Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Quest Love Supreme. I mean
Speaker 1: it's Quest Love and we have teams Supreme with us. Yea, hello,
Speaker 1: how are you to day?
Speaker 2: I am doing well, sir? How are you great?
Speaker 1: Is that a new microphone?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 2: It's like every day every time we do the show,
Speaker 2: you you look at me more.
Speaker 1: Not something new.
Speaker 4: It's not new though.
Speaker 1: It's like we're meeting for the first time exactly.
Speaker 2: Just looked at me.
Speaker 1: It's like we know each other since we were thirteen.
Speaker 1: I'll start a sugar Steve.
Speaker 5: How you doing, man, I'm doing great. Nice to see
Speaker 5: you and me are nice to see your team.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a deflection. How you really? We're all
Speaker 1: of it all right. Now we're gonna rename.
Speaker 2: You see.
Speaker 5: Sugar Sugars, Double Sugars.
Speaker 1: Can we start calling you cannot do this on my watch, man,
Speaker 1: I'm not because I'm gonna.
Speaker 5: Thank you for your concern. I'm going cold Turkey on
Speaker 5: rock Cookie del I'm gonna be fine.
Speaker 2: You are too old to be eating that. That's crazy.
Speaker 5: I'm done with all that.
Speaker 4: I'm done with it all right, Steve I'm now.
Speaker 1: Implement some sugarless snacks in your day. To me, it'll
Speaker 1: it'll work for you. Bill. How's life.
Speaker 3: Everything's good.
Speaker 1: I can't play I'm cool and anything. Fine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, everything's cool over here. We're just chilling. Everybody's uh.
Speaker 4: We staying staying low, staying healthy.
Speaker 1: Were good. That's good? All right? Well, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: I will say, probably during the pandemic, not only for me, well,
Speaker 1: I will probably speak for the team. We probably watched
Speaker 1: or revisited more content from film and TV in the
Speaker 1: pandemic than we normally have. And and I will personally
Speaker 1: say that I have a new appreciation for the teams
Speaker 1: that make film. It's not just about the director just
Speaker 1: about a particular actor or actress that you like. You
Speaker 1: have to consider the producer of the cinematographer, the lighting director,
Speaker 1: and most importantly, the editing of the film. And so
Speaker 1: I will say that, as far as our guest is concerned,
Speaker 1: started out his assent into the professional career of filmmaking
Speaker 1: as an editor. First of all, in the groundbreaking what
Speaker 1: I call one of the first hip hop films, Style Wars,
Speaker 1: not to mention as an editor for some of my
Speaker 1: favorite Spike Lee films like Mobetta, Blues, Junkle Fever, Juice, Clockers,
Speaker 1: Girls Six, his documentaries for Little Girls, both of the
Speaker 1: what I would call the New Orleans documentaries for the Levies,
Speaker 1: not to mention also, I didn't realize Hooker's on the Point.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that Wow, you.
Speaker 6: On the stroll holes on a roll.
Speaker 4: Yes, I see, but the name remains the same.
Speaker 1: Candy She So, oh my god, you like memorize this film, dude,
Speaker 1: And you don't understand, bro, Me and my homies used to.
Speaker 4: Watch because this is like I'm in like high school, right,
Speaker 4: So me and my homies watch Hookers at the Point,
Speaker 4: and then you come to school the next day and
Speaker 4: know all that we'll be saying all the lines and classes.
Speaker 4: I would like to.
Speaker 7: Say that Hookers at the Point transcends all things.
Speaker 1: I also because both of my.
Speaker 3: Friends about Hooking the Point, like in a different way,
Speaker 3: but I definitely watch them.
Speaker 1: This makes an official that Bill and are the same person. God, dude, O, guys, guys, guys,
Speaker 1: hang on Inton is powerful. Shirley Chisholm and his forays
Speaker 1: into uh directing documentaries, not to eyes on the Prize,
Speaker 1: which I especially in light of uh Black Messiah and Jesus,
Speaker 1: Uh Jesus in the Black Messiah movie, him directing the
Speaker 1: Eyes on the Prize film too. I'm sorry, Eyes on
Speaker 1: the Prize too, of which uh the footage of that
Speaker 1: film was used in in in uh in that particular film.
Speaker 1: But there's also uh the Mister Soul documentary and his
Speaker 1: his latest uh M l k FBI, which weighs heavily
Speaker 1: into explores the what we can say, the harassment uh
Speaker 1: in the monitoring of the jack Er Hoover led Bureau
Speaker 1: into the life and uh kind of the affairs of
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Jr. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to
Speaker 1: Quest Lifts, Sam Pollard, thank you. Okay, now back to
Speaker 1: hookers on the point.
Speaker 3: My god, what happened to.
Speaker 2: Introver for you, sir, I'm sure terrible.
Speaker 4: You've been out there fucking I even fucking.
Speaker 8: Whole.
Speaker 3: I don't memorizing, man, Bren, this is man.
Speaker 1: I got a stage reading.
Speaker 3: Wow. Man, she had to tone everything down.
Speaker 4: Made an impact.
Speaker 1: So how's it going right now? How are you doing?
Speaker 3: I'm good, man, I'm pretty good. You know. I'm working
Speaker 3: on a new film about Arthur ash Wow. Yeah, hoping
Speaker 3: to kind of set by June and you know, developing
Speaker 3: some other stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll let our I'll let our listeners know that
Speaker 1: you and I are actually partnering up for hopefully, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, in the near future, will have the definitive
Speaker 1: film about the Negro League. You know, I've been pounding
Speaker 1: the pavement together, pitching to various companies and whatnot, So
Speaker 1: that's very exciting for me. Yeah, I'll ask. As I
Speaker 1: said at the top, I didn't realize how important or
Speaker 1: how instrumental editors are to a film. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of the times, like people that aren't you know,
Speaker 1: film buffs or whatnot, they just tend to think that
Speaker 1: the director has complete control of everything, the screenwriting, everything,
Speaker 1: but you know, almost feel as though the editor has
Speaker 1: the hardest job of setting the tone. So I'll ask you,
Speaker 1: first of all, as an editor, the general rule that
Speaker 1: I've been taught is that once a film is done,
Speaker 1: you're basically to hand your entire footage to your editor
Speaker 1: and kind of sight unseen, just let them do their
Speaker 1: thing and not micromanaged. Is that necessarily true or like,
Speaker 1: what is the true job of an editor?
Speaker 3: Well, I would I would say this, I would say
Speaker 3: in the fiction world, you know, when you when you're
Speaker 3: doing editing a fiction film, you're given a script and
Speaker 3: you know, and everything that they shoot in that script,
Speaker 3: you basically know exactly how to put together. Now, it
Speaker 3: can change when you're sitting down editing sequences together, but
Speaker 3: usually most directors leave you alone with a fiction film
Speaker 3: that's sort of put together what we call the first
Speaker 3: rough cut, you know, and then they come in and
Speaker 3: they give reactions to everything you've cut outs for changes
Speaker 3: and stuff, so that becomes a director's cut, you know.
Speaker 3: So that's how it works in fiction film and in
Speaker 3: the documentary world. The thing that one of the reasons
Speaker 3: I became such a lover of documentaries is because, as
Speaker 3: an editor, specifically, what you're speaking to a mirror. Many times,
Speaker 3: when I was beginning to edit a documentary, the director
Speaker 3: would come in with lots of footage and say, I
Speaker 3: have this great idea to tell this story about hip
Speaker 3: hop and break dancing and rap music, and I'm not
Speaker 3: quite sure the order, but here's the footage, and then
Speaker 3: they walk away and they give you, you know, give
Speaker 3: me four or five, six months, seven months sometimes to
Speaker 3: create the sequences, you know, and you're basically trying to
Speaker 3: in some ways as the editor, read the director's mind
Speaker 3: to get a sense of what the director is looking
Speaker 3: for as you're shaping the sequences. Now, sometimes in the
Speaker 3: documentary's the director comes in or he calls in and
Speaker 3: he wants to see sequences to see where you're going
Speaker 3: before you put the whole thing together, and you show
Speaker 3: it to him or her and they react to it
Speaker 3: and you make changes. But really in the furms of
Speaker 3: the documentary, it's really the editors medium. The editor becomes
Speaker 3: with the documentary much more so than with the features.
Speaker 3: They become sort of the surrogate directors because they're shaping
Speaker 3: the story arc, they're shaping the tone, the emotional tone.
Speaker 3: They're shaping me sort of the up and downs of
Speaker 3: the film as it unfolds. So, you know, as a
Speaker 3: young editor, that's why I mean, I was I was
Speaker 3: pretty shy back then, so the idea of being a
Speaker 3: director didn't then entice me. It was the idea that
Speaker 3: I had all this footage. And you know the big
Speaker 3: thing about editing documentaries is that you can hit a
Speaker 3: home run. You can hear, you can hear, you can
Speaker 3: hit a ball that just pop out, and you could
Speaker 3: completely fail. And uh, you know that's the responsibility as
Speaker 3: a documentary that you have to take on, understanding that
Speaker 3: sometimes a director to walk in and say that you
Speaker 3: have to see your first cut. Ah, Sam, this is
Speaker 3: exactly what I was thinking about. This is my vision
Speaker 3: of the film. You found my vision. Or they can
Speaker 3: walk in into the editing room and they'll say I
Speaker 3: have to look at your cut. They'll say, oh, Sam,
Speaker 3: that's terrible. You didn't understand anything I was trying to
Speaker 3: do with this footage. We're gonna have to start all
Speaker 3: over again. I've been on both sides of the of
Speaker 3: the of those polls. You know, when I was young,
Speaker 3: I would be like, oh my god, I'm terrible. Nobody
Speaker 3: loves me. It doesn't work. As i've gotten older, that's
Speaker 3: part of the process. You realize that's part of the process.
Speaker 3: You're never going to make it right the first time.
Speaker 3: That's why it's called re editing and re editing. I
Speaker 3: mean you listed the films like that edited for Spike,
Speaker 3: and even on the feature films, I never made a
Speaker 3: cut that Spike completely said, oh it's one hundred percent work. Well, Sam, no, chick.
Speaker 3: It just doesn't work that way. There's always going to
Speaker 3: be changes.
Speaker 4: Has there ever been a time where in your editing
Speaker 4: career where you know, like you said, director comes to
Speaker 4: you and says, hey, I want to tell this story
Speaker 4: about breakdancing and hip hop or whatever, and so they
Speaker 4: give you all this footage. But then during your editing
Speaker 4: you kind of start putting together and you see, I
Speaker 4: know this is what he thinks this is about, but
Speaker 4: I think there's a bigger story that can be told
Speaker 4: that maybe he's missing or maybe now when I have
Speaker 4: all these pieces together, he may think that it's about,
Speaker 4: you know, just hip hop and breakdancing, but there is
Speaker 4: probably a deeper narrative that is starting to evolve as
Speaker 4: I put this together. Has that ever happened?
Speaker 1: How much leeway are you giving all the time?
Speaker 3: That happens all the time an editor, As a creative editor,
Speaker 3: you have to be open to the idea of seeing
Speaker 3: the story in a different way and taking on that responsibility.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say, you say to yourself, should I show
Speaker 3: it to the director this way? Because I think it's worked?
Speaker 3: So should I say, Well, I'm not sure it works,
Speaker 3: let me show it to the way he asked me
Speaker 3: to do it. I have the I always had the
Speaker 3: tendency to show it to him the way I thought
Speaker 3: it would work better, you know, and that you know,
Speaker 3: that's part of the gamble. Sometimes you show it to
Speaker 3: him and they say yeah. Sometimes you shoot them they
Speaker 3: say no, that's how it works.
Speaker 2: I just wanted for MLK FBI. Was it the decision
Speaker 2: to not show the commentator the folks who were commentating's face.
Speaker 2: Was that a SAM decision or was that just like
Speaker 2: something that y'all had to established because I was noticing
Speaker 2: and that was like a big different in a lot
Speaker 2: of the documentaries that I see these days.
Speaker 3: In that case, that was a SAM decision. Before we
Speaker 3: even shot, I had said to the producer Ben Henden
Speaker 3: that I didn't want anybody on camera. I wanted to
Speaker 3: all be voiceover because I had seen a film that
Speaker 3: Amyl was involved in the music for a black power mixtape,
Speaker 3: you know, and I and they had no voice They
Speaker 3: had nobody on camera in that film. I remembered that.
Speaker 3: So when I got to do this one, I said,
Speaker 3: we don't show anybody on camera. We're going to do
Speaker 3: it all voiceover. And you know, that was a gamble,
Speaker 3: but I was willing to take it.
Speaker 1: You know, what was it?
Speaker 4: What was the artistic kind of choice? What drove that decision?
Speaker 3: You know? I felt I felt that in this particular film,
Speaker 3: I wanted people who were either close confidence or doctor King,
Speaker 3: or whose stories could talk about the mythology, the built
Speaker 3: and growing mythology, the FBI, and I just felt like
Speaker 3: I wanted people to not see people on camera. I
Speaker 3: just wanted them to be immersed in the footage and
Speaker 3: hear the voiceover.
Speaker 1: That's what they do.
Speaker 3: What happens when you put camera people on camera sometimes
Speaker 3: it can it can break the emotional momentum of the footage,
Speaker 3: you know. So I felt like, no, keep them, keep
Speaker 3: them off camera, keep the footage, keep the archival footage
Speaker 3: front and centers of people will engage. Now, as you
Speaker 3: saw in the epilogue, we did show their faces when
Speaker 3: they sort of wrapped up about what they thought about
Speaker 3: the tape being released in twenty twenty seven. Now, I
Speaker 3: would say that wasn't my idea. I thought the epilogue
Speaker 3: is should be all voice over too. But the editor,
Speaker 3: this was Laura Thomas Selley, she had the idea we
Speaker 3: should put them on camera, So when I saw the
Speaker 3: cut and she put them on camera, I said, Wow,
Speaker 3: I wish I could take credit for this, but.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it was a payoff.
Speaker 1: It was like a break payoff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: fell down my own rabbit hole and just happened to
Speaker 1: click on Black Power Mixtape. So apparently I won a
Speaker 1: Swedish Oscar didn't know that she did know they had.
Speaker 1: Apparently I won a gold Goold Bandage Award. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would have to. Yeah, this is the second time I
Speaker 1: found out I won something and wasn't told. Uh. Oh,
Speaker 1: this very web this very podcast won a Webby and
Speaker 1: we weren't told. So there's there's a history of that people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: West Supreme, we win in awards and you don't even know.
Speaker 2: Trying to keep us down the man you know about.
Speaker 1: That fan keep it us on, Sam. What what brought
Speaker 1: you to the film world or a passion? I'll say
Speaker 1: that mostly like from my point of view and my observation,
Speaker 1: people easily jump into music, people easily jump into sports,
Speaker 1: but I rarely hear of people successfully having a passion
Speaker 1: for film and jumping into that world and like making
Speaker 1: a living and having a fruitful career in it. So
Speaker 1: what started yours.
Speaker 3: Well here, I was a young man who grew up
Speaker 3: in East Tarlow. I was going to Blue College with
Speaker 3: the majoring in marketing. I was in my junior year
Speaker 3: and one day I looked around and I saw myself
Speaker 3: being miserable taking all these marketing andstic statistics courses. And
Speaker 3: I said, Jesus, I got to find some after school
Speaker 3: activity to do. I just I can't handle this. So
Speaker 3: I walked across the street to the counselor's office. I
Speaker 3: saw my counselor's wonderful African American lady, and I said,
Speaker 3: I was looking for an after school in turn internship.
Speaker 3: And she said, well, what are your interests? And I said,
Speaker 3: one of the things I really loved growing up in
Speaker 3: my teens, I loved watching all these old Hollywood movies,
Speaker 3: you know. I watched all those Warner Brothers and MGM
Speaker 3: and Columbia pictures and RKO movies, Arko Studio movies, and
Speaker 3: I love them. So she said. There was a PBS
Speaker 3: station in New York City WNAT in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 3: After Doctor King's assassination. This felt it was important to
Speaker 3: get more people of color behind the scenes shooting editing,
Speaker 3: taking sound producing, and she said that they had a
Speaker 3: one year workshop every year from sixty eight this was
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy one, and they had on Tuesday nights they
Speaker 3: would have these classes from six to ten where professionals,
Speaker 3: professional editor is, professional cinematographers, professional sound people, professionals producers
Speaker 3: would come in and teach you about the process of
Speaker 3: making television and films. And then on the weekends you
Speaker 3: would go out with your crew group of people. There
Speaker 3: was like fifteen of us. They would pair us off.
Speaker 3: We'd go out and shoot little films. Then we'd go
Speaker 3: into come back to an editing space, and we'd learned
Speaker 3: how to edit these films together. So when she first
Speaker 3: proposed that to me, I said, my response to her
Speaker 3: was I like watching movies, but I don't really care
Speaker 3: about how to make them. I don't care. But she
Speaker 3: was very persuasive. She got me to have an interview
Speaker 3: and I got accepted to this program. And I did
Speaker 3: that for one year. And the thing that I got
Speaker 3: attracted to wasn't the shooting, wasn't the producing, wasn't the
Speaker 3: sound mixing. It was the editing. Because I could be
Speaker 3: in a dark room, I could by yourself. Nobody could
Speaker 3: see me make mistakes. If I made a mistake, I
Speaker 3: could undo the foodge and splice it back together because
Speaker 3: we were cutting on film. And at the end of
Speaker 3: that workshop, I said I was interested in trying. They
Speaker 3: said they'd try to find you a job, and I said,
Speaker 3: I was interested in finding a job in editing. And
Speaker 3: one day I was working the summer of seventy two,
Speaker 3: I was working at a marketing firm on thirty third
Speaker 3: in Park Avenue, and my mother called me and said
Speaker 3: that this production manager called and said they were looking
Speaker 3: to interview me to be an apprentice editor on a
Speaker 3: low budget feature film called Ganjia and Heads, directed by
Speaker 3: Bill Gunn. Bill Yeah, Bill Gunn, And most of the
Speaker 3: crew was African American, but the editor was this Jewish guy.
Speaker 3: His sister was this young white girl from Kentucky. So
Speaker 3: I went and had an interview with this editor and
Speaker 3: I got hired in nineteen seventy two. It's my first
Speaker 3: first job.
Speaker 4: And then Spike, he remade, that is the sweet blood
Speaker 4: of Jesus.
Speaker 3: He did it, the sweet blood of Jesus. Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: Well you mentioned w ne Et earlier, did you were
Speaker 1: you interning there or.
Speaker 3: Just they had the workshop there. The workshop was part
Speaker 3: of NAT.
Speaker 1: So did you have any interaction with like the well
Speaker 1: you directed Mister Soul, but the original Soul show, Like.
Speaker 3: Did you work at all? No, it didn't work on
Speaker 3: it all. It was it was you know, it had
Speaker 3: been canceled. By the time I got into that program,
Speaker 3: it was sixty nine to seventy two, So by the
Speaker 3: time I left the program, he had been canceled. I
Speaker 3: used to watch it all the time. Yeah, what about.
Speaker 1: Well, they had like a lot of black productions. I
Speaker 1: remember you remember a show called Rebop or.
Speaker 3: That was rethought. Was not in New York, it was
Speaker 3: in Massachusetts, Oh okay, But in New York they had
Speaker 3: Black Journal, they had Miss had Soul, they had like
Speaker 3: it is Gil Noble on ABC. Bill was to produce
Speaker 3: On Soul and some of the first African producers who
Speaker 3: worked for Black journals, like Tony Batton and Saint Clair Bourne.
Speaker 3: You know who I used to have who I who
Speaker 3: became one of my mentors later in my career.
Speaker 1: That's what I wanted to know, Like, who were your well,
Speaker 1: it's contemporaries at least starting out with you at the
Speaker 1: same time, like I know that Uh uh what's his name?
Speaker 1: Uh director Dickerson? No, Uh, what's her name's father?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 4: God, that's uh.
Speaker 1: What's your names? Father?
Speaker 3: Stand was already director and soul in Black Journal. By
Speaker 3: the time I got to the business, Sam, Sam was okay.
Speaker 1: But what I wanted to know was like, was there
Speaker 1: uh like a crew of view as young black up
Speaker 1: starts trying to get into film or was it just
Speaker 1: all of you independently treading in?
Speaker 3: The program I was in was like fifteen that us.
Speaker 3: We're all African American, and some of us, you know,
Speaker 3: got into the business. Some people went to CBS, some
Speaker 3: people with the ABC, some people freelance like I did.
Speaker 3: That was the crew I was with, you know. And
Speaker 3: then after I did the six months as an apprentice
Speaker 3: editor on God and Hess, that same editor who hired
Speaker 3: me then made me his assistant and I was his
Speaker 3: assistant for three years from twenty two twenty three, twenty
Speaker 3: four to twenty five years old. George Bowers No, No,
Speaker 3: I met George right around seventy five. Had I sort
Speaker 3: of was looking for a job and I went to
Speaker 3: this editing room and George Bowers was editing a film
Speaker 3: called Campdown on Cassini directed by Assy Davis with Ruby
Speaker 3: d and Greg Morris from Mission Impossible. George turned me
Speaker 3: on to doing a little film, had me he hired.
Speaker 3: He got me hired to do a little film about
Speaker 3: the first three black mayors of major cities, Tom Bradley
Speaker 3: of Los Angeles, Coleman, Coleman Young of the Detroit Accident
Speaker 3: of Atlanta. And it was being directed by David Parks,
Speaker 3: Gordon Parks's son.
Speaker 1: Wow, oh wow, okay.
Speaker 3: And I edited it that when I was like twenty
Speaker 3: six years old. And then George hired me to edit
Speaker 3: some films for him, and then he moved out to
Speaker 3: California to direct some low budget features. That in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty I went out to la and directed and edited
Speaker 3: it for him a film. I don't know if you
Speaker 3: remember this film, Body and Soul with Leon Isaac Kennedy.
Speaker 4: And yes, yeah, I know.
Speaker 3: I edited that film in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know this. I know of this film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was at the time in the seventies. Did you like,
Speaker 1: what was your kind of your what in your mind
Speaker 1: would have been your endgame or your your your goal
Speaker 1: to get to at the time when you were sort
Speaker 1: of finding your way in the early seventies.
Speaker 3: My endgame was I had this dream of becoming a
Speaker 3: big time featured film that, you know, I wanted to
Speaker 3: edit feature films. That was the big time. That was
Speaker 3: the goal, you know. Nineteen seventy, ninety, seventy seven, seventy eight,
Speaker 3: I was adding docs, but I wanted to be at
Speaker 3: a big time feature edited in George let me edited
Speaker 3: Body and Soul, and then I went back to New
Speaker 3: York and I was adding more docs. And then George
Speaker 3: did this film in nineteen eighty four with a young
Speaker 3: Johnny Depp called Private Resort that I edited in California.
Speaker 4: That film too, Man, I don't remember that one. I've
Speaker 4: never heard of that one.
Speaker 1: It feels like one of those films that would come
Speaker 1: on prison or Showtime.
Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, that's it was my Showtime.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then I and then I came back to New
Speaker 3: York with some other films, and then I got hired
Speaker 3: by Henry Hampton in eighty seven to work on Ice Too.
Speaker 3: And I was working on Ice Too for like a year,
Speaker 3: shooting and my first time producing. And then one day
Speaker 3: I was living in the back base of Boston and
Speaker 3: my son, who was ten years old at the time.
Speaker 3: The phone rang. He picked it up and he said, Dad,
Speaker 3: Spike Lee, and I had just seen you the Right
Speaker 3: Thing in the movies. And I said, Jason, will you're
Speaker 3: messing with me for a man, Spike Lee didn't call me.
Speaker 3: It's not calling me, not Dad, Spike Lee. So I
Speaker 3: down the phone and sure enough it was Spike and
Speaker 3: a buddy of mine who was his production manager and
Speaker 3: Do the Right Thing had recommended me to Spike to
Speaker 3: cut No Better Blues okay, and I turned him down.
Speaker 3: Wait wow, I turned him down the first time because
Speaker 3: I was still in the middle of Eyes on the
Speaker 3: Prize too, So I said, Spike, I'm busy. Thanks for
Speaker 3: the call, but I can't I say no. And then
Speaker 3: Saint clair Bourne had done a documentary about Do the
Speaker 3: Right Thing called Making Do the Right Thing, and I
Speaker 3: had worked for Saint in the early eighties cutting two
Speaker 3: or three films. And then Saint recommended me to Spike,
Speaker 3: and about six weeks later Spike called me again, asked
Speaker 3: me again to know better, and this time I said well.
Speaker 3: He said, let's meet up, and we were both going
Speaker 3: up to the venue to Oak Bluffs and separately, and
Speaker 3: we met up at Oak Bluff. We went to a
Speaker 3: little coffee shop. We spent a half hour in that
Speaker 3: coffee shop, and I basically talked myself at the taking
Speaker 3: the job, because he didn't talk about.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, you said that, and you know you wanted
Speaker 1: to concentrate on your your one project. And you said
Speaker 1: the word no, which I clearly don't know the meaning
Speaker 1: of that word. How many projects can you realistically juggle? Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll rephrase that, how many projects should you juggle any
Speaker 1: calendar year? If you are an.
Speaker 3: Editor, you can't. You can't do but maybe one or two.
Speaker 1: So if you're actively working on a project.
Speaker 3: It's very hard. If you're actually physically editing, it's very
Speaker 3: hard to do another film unless you know, you know, Listen,
Speaker 3: When I was a young man, I would do two films,
Speaker 3: edit two films. I would edit probably somebody's film all
Speaker 3: day in the day. It'd be my prime time job.
Speaker 3: And I'd come home. I remember working in Washington on
Speaker 3: a serious close Smithsonian World, and I would edit all
Speaker 3: day from from like nine to six. I'd go home
Speaker 3: and have some dinner and Saint I was doing a
Speaker 3: film for Saint real dramatic film for Saint, and I
Speaker 3: would edit for Saint from I would edit my apartment
Speaker 3: on the steam back from like seven till midnight. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I would edit two films. You know, that's when I
Speaker 3: was a young man.
Speaker 4: We don't do that type shit at the moment.
Speaker 7: When it switched over to digital, did that help it all?
Speaker 3: I could probably do three. Oh, I didn't sleep as much,
Speaker 3: you know. But it's very hard when you're editing. You know,
Speaker 3: it's easier to multitask when you're producing and directing somebody
Speaker 3: else's so you can. You can, you can do more
Speaker 3: than one show you're producing directly because you know, you
Speaker 3: know this. I mean, you got a team right now.
Speaker 3: You got you got other associate producers, you got archival producers,
Speaker 3: you got editors, so you don't have to do everything yourself.
Speaker 3: You're not sitting there at the machine editing, you know.
Speaker 1: Actually, Bill brought up a point that I didn't think about.
Speaker 1: At least for musicians. I feel like a lot of
Speaker 1: us made the full like the full jump into pro
Speaker 1: tools like around like ninety two, ninety three and full
Speaker 1: fledged like in mid to late nineties. But for the
Speaker 1: film world, when did that jump. When did that jump
Speaker 1: with that paradigm shift occur, like from digital editing.
Speaker 3: To around ninety four ninety five. Yeah, I cut my
Speaker 3: last film. I cut the last piece on film for
Speaker 3: Spike in ninety six. It was Girl six.
Speaker 1: Okay, that was done on film.
Speaker 3: That was done on film. Then after Girls six, I
Speaker 3: never did anything else on the shelf. It was fine.
Speaker 3: I mean, full Little Girls was was digital. You know,
Speaker 3: Bamboozle was digital. Everything after that was digital.
Speaker 1: How hard is that adjustment in learning new language? Learning?
Speaker 1: Like Protess steal all my questions all the time on
Speaker 1: every show, Sugar, Steve wants to know how hard? Steve
Speaker 1: asked a question.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, well, I just yeah, What was the transition
Speaker 5: like for you?
Speaker 1: Was it?
Speaker 5: Was it exciting or frustrating?
Speaker 3: Or at first it was frustrating because you know, I
Speaker 3: didn't think of myself as computer savvy, so I had
Speaker 3: to I had to get up to speed. I'm working
Speaker 3: on the computer and stuff and figuring out how to
Speaker 3: do things technically.
Speaker 5: Did how old were you? Sorry, how old were you
Speaker 5: at that time?
Speaker 3: Forty five mm? So you know, it used to be
Speaker 3: they used to have they used to have you could
Speaker 3: call you Avid support all the time, and you had questions.
Speaker 3: So the first film I could an avid, I think
Speaker 3: it was an average support every day. You know, this
Speaker 3: doesn't work. How do I make this work? Or do
Speaker 3: I do this? You know? Avid support, avid support, you know.
Speaker 3: But but you know I adjusted to it because I
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't want to stop editing, so you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't want someone else to edit for me, so
Speaker 3: I learned how to do it digital.
Speaker 5: Did you find that you were able to be more
Speaker 5: creative with digital or than you were with film as
Speaker 5: an editor?
Speaker 3: The big, the big advantage to editing digitally is that
Speaker 3: you know, when you say edit film you want to
Speaker 3: recut a sequence a different way, and say the old sequence,
Speaker 3: you'd have to even make a dupe of the old
Speaker 3: sequence and then unsplice all the shots to rebuild it
Speaker 3: another way. Digitally, you can do it in one way
Speaker 3: and then you can just do another version and you
Speaker 3: keep the other one. You know, and you know that
Speaker 3: to me was like a great sort of plus, I
Speaker 3: could see three versions of my cut. Now. The issue
Speaker 3: the challenge is is if you sort of don't make
Speaker 3: a decision, then you say you got to see six
Speaker 3: versions of your pet because then you can't make a decision.
Speaker 3: You got to you gotta be mindful of how many
Speaker 3: cuts you want to see before you say, okay, this
Speaker 3: is the one. You know, maybe you make it so
Speaker 3: real adjustment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as far as the quality is concerned, I know
Speaker 1: that as a musician, even though I do use digital technology,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty much using that digital technology to make it
Speaker 1: sound like I'm doing analog, trying to make it sound
Speaker 1: as cheap and whatever. Like are you the type of
Speaker 1: editor or do or do editors in general still try
Speaker 1: to I don't know, execute that same process as far
Speaker 1: as uh, you know, like we we will use terms
Speaker 1: like well, there's a warmth sound with analog that you
Speaker 1: don't get with digital and it sounds fold. Is that
Speaker 1: the same with you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you're still trying to You're still trying
Speaker 3: to figure out when you're you know, in terms of
Speaker 3: your aesthetic, how to make it still feel like you're
Speaker 3: making a movie and you know, I try to do
Speaker 3: a commercial, you know, so you're crafting it in a
Speaker 3: certain way. So you're saying the film aesthetic that I
Speaker 3: learned when it was film, I'm trying to apply that
Speaker 3: to the digital technology. You know, I'm trying not to
Speaker 3: edit films like what I would see the fast paced
Speaker 3: commercials or something on you know, these music videos. I'm
Speaker 3: still trying to bring to it the storytelling editorial storytelling
Speaker 3: techniques I learned when I was editing film, you know,
Speaker 3: and I try to still apply those, you know, And
Speaker 3: then depends on who shoots your material. I mean a
Speaker 3: lot of documentary filmmakers still have the ability to have
Speaker 3: their camera people shoot it so it's twenty fourth rings
Speaker 3: per second, you know, it looks like you're shooting it
Speaker 3: on film. You know, sometimes you want to change the
Speaker 3: textures and the coloring of it so it has a
Speaker 3: more sort of film and texture. And think about all
Speaker 3: those things you know, when you when you shoot, you go.
Speaker 3: When you watch some of these films I've done in the
Speaker 3: last few years, they all I still try to give
Speaker 3: it a sort of an emotional film sensibility in terms
Speaker 3: of the approach.
Speaker 1: You know that That leads to my question, Okay, you
Speaker 1: brought up Bamboozle. So at the time when we shot
Speaker 1: that with Spike, and Spike was explaining to me that
Speaker 1: Yo're going to shoot this all in digital, and I
Speaker 1: think that was like new to him at the time,
Speaker 1: Like the way he shot that film was was way different.
Speaker 1: So even watching him on the set and how him
Speaker 1: and was Malik his his Linesman, I'm not.
Speaker 3: Certain cis shot.
Speaker 1: Okay. Now, when I saw that film and it was digital,
Speaker 1: it still had a I don't know what to call
Speaker 1: the type of film that like they use when they
Speaker 1: do soap operas.
Speaker 3: But that film because because that's what they wanted to.
Speaker 1: Is that is that video or is that? But that's
Speaker 1: why I was asking was that done on purpose? Because
Speaker 1: then you know you cut to cut to she Hate Me?
Speaker 1: She Hate Me still had a kind of you don't
Speaker 1: know if it's video or.
Speaker 3: Had the videos of the old television shows texture how
Speaker 3: know as you're talking about.
Speaker 1: But now it's like it's borderline, Like it feels like
Speaker 1: it's thirty five millimeters when I'm watching it. Like in
Speaker 1: the beginning, when I first got my digital TV, everything
Speaker 1: felt like it's so proper. Maybe like after ten years
Speaker 1: of watching it, I've just conditioned myself to accept this
Speaker 1: is the norm. But are they still like rewriting the
Speaker 1: quality of what digital is?
Speaker 3: Well, the thing you should remember, you know what your TVs,
Speaker 3: you know there's settings in your.
Speaker 4: TV and you got to set that frame rate.
Speaker 3: You got to set the frame rate so it doesn't
Speaker 3: look like digital. You go to these hotels sometimes you're
Speaker 3: watching things and man, that looks you know, it looks.
Speaker 4: Like a play right, Yeah, it's so proper, right, But.
Speaker 3: If you set your frame rate on your television, it
Speaker 3: won't look like that. If you said it for twenty
Speaker 3: four frames per second, they're gonna look like thirty frames
Speaker 3: per second.
Speaker 2: Service love a good lesson, Let me go get my promote.
Speaker 4: That's because on the new iPhones, like on the because
Speaker 4: like I got the twelve, I got the twelve pro
Speaker 4: macs and naked you can shoot it.
Speaker 5: You can shoot.
Speaker 4: Thirty frames per second video four and then you can
Speaker 4: shoot sixty frames, and the sixty frames just's yeah, it's like, nah,
Speaker 4: it looks plastic like, it looks so real. It looks fake.
Speaker 4: It's crazy.
Speaker 3: The other thing is, you know, the other thing. The
Speaker 3: other thing too is that with Bamboozle, Spike was shooting
Speaker 3: on DV cameras, the first DV cameras, and the frame
Speaker 3: rate was thirty frames per second, but it really had
Speaker 3: a real digital feeling. What's happened with the cameras, those
Speaker 3: DV cameras. Nobody uses those anymore. So the technology has improved.
Speaker 3: So now when you shoot with these video cameras, they
Speaker 3: and if you get to if you use the right lenses,
Speaker 3: you can feel like you're watching films. You know, that's technology.
Speaker 1: So if they were well, I already know that they
Speaker 1: did a uh like criteria, I know they did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they already did a Criterion reissue. So what I'm asking
Speaker 1: is if there's a remastering process.
Speaker 3: It will still look the same, so you.
Speaker 1: Can keep it looking just like it did in two thousand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I just watched it too on Criteria. It
Speaker 3: looks the same. It looks just like it did when
Speaker 3: they shot it. You're not going to be able to
Speaker 3: change that. That look. That's the field that they got
Speaker 3: and it's not going to change.
Speaker 1: So at the time when you were doing it and
Speaker 1: watching it was it was it sort of off putting, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: is this going to be the future of movies now?
Speaker 1: Like is everything going to look like yeah, it was,
Speaker 1: you know, I picked up a video camera and made
Speaker 1: it look like this, or yeah.
Speaker 3: It's a little off putting. It definitely did but you know,
Speaker 3: Spike was you know, Spike did it for a couple
Speaker 3: of reasons. I mean, he had access to all these cameras.
Speaker 3: He shot with six cameras, you remember, Yeah, he shot
Speaker 3: with lots of cameras. And also it had an impact
Speaker 3: on the budget because shooting with those cameras, he didn't
Speaker 3: spend as much money he was shooting on film. You know,
Speaker 3: he did shoot the performance stuff with you know, with
Speaker 3: Tommy Davison and and Save You on he shot that
Speaker 3: on film six Super sixteen, but everything else was video.
Speaker 4: Okay, I see, what is a question I had? Just
Speaker 4: what is an example? And you don't have to, you know,
Speaker 4: name any particular movies if you don't want, But what
Speaker 4: is an example of just bad editing? Just kind of
Speaker 4: just you know, just from a fundamental standpoint, because the
Speaker 4: movies I watch and I'm just like, yeah, they felt
Speaker 4: like they could have cut maybe ten to fifteen minutes
Speaker 4: out of that it felt too long or whatever. But
Speaker 4: what is bad editing?
Speaker 3: I never say that anymore, you know, Okay, but most
Speaker 3: films when you watched him, I watched the film the
Speaker 3: Other Night from twenty fifteen with Sean Penn and Idris
Speaker 3: Elba and javardin called Gunman, you know, and they shot
Speaker 3: all of it. But they shot and they shot in
Speaker 3: South Africa, they shot in Spain, Barcelona, they shot in England.
Speaker 3: And it's not a good film. It's not a good
Speaker 3: film at all. But it's not about the editing. It's
Speaker 3: not about the cinematography, because it looks great. It's edited
Speaker 3: pretty well, ain'ty. Remember it's usually not bad editing. It's
Speaker 3: usually bad scripts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, bad storytelling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a bad storytelling, you know, because the technology
Speaker 3: has improved to such a degree that most films look fantastic.
Speaker 3: Most films are edited well. The problem is is the
Speaker 3: story sucks. You know, So when the story sucks, it
Speaker 3: doesn't matter how well it's put together, it just doesn't work,
Speaker 3: you know. So I'm you know, I never really see
Speaker 3: that term bad editing anymore. You know, it's really bad storytelling.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was just so. Yeah, that was curious for
Speaker 4: things cleaning it up, because I wonder like, yeah, where
Speaker 4: is it? Where does it get made? Is it the
Speaker 4: story or is it Can you have a good story
Speaker 4: and then a back cut can mess it up?
Speaker 3: You know, it's rare, you could, but it's rare. You
Speaker 3: can definitely have a bad story and the cuts won't
Speaker 3: help it.
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to say, I was going to say,
Speaker 1: what happens in the case of a film like The Irishman,
Speaker 1: which clearly I see more of it as a curtain
Speaker 1: call than I do a film like I don't know
Speaker 1: if I would name The Irishman in my school, you know, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: But the thing is is that I enjoyed it, but
Speaker 1: I saw it more as a curtain call, Like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is obviously the last time we're going to see
Speaker 1: Paccino and de Niro and Scorsese and school micer like
Speaker 1: at this level and this intensity of a gangster film.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like, Okay, I forgave the fact
Speaker 1: that three hours and forty five minutes however long it was,
Speaker 1: but in your mind. But I'm also not a film buff,
Speaker 1: so there are a lot of things that I will
Speaker 1: let slide that a lot of my film buff films
Speaker 1: friends will just start criticizing. Now, I know it might
Speaker 1: be sacrilegious or whatever, but what do you do in
Speaker 1: what would you do in the case of a film
Speaker 1: like The Irishman, where well, here's.
Speaker 3: My take on the ash Man. And you know, there's
Speaker 3: some people I know who love it, well, absolutely love
Speaker 3: that film to me. To me, I feel like you
Speaker 3: it was what I call Scorsese's sort of like the
Speaker 3: last trail. You know, he's on this his swan song.
Speaker 3: He'll make more films. But in terms of the Gangs,
Speaker 3: to mill you, he should leave it alone because for
Speaker 3: me it was too long and I didn't buy the
Speaker 3: idea that Joe Peshew and de Niro look like young men.
Speaker 4: Oh my god? What is that about it? All?
Speaker 2: Is this effect?
Speaker 4: It doesn't work on everybody? Did they try?
Speaker 3: It didn't work at all and did not.
Speaker 1: But wasn't that also like a primitive like in my mind,
Speaker 1: is that bamboozled in two thousand where it's just like
Speaker 1: this new technology that they're working on. And obviously though
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: It could be one of those things where in ten
Speaker 3: years people when need to visit that film say it
Speaker 3: was a master piece. To me, it was too long
Speaker 3: and it was a curtain call and you know, and
Speaker 3: I don't need to see the narrow but Joe Pesci
Speaker 3: played gagsters ever again, you know, I agree, you know,
Speaker 3: it was just you know, and you know you know,
Speaker 3: I'm a big fan of Marty films, you know, Raging
Speaker 3: Bull and Good Photos, even Casino, but this one.
Speaker 4: Was like yeah, casinos, yeah.
Speaker 3: This one. This one was like, Okay, this is time
Speaker 3: to stop this this journey, you know, the one.
Speaker 4: I will say. The thing I liked about it that
Speaker 4: I thought was interesting was that he he wore his
Speaker 4: old films. You know, he was kind of shown as
Speaker 4: you know, glorifying the gangster life with Casino and Goodfellas,
Speaker 4: you kind of should see the shiny side of it.
Speaker 4: But with this one, it was more more so for
Speaker 4: lack of vetter termin It was just a blue collar gangster,
Speaker 4: like he wasn't rich, he wasn't you know, you know,
Speaker 4: he was just that. So I did think that that
Speaker 4: was an interesting shift, you know, tone wise, But I agree,
Speaker 4: I don't think we need to see them play gangsters.
Speaker 4: I think they don't have nothing new to say in
Speaker 4: that way.
Speaker 3: And it was watching, you know, even the scene I do.
Speaker 3: I remember the scene Narrow's character beats up to kicks
Speaker 3: the gangster in the street.
Speaker 4: Dude, he's like eighty years old.
Speaker 3: I said, I said, this guy's an old man.
Speaker 1: I mean, he can his leg, but I well, see
Speaker 1: I thought that, uh, like, normally, especially if you watch
Speaker 1: Goodfellas and Casino, the way that Filma does cuts and
Speaker 1: edits very intensely and things that you know, trademarks that
Speaker 1: Scorsese is known for. This was the first time where
Speaker 1: I didn't see that fast paced kind of editing action
Speaker 1: that makes it more intense. So I actually thought that
Speaker 1: it was unique for them to do a slower a
Speaker 1: slower cut kind of Scarsese gangster film. That wasn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could say that, you could say that, you know.
Speaker 3: The other way to look at it, you know, is
Speaker 3: that sometimes you know this sometimes when when when an
Speaker 3: autist gets older, their their rhythms and their paces slow down.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: See I thought that was on purpose, No, I you know, sometimes.
Speaker 3: It is, and sometimes I mean I gave you a
Speaker 3: great example, you know. You know, I've been doing the
Speaker 3: Max Roach film right right, And so you watch Max
Speaker 3: in the forties and you listen to Max and the
Speaker 3: Poison and fifties of Quickly Brown, I mean everything is
Speaker 3: in the seventies, he's still playing, you know, he's doing
Speaker 3: you know, it's drum also losses, but you can tell
Speaker 3: it's slowed down.
Speaker 1: Right, Wait, It's funny you said that. I had a moment,
Speaker 1: probably one of Max's last public performances before he passed away,
Speaker 1: where they set up this drum thing between him and I,
Speaker 1: and uh this, I feel so fuck boyish recalling this story.
Speaker 1: You know, I was like, all right, I got it.
Speaker 1: I'm going up against Max roach Man. I better prepare.
Speaker 1: So I spent a month like working on my technique. No, well,
Speaker 1: the thing was I had going up against. I did
Speaker 1: this with Cindy Blackman maybe seven months before, and.
Speaker 2: Did it with Roy Haynes too, and this.
Speaker 1: Was four hundred No I know, No, I did not
Speaker 1: battle Roy Haines, but I'm just saying that with Cindy one,
Speaker 1: I was way out of shape. I was like four
Speaker 1: hundred pounds whatever, and like three minutes into the solo,
Speaker 1: she just dusted me. And I was like I was
Speaker 1: on my never again joined And so I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, Max Roach, I don't care, I'm gonna dust
Speaker 1: his ass. And I didn't realize that he was like,
Speaker 1: you know, his late eighties and just he was just
Speaker 1: happy to be there. He's like playing a little and
Speaker 1: I felt like an asshole at the end, like a man.
Speaker 1: I was showing out, and then I.
Speaker 4: Think too because by that point in your career you
Speaker 4: don't really have anything left to prove. I mean, it's like, motherfucker,
Speaker 4: I'm Max Rose, Like, what that's it?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: If I get I can play fucking spoons and bottles,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Whatever, that's true, That's true, exactly true.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about style wars for a
Speaker 1: lot of hip hop aficionados, especially old school cats like
Speaker 1: between Wild Style and Star Wars like those are the first,
Speaker 1: probably the two really authentic looks at early hip hop.
Speaker 1: How did you did you talk about getting involved in
Speaker 1: that that project and was it a big deal to
Speaker 1: you that that that sort of thing was greenlit to
Speaker 1: make in the first place.
Speaker 3: Well, it was interesting the director Tony Silver. I was
Speaker 3: working for Victor Kaneski, the guy who trained me, and yeah,
Speaker 3: he had this editing service and we had been doing trailers.
Speaker 3: Tony Silvery used to do these movie trailers, these little
Speaker 3: two three minute movie trailers, and we used to edit
Speaker 3: those for Tony And one day he said he had
Speaker 3: a buddy named Henry Chaufman who would go up to
Speaker 3: the Bronx and Queens and he would photograph and these
Speaker 3: all these graffiti artists doing their thing, and he decided
Speaker 3: Tony decided to take a camera crew and start shooting.
Speaker 3: And so he just started shooting all the guys, the
Speaker 3: breakdancing and all the artists, you know, all of them.
Speaker 3: And then he came to Victory and says, I got
Speaker 3: all this footage. I don't have a lot of money,
Speaker 3: but you guys, I'll pay something so we could start editing.
Speaker 3: So in like nineteen eighty one eighty two, we started
Speaker 3: editing that film for not a lot of money, you know.
Speaker 3: And I knew about the whole hip hop world, you know,
Speaker 3: I knew about graffiti, but this was a deep dive.
Speaker 3: It took us a whole year to edit that film,
Speaker 3: you know, because Tony was always changing every cuts we made.
Speaker 3: Held look at the cuts, O, this is not right,
Speaker 3: this is not working, which we edit the restructure, We
Speaker 3: edit restructure. And by the time that whole year was
Speaker 3: over editing that film, I was so angry and disgusted
Speaker 3: with Tony. I didn't want to see him again. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because we just worked so hard on it. It really
Speaker 3: worked hard, and you know, I never realized that the
Speaker 3: film would really take off like it did. You know,
Speaker 3: we knew that it was an audience. We didn't realize it.
Speaker 3: We really had such a big splash. I mean even today.
Speaker 3: I mean I've had students, you know, in the last
Speaker 3: ten years who've seen that film. I mean even Spike
Speaker 3: said he didn't know I edited that film after I
Speaker 3: did No Better Blues and saw my credits. What is
Speaker 3: you edited one of the editors on the Star Wars.
Speaker 3: But yeah, man, you know.
Speaker 1: So you had no clue that this was something revolutionary.
Speaker 4: Like not.
Speaker 3: I knew it was revolutionary, but I didn't realize it
Speaker 3: was going to have such a wide reaching impact, you know,
Speaker 3: because when we finished it, Tony took it away and
Speaker 3: we knew it got in some festival. You know, we didn't,
Speaker 3: you know, back then, when I was editing films, I
Speaker 3: didn't think much about how where they were going to
Speaker 3: go so much. I was just it was, you know,
Speaker 3: I was trying to make a good film and didn't
Speaker 3: move on. So it was one of those things you said, Wow,
Speaker 3: I really had an impact.
Speaker 1: I guess that said for me, the film seems so
Speaker 1: guerrilla like, like did it have did they at least
Speaker 1: go into the project with some sort of like plan
Speaker 1: or or was it just like we'll just shoot as
Speaker 1: we go along and try to make create a story
Speaker 1: out of this, because it wasn't like they were there
Speaker 1: to teach us the history. It was almost like a
Speaker 1: reality show.
Speaker 3: So it was it was gorilla or I mean, sometimes
Speaker 3: they would they would go to these yards and they
Speaker 3: would shoot the guys doing their thing. Sometimes they did
Speaker 3: have a little bit of a plan, like when Case
Speaker 3: went into his house, you know, when you see Kase
Speaker 3: walking through the projects, walking through the playground, walks to
Speaker 3: his house, the camera fan doll pans out. They decided
Speaker 3: to do that. Then they would have stars and they
Speaker 3: sat down with Case and his two buddies and had
Speaker 3: them drawing in cases telling you his story about how
Speaker 3: he lost his arm and stuff right and seeing with
Speaker 3: those guys on the train when casing his guys up
Speaker 3: on the L train, you know. And then you know,
Speaker 3: like when we put the we did that montage that
Speaker 3: was sort of Tony said, let's let's do a montage.
Speaker 3: Let's figure out a montage. So we found that song
Speaker 3: when they're saying, you know, they're doing that wrap right
Speaker 3: on the music, and we just created some of these
Speaker 3: things were spontaneous, and these things were a little set up,
Speaker 3: but most of those gorilla type filmmaking.
Speaker 1: Well, when you're in that situation, what happens if you're
Speaker 1: I assume that if you're editing already, you're at least
Speaker 1: towards the end stage or the fourth quart of the project.
Speaker 1: What if you're in a situation in which, uh, you
Speaker 1: have like way more broth, then you have stue content
Speaker 1: for that particular meal. In other words, like if you're
Speaker 1: editing and you're trying to create a sort of coherent
Speaker 1: storyline and it's not all the way there yet, Like,
Speaker 1: do you guys go back out to shoot some more stuff?
Speaker 3: Some Yeah, Sometimes if they have the budget and you
Speaker 3: can get them to go back out, they do shues.
Speaker 3: Sometimes if they don't have the budget, then you got
Speaker 3: to improvise even more to figure out how to make
Speaker 3: it coherent and work. If you have more broth than
Speaker 3: stu ste ingredients, you know. So the thing you always
Speaker 3: have to remember when you make it a film is
Speaker 3: always keep yourself, keep on your toes with the surprises.
Speaker 3: Never settle into the idea that, oh this is going
Speaker 3: to be a material I have. I got to make
Speaker 3: it work this way you can always with film, it's
Speaker 3: really malleable. You can try different things and all the
Speaker 3: time to come up with different ways and look at
Speaker 3: a sequence, you know, and a really good filmmaker will
Speaker 3: always be open to try different things, because if you're not,
Speaker 3: then someone's going to take it from you and say, well,
Speaker 3: you know, there's another way, because there's always another way
Speaker 3: to make a film always.
Speaker 7: Okay, Can you talk about your relationship with composers and
Speaker 7: music editors. I mean, we just we just recently interviewed
Speaker 7: Terrence Blanchard, who I'm sure you know, and I've been
Speaker 7: working on a bunch of films lately, and I find
Speaker 7: that that relationship is always very different as editors. Some
Speaker 7: usually work with the same composers, some don't, and just
Speaker 7: figuring out that situation and how that how to achieve
Speaker 7: the best posts will think and what comes first?
Speaker 3: Music or not music?
Speaker 1: What are you using? Ya ya YadA.
Speaker 3: That's what usually in my process is, you know, I'll
Speaker 3: put a cut together. Like I just mentioned this other
Speaker 3: film for HBO called Black Art in the Affence of
Speaker 3: Life about these different artists from Carrie may Leans to
Speaker 3: Carol Walker to Carrie James Bush. So we put the
Speaker 3: film together and the editor said, what kind of tent
Speaker 3: music going to use? I said, well, there's a composer
Speaker 3: out in La Na, Katherine Bostic, and I want to
Speaker 3: use her music. So she had done the music for
Speaker 3: my August Wilson film, so I said, let's go back,
Speaker 3: and I had her send me some of that music
Speaker 3: that she had done for the August Wilson post. Let's
Speaker 3: use some of your music as temps. Send me some
Speaker 3: other pieces that you can use as temp and then
Speaker 3: we laid in some of her music. Some of it
Speaker 3: worked and it didn't work. But when we got to
Speaker 3: a cut where we had some of this tent music in,
Speaker 3: and then I had some other music that I found
Speaker 3: that I liked it I used. I use some Cold
Speaker 3: Traine music. I use some some Billy Straighthorn, which I
Speaker 3: knew I couldn't keep because it was going to cost
Speaker 3: too much money. So then we had a music session
Speaker 3: where I said to Katherine, you know, here's the feel
Speaker 3: I'm looking for, here's the tonalities, you know, and I
Speaker 3: play an instruments I'm always talking about. Here's the kind
Speaker 3: of instruments I want you to try. I want I
Speaker 3: want flutes here, I want woodwinds here. I think you
Speaker 3: should what's your instrument? I play flute. I used to
Speaker 3: play side yeah, okay, so so you know, and you know,
Speaker 3: so I'm talking about the rhythm and the pace and
Speaker 3: the tonal. Now, some people, you know, some of the
Speaker 3: directors don't know music, can't use musical terms. They say,
Speaker 3: you know, I wanted to be strong, I want to yellow. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But I try to give them some real specific so
Speaker 3: I'll say, like i'm talking, I'm talking to this composer
Speaker 3: now about this zard astron And I said, you know, man,
Speaker 3: we're trying to create that seventies feel. So go back
Speaker 3: that sixties and seventies steel. Go back and listen to
Speaker 3: the scores that Quincy Jones did for in the Heat
Speaker 3: of the Night in the nineteen sixty eight called The Pawnbroker.
Speaker 3: Listen to that rhythmic field, Listen to rhythm and the
Speaker 3: pacing of that. I want that kind of feel for
Speaker 3: this score for this film, you know, you know, and
Speaker 3: we're using we're keeping some music. We're having a film
Speaker 3: that when Art da Ash goes to South Africa, we're
Speaker 3: gonna use Gilbert gil Gilskharens Johannesburg. You know we're going
Speaker 3: to use the temptations how I wish every grain, you know,
Speaker 3: but so listen to those pieces to see if you
Speaker 3: can sort of instrumentally replicate that feel for some of
Speaker 3: the other sections of the film. So I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: trying to be very specific with composers, you know.
Speaker 4: Now, the fact that you can speak music and film
Speaker 4: that goes a long way.
Speaker 1: It helps.
Speaker 3: It really helps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for me, of all your work with Spike Lee,
Speaker 1: I will say, and it's weird, and I hope you
Speaker 1: know this. This statement isn't hyperbolic or timely, only because
Speaker 1: the film has not been seen in thirty years for
Speaker 1: some reason, he hadn't allowed it on streaming or whatever.
Speaker 1: But for me at the time in ninety one, watching
Speaker 1: that taj Mahal scene jungle Fever, to me, that was
Speaker 1: I of all of it in Spike's whole canon, I
Speaker 1: don't think six minutes really hasn't gripped me or frightened
Speaker 1: me as much as watching that film like it wasn't
Speaker 1: over exaggerated. And oftentimes you know, Spike will hammer point
Speaker 1: home with over exaggeration or that sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: it was just like to watch that scene in its
Speaker 1: six minute glory, like to the backdrop of Stevie Wonders
Speaker 1: living for the City and the way that was edited
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. Could you talk about just the
Speaker 1: choreography of how that scene came to be?
Speaker 3: I think, you know, you'd have to aspect this, but
Speaker 3: I think he played that music and he was shooting
Speaker 3: that scene oh wow, because it was interesting to me.
Speaker 3: But when I cut that scene and Spotty said he
Speaker 3: wanted to use Living in the City, I don't think
Speaker 3: I made a music cut. You know, usually I don't
Speaker 3: think I made a music cut. I know, if you
Speaker 3: go back to you guys watch The Love Supreme at
Speaker 3: the end of My Better Blues, I made a big
Speaker 3: music cut there, you know, between when the Babies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I made a big music cut there.
Speaker 3: But on Living in the City, I don't think I
Speaker 3: made a music cut.
Speaker 2: Now, Sam, you know you got to break that down
Speaker 2: because I'm like, wait, music, what are you saying a
Speaker 2: music cut or.
Speaker 3: Music cart a music cut where you said you removed
Speaker 3: some of the music to make it.
Speaker 1: Work to work in the scene.
Speaker 3: But this one, I don't think I made any music cuts.
Speaker 3: Live in the City because I think with.
Speaker 1: The exception of the occasional cut of them smoking crack
Speaker 1: across the screen, it almost felt like it was one
Speaker 1: long take, but I know that you used multiple.
Speaker 3: I used my mostle visual take. I'm talking about it.
Speaker 3: I didn't make any music edits.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the music was it plays straight through.
Speaker 3: Usually I make a music edit because the sequence is
Speaker 3: too long. But the two films I never made a
Speaker 3: music edit was on that one and the sequence in
Speaker 3: Girls six when what your name is? Going to the beach.
Speaker 1: And how come you don't call me anymore?
Speaker 4: And I love that.
Speaker 3: Scene scene too, man, I don't think I made a
Speaker 3: music cut, you know, the.
Speaker 1: First Catfish one film, the first the first two of
Speaker 1: the fly Out story going Wrong.
Speaker 3: It was it was almost like Spike It and Edit
Speaker 3: had shot that scene in in the pace and the
Speaker 3: rhythm that I didn't have to. I made all these
Speaker 3: individual picture cuts that were but it was like they
Speaker 3: were just right. Everything was just right. I was like, Wow,
Speaker 3: I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: I cut it at one point, I borderline felt like
Speaker 1: he started with Living for the City and then somehow
Speaker 1: like wrote the film around that because I just.
Speaker 3: What I think he did. That's exactly what I think
Speaker 3: he did. Man, I think he Yeah. I think he
Speaker 3: started with the song and he then built the scene
Speaker 3: from that because that's how it works.
Speaker 1: And dressed okay, yeah, because it's just so unusual too.
Speaker 1: And again Living for the City is like six minutes long.
Speaker 1: But I just wondered how with editing is concerned, Like,
Speaker 1: how is he like, because the timing has to be
Speaker 1: perfect because literally, for the for those that haven't seen
Speaker 1: the film, there's a scene where Flipper Purify played by
Speaker 1: Wesley Snipes, has to confront his brother for stealing the
Speaker 1: family television the TV. Yeah, Sam Jackson playing a crackhead
Speaker 1: his older crackheat butter brother Flipper gataa data. As matter
Speaker 1: of fact, I believe that cons had to invent a
Speaker 1: category just so that Sam Jackson could win Best Supporting Actor.
Speaker 1: They didn't have a supporting scene. So basically what happens
Speaker 1: is Wesley Snipe starts at one point in Harlem and
Speaker 1: does a real time walk what seems to be four
Speaker 1: blocks or whatever to a crack house, a crack then
Speaker 1: of which once he gets there. You know, especially for
Speaker 1: ninety one, when people were still had their heads in
Speaker 1: the sand over the crack epidemic, like to visually see
Speaker 1: that shot. I'm really shocked. We didn't even ask Spike
Speaker 1: about the scene when he was on the show twice.
Speaker 1: I forgot.
Speaker 2: But doesn't it pauls in the middle when when Leslie
Speaker 2: has the conversation with was it Charlie Murphy Charlie okay, okay?
Speaker 1: No, music is still going, music is still going, right,
Speaker 1: So I guess what I wanted to like, did they
Speaker 1: did they have to quirre gra that in terms of
Speaker 1: or was that just great editing? Because as far as
Speaker 1: I know, Wesley Snipe starts four blocks ahead, walks to
Speaker 1: the Tasma hall four blocks later, confronts Halle Berry and
Speaker 1: Sam Jackson, and you know, of course this has to
Speaker 1: work in coordinance with with the song, you know, and
Speaker 1: stopping to talk to child.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 9: I think I think Spike played the track while he
Speaker 9: was shooting as okay, because it almost works so perfect
Speaker 9: when I cut it, I couldn't believe how it worked.
Speaker 1: It works so well, right, Yeah, that to me is
Speaker 1: like one of his I don't know, And again I
Speaker 1: don't know timing wise, if it still could work in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. I beg him all the time, like
Speaker 1: why haven't why is this the only film of yours
Speaker 1: that's not, you know, available for screening?
Speaker 3: Was he saying, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I you know, and it's weird. I've I've done some
Speaker 1: uh you know, I've read a few blogs or whatever,
Speaker 1: and they'll try to say like, well, you know, this
Speaker 1: is his only film that wasn't as timely or you
Speaker 1: know that sort of thing like it it didn't age
Speaker 1: well or that sort of. I don't know, but he's
Speaker 1: sort of just he shruggish about it. But for me,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I I between Matt scene and the
Speaker 1: final scene with Ozzie Davis and Sam Jackson, I thought
Speaker 1: that was some of his most powerful visuals. So I
Speaker 1: guess I want to jump into you as a director,
Speaker 1: not just as an editor, as I mentioned at the top.
Speaker 1: With Eyes on the Prize too.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: The aforementioned Jesus in the Black Messiah film is based
Speaker 1: Judas and the Black I'm sorry I keep saying Jesus
Speaker 1: the only one. Wait a minute, I've went on a
Speaker 1: record in other places publicly said Jesus and no one
Speaker 1: has ever corrected me.
Speaker 7: That's because we weren't there, because we weren't there, and
Speaker 7: that's what we do.
Speaker 3: We correct you.
Speaker 1: Anyway. So they use the footage from your documentary interviewing
Speaker 1: I forget his name, Yeah, William O'Neill, and of course
Speaker 1: they they also note that he commits suicide the day
Speaker 1: that Eyes on the Prize finally gets televised at the time.
Speaker 1: Why did you choose to uh include him in your film?
Speaker 1: And was he as brash as that clip seemed to be.
Speaker 1: You know, he kind of spoke with like no remorse, like, well,
Speaker 1: at least at least I did something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think he was. I think he was conflicted.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think he was a complicated man.
Speaker 3: And when when when? You know, because I didn't produce
Speaker 3: that particular segment, but I was on the series and uh.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I thought you directed.
Speaker 3: That I didn't direct, but and you know, the producers
Speaker 3: whose voices really asked the question was a woman, you know,
Speaker 3: so it's you know, I think I don't think of it.
Speaker 3: I think he was a conflicted man. I just think
Speaker 3: he was. He was torn, as you can see in
Speaker 3: the film, and he caught up with him emotionally and psychically.
Speaker 4: You know, you know, and also too they just didn't
Speaker 4: show uh well not the shortened movie, but I think
Speaker 4: a lot of times context is lost on just how
Speaker 4: young they were when they got involved doing this ship.
Speaker 3: He was caught up, he was caught up between a
Speaker 3: rock and a hard place. Yeah, you know, so you know,
Speaker 3: he was a conflicted man. So it's a sad story,
Speaker 3: quite honestly, very sair.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So with h m ok FBI, what what prompted you
Speaker 1: to even return to the story or like to investigate
Speaker 1: the story because I guess for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's sort of a fatigue on civil
Speaker 1: rights and how many ways we can tell the story.
Speaker 1: How did you know that there was another story to
Speaker 1: tell that we weren't aware of?
Speaker 3: It was a book. We read, this book by David Garrow,
Speaker 3: historian about the surveillance of King by the FBI and Hoover,
Speaker 3: and we thought it would be a good story if
Speaker 3: we told it right, We thought we could make it work.
Speaker 3: And you know the reality is is that I don't
Speaker 3: think there's going to be a fatigue on stories about
Speaker 3: King or Malcolm or even you know, Fred Hampton. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's always an appetite and this is this is history now,
Speaker 3: this is forty years almost fifty years ago, so this
Speaker 3: has become really important history. So we thought we could
Speaker 3: give it a new spin. You did, you did, and
Speaker 3: that's what we did, you know, That's that's why we
Speaker 3: did it. You know, it was a new way to
Speaker 3: tell the story.
Speaker 1: How did you? As far as the film concerns, it
Speaker 1: really gets deep into how the FBI tries to to intimidate,
Speaker 1: a manipulate and use propaganda against King, especially his uh
Speaker 1: kind of philandering if you will with other women and
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Was there any apprehension whatsoever to
Speaker 1: sort of let that cat out of the back even
Speaker 1: though these things are on record. I know they're on record,
Speaker 1: but the I don't think the average Joe likes says
Speaker 1: I'm a good FI and and you know.
Speaker 3: There were reservations. You know, we we talked about it.
Speaker 3: You know, we felt like, you know, what's going to
Speaker 3: happen if we put this stuff in? You know, is
Speaker 3: it gonna are we going to be doing this the
Speaker 3: service of the FBI. And we talked about it constantly,
Speaker 3: but we knew that if we left it out, someone
Speaker 3: would say, well, you guys really just you know, tried
Speaker 3: to clean this up and not whitewashed actor King whitewash it.
Speaker 3: So you know, we we talked about it, We talked
Speaker 3: about we talked about it, We tried that, we tried
Speaker 3: different versions of the section about supposed the supposed great
Speaker 3: until we felt we were doing we were being responded filmmakers.
Speaker 3: So you know, it's it's never sometimes the decisions you
Speaker 3: make are never easy, but you have to make a decision.
Speaker 3: And that's that when we say, okay, let's make the decision.
Speaker 3: We're going to put it in. We're going to try
Speaker 3: to be responsible filmmakers and tell it in a way
Speaker 3: that doesn't sound doesn't seem salacious.
Speaker 1: Were there things that you discovered in Uh? Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, what is the research besides the book? How
Speaker 1: much personal research do you as director have to do
Speaker 1: and not just like okay with your team or that
Speaker 1: sort of No.
Speaker 3: No, you got to read books, you got to read articles.
Speaker 3: You know, you try to do as much research as
Speaker 3: you can so you understand the subject you're going to tackle,
Speaker 3: and then you bring on an archivo producer to help
Speaker 3: you find the material that you think can help visualize
Speaker 3: and orally tell orally tell the story, you know, so
Speaker 3: you always I mean, when you're making these films, you
Speaker 3: got to do homework. You know, you could do homework.
Speaker 3: You could you could do homework on any of these
Speaker 3: documentaries for two three years before you make the film.
Speaker 3: But sometimes you get schedules and you have to sort
Speaker 3: of do it faster, you know. So I read the book,
Speaker 3: I read some of the letters, I read some of
Speaker 3: the friend of Freedom of Information Act material, you know,
Speaker 3: and Ben did also, so we knew what we were doing.
Speaker 2: You know, did the King family have well given especially
Speaker 2: given who you are, did they have any like heads
Speaker 2: up or.
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 3: Because we know the King family is litigious. You know,
Speaker 3: they're looking at they're looking to make money, you know,
Speaker 3: and when they're making money, it's you know, we knew
Speaker 3: that they want to they want to charge for any
Speaker 3: time you see doctor King's image or hear his voice.
Speaker 3: And you know, the amazing thing, you know is that
Speaker 3: they didn't shoot that footage. It was shot by networks
Speaker 3: and stuff like that. But they feel proprietory sort of
Speaker 3: you know, ownership of their father's image.
Speaker 2: And this brings up a good subject because I we
Speaker 2: this of Mike Africa and uh, well, I'm sorry the directors,
Speaker 2: Tommy Tommy, yes, Tommy Oliver, I'm sorry who did it?
Speaker 2: Who did their documentary? And it's interesting that people layman
Speaker 2: don't understand how people get paid for like their appearances
Speaker 2: in documentaries and things of that nature. And I was
Speaker 2: I kind of learned a little on this process of
Speaker 2: a mirror doing songs of songs that shook, but just
Speaker 2: of archival and breaking down like how it's not really
Speaker 2: a money making situation with documentaries, right, Like you shouldn't
Speaker 2: be thinking in that way, but when you do, there's
Speaker 2: a way, there's a different way of doing things. Am
Speaker 2: I wrong in saying that? Well, it's correct me saying
Speaker 2: correctly If I'm not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you should never you should never think you're going
Speaker 3: to make a documentary to make money because that's not
Speaker 3: really ever happened.
Speaker 2: But even some of the participants who feel like they're
Speaker 2: a part of this story and this mood, this this
Speaker 2: project is going to make money. So if I'm seeing
Speaker 2: on camera, then I should make a But even.
Speaker 1: If they break the record for highest documentary, the.
Speaker 3: Rule of thumb is you should never pay a subject
Speaker 3: to do a documentary.
Speaker 1: I found out something in this process. Okay, Well, I
Speaker 1: found out that if the subject is the executive producer
Speaker 1: of the project, like, that's kind of a conflict of interest.
Speaker 1: So that in other words, like because Wu Tang insisted
Speaker 1: on being the executive producers of that documentary, they're not
Speaker 1: eligible for uh you know, like awards. He's like for it.
Speaker 1: I guess that would be an Emmy thing. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: be eligible. And also you cannot pay yourself. You can't
Speaker 1: pay a subject to be a talking head. However, right, however,
Speaker 1: I found out there's a slight. I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is the magician giving away that's.
Speaker 2: What I thought I was doing when I said the
Speaker 2: archival thing, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: If someone has if someone has something that you wanted
Speaker 3: to use in your film, arch title or skills.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you say quote archival.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're paying your license in their materials that you
Speaker 3: can do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I will say that that's that's a loop
Speaker 1: around it. You can do archival. Okay, Okay, that's the sort.
Speaker 3: Of thing I'm never going to pay.
Speaker 2: I got though, I get it together.
Speaker 3: That may change it.
Speaker 1: So, Sam, I just want to talk about the upcoming
Speaker 1: projects you have. Well, in particular the the the Negro
Speaker 1: League project that you're proposing. So since you're at the
Speaker 1: beginning of it, what in your like, in your mind,
Speaker 1: do you already have an outline of what you want
Speaker 1: to achieve or is it still a thing where you
Speaker 1: have to see what you're given and then add to
Speaker 1: it later, or.
Speaker 3: It's a it's a combination of both. I mean, in
Speaker 3: the case of the negro Leagues, we know we have
Speaker 3: you know, uh, Bob Madley, Brian's father to help tell
Speaker 3: that story, right, he's gonna We're gonna do it. And
Speaker 3: I've been reading this book again, so we know we're
Speaker 3: gonna have elements from his life to tell that story.
Speaker 3: And then the other element I know that we're going
Speaker 3: to have to tell the story is the archival images,
Speaker 3: religion stills to tell the story. And we also have
Speaker 3: this this this this box full of interviews that that
Speaker 3: Byron did over the years, and I'm gonna use and
Speaker 3: in this particular case, because some of it's not shot,
Speaker 3: so well, I'm gonna use it as audio. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: use it as audio only, okay, because I don't want
Speaker 3: to see some of these people on camera. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: do it audio to help tell that story, you know.
Speaker 3: And the other element that that I you know, you've
Speaker 3: heard me say this is to create these impressionistic recreations
Speaker 3: of the fields, of the places they played, of the
Speaker 3: of the of the locker rooms they were in, give
Speaker 3: you a sense of that experience to make it. My
Speaker 3: attitude is to try to make this film as poetic
Speaker 3: and informative it's possible, you know, in a different way
Speaker 3: than I've did in ok FBI. This one. I wanted
Speaker 3: to have more poetry, you know, this, whereas I want
Speaker 3: the music to sort of you know, replicate the period
Speaker 3: that the negro leagues evolved through, you know. So that'll
Speaker 3: take me back to this. There was a great musician
Speaker 3: for my taste, you know, from the from the early thirties,
Speaker 3: you know, you know name, what was his name, Ernie Fields.
Speaker 3: He had he had he had a great jump band
Speaker 3: in the thirties, and his music would be absolutely appropriate
Speaker 3: for the negro leagues, you know, even quite honestly, you know,
Speaker 3: Count Besie's early bands come out of that side. What's feel,
Speaker 3: you know whatever, That would be a great feel for
Speaker 3: that period. Also, you know, yeah, herschel Evans and Lester Young,
Speaker 3: you know, and Ben Webster. You know. So my head's
Speaker 3: already thinking the kind of musical template I want to
Speaker 3: use to help tell this story.
Speaker 1: My final question is is there a film project that
Speaker 1: you long to do that you haven't and that also
Speaker 1: includes nondocumentary stuff as well, like is there a fantasy
Speaker 1: film that you want to knock out the box?
Speaker 3: Well? You know, I got the Max Shrow Show, which
Speaker 3: is almost done tweaking now, and if I had, if
Speaker 3: there's if there was a fantasy film I had to do. Man,
Speaker 3: you know, I was listening to I would do a film.
Speaker 3: I would do a film not about Blue Note Records.
Speaker 3: I would do a film about the musicians who were
Speaker 3: probably Blue Note Records, but who had a style that
Speaker 3: the change from what I call that Hardbot period to
Speaker 3: the post Coltrane McCoy tyner period. Listening to people like
Speaker 3: Joe Henderson and Sonny Rollins, you know, Freddie Waits, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, because I mean I'm so into the music
Speaker 3: that's my head always, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, So basically the stuff that Ken didn't cover in
Speaker 1: his documentary.
Speaker 3: Is exactly right, man, exactly right. Joe Henderson, Man, No,
Speaker 3: Freddie waits you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get it. Well, Sam, I thank you for
Speaker 1: coming on the show. We really appreciate it was fun.
Speaker 3: It was fun, guys, and this.
Speaker 4: Was super fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah man.
Speaker 4: And if you see Brendon's telling myself what up?
Speaker 1: Because give me that, give me that wrapp again?
Speaker 3: Man for the opening.
Speaker 6: Pimps on a stroll, Holes on the road, meet can
Speaker 6: did she's looking Dan dig on a Friday night. Everyone knows.
Speaker 6: The names change, but the game remain. It's the same.
Speaker 1: I don't know who you are any more fun. I
Speaker 1: do not know who you are, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 4: Who who's scoring?
Speaker 1: What's at the point?
Speaker 3: Anybody?
Speaker 1: Anybody you know?
Speaker 3: Because because bo is his brother is Jimmy Owens a
Speaker 3: trumpet player? Good night?
Speaker 1: Yes that's crazy, all right? Well on behalf of like yeah,
Speaker 1: sugar Steve, I'm paying Bill and Fante and thank you
Speaker 1: saying Paula this quest left signing off we will see
Speaker 1: you on the next go around and west left Supreme,
Speaker 1: thank you good, take care of very yo.
Speaker 4: What's up? This is Fante. Make sure you keep up
Speaker 4: with us on Instagram at quls and let us know
Speaker 4: what you think. And we should be next to sit
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Speaker 4: all Right.
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