say in these credits.

Goines is, you know, one of the premier black pulp-fiction writers

and he's been read extensively in this country

but ignored pretty much by the critical establishment,

and really a pulp-fiction writer

because in america none of his stuff has ever been pushed in hardcover.

It's all been paperbacks.

But in Europe he's given major respect,

the same respect that Chester himes gets, iceberg slim gets.

His books have gone hardcover. He's huge over there.

- He needs to be huge over here. - This may be a step.

I hope so. When we premiered the film at Sundance,

there was a young white kid that was in the theater who came up to me

and said he loved the film and he said he's dying to read the book.

And I'm hoping we get that reaction all over the place.

I hope it gets kids reading goines.

Absolutely. He's really underappreciated.

But this movie, this isn't actually the first Donald goines movie.

There was an adaptation of crime partners, but it went straight to video.

Part of a conspiracy involving a record label,

an alleged drug dealer and money laundering.

I'm not gonna say names 'cause I'd have to get the clearance on the legal that way.

It was in the la times. Do a nexus on the business section, you'll find him.

In New York?

It was based in New York but the la times broke the story.

That came out on video. A lot of people are not fond of it.

So this is the first real goines adaptation. Hopefully there'll be more.

He's got millions of fans. He's sold millions of books in the United States.

A lot of the people who bought this DVD probably bought it for the movie

but they also probably bought it out of love for him, and it's appreciated.

Yep, maybe we'll see more Donald goines adaptations.

Maybe, I hope.

I do hope so. There's plenty of them.

We hope you enjoyed this movie. It's different.

It's not your typical shoot-'em-up,

not your typical gangster thing, or gangsta thing.

It's a deep kind of character portrait.

It's got those elements, but it's really depicting some sociopathic behavior,

interesting characters, people with a lot of gray.

Mike is not really a hero, he's a flawed hero.

I think that there's a lot of moral ambiguity in this.

People find this movie sticks with them. There's a lot to think about.

It's not cut and dry. Like life.

Tell me about it.

Wow.

Well, you know, it was great working with you, sir.

And you, sir. I think dmx

has a little farewell message for his fans coming on up.

- I think he does. - Dmx?

Yeah, yeah, this is dmx, aka king David, signing off, baby.

You know what I mean?

Another hotjoint, the first hotjoint, actually, from Donald goines.

Ernest dickerson and my man Jim. Hold it down, baby.

Well, one thing, whenever x came to set, you could hear him

about three blocks away when he was coming, 'cause he had these...

The man loves toys. He loves remote-control cars.

Ones with gas engines on them.

He follows them with remote control. They make a lot of noise.

So you can hear him coming three blocks away.

If you've ever seen the mtv cribs he did, he's got planes...

He loves toys. He's got planes, he's got helicopters.

These things can go 60 miles an hour. They have disc brakes.

There's a story that, when he was doing another movie,

he spent so much time at a hobby shop that the studio bought the hobby shop for him

so they could keep it closed on the days when he was working.

- That'll work. - These guys came to the set.

He would race those things around the city, in downtown la.

We're shooting a block away from skid row

and there's little cars running down the street.

But it was good because you always knew he was nearby.

He's a real fun guy. And he always likes to play pool too.

Yeah, a great pool player.

Like that scene we were talking about when he got stabbed by Mike,

blood pouring out of his chest, and cuts, ragged things in his clothes.

He walks in, they didn't even blink twice. They've seen guys with stab wounds.

Yeah.

It was a lot of fun working with him.

There was one night we were shooting and he started singing...

I heard him singing it to himself, then I started chiming in with him.

I think grandpa has it on video. I hope he's got it on video,

me and xjust singing.

There may be an extra bonus feature for fans.

Behind the scenes of this movie.

Yeah, maybe. We'll see what happens.