The Importance of Being “Ernest” - An Interview with Ernest Dickerson

By Michael Brody: 2004-07-14 00:00:00

Director Ernest Dickerson has never been one to shy away from the subject of urban culture in America. Dickerson, who began his career as a cinematographer on Spike Lee’s early films, made his directorial debut in 1992 with the critically-acclaimed crime drama, Juice. Since then, he has alternated equally between drama (Blind Faith, Ambushed), action (Surviving the Game, Bulletproof) and even horror (Demon Knight, Bones), all while maintaining a gritty tone and weaving racially-motivated issues into the story. Dickerson now returns to the roots of his first film with Never Die Alone, an urban crime drama based on the cult novel by pulp fiction writer Donald Goines. The director of Never Die Alone talks about his new film, working with DMX, and tries to explain what exactly went wrong with Bulletproof.

The big talk in the lobby, as we were waiting to come in, was the level of violence in the film. Was it necessary?

ED: It’s actually much tamer than the book. King David was a victimizer. He did some terrible things to people. And I believe it’s my responsibility, if people are getting hurt, to show the pain. I can’t gloss over something like that. It had to be in-your-face.

What made you choose Matthew Libatique as a cinematographer and how did you guys collaborate?

ED: Matt and I have been friends for a couple of years and always trying to find something to do together, but he was always off with Darren Aronofsky. So I was lucky. I wasn’t sure he would be able to do it. I wasn’t sure if he could do it financially. Because everybody took a big pay cut to do the movie. It was done for very little money and we shot it in nineteen days. So I was lucky to get him. He was game for the way I wanted to shoot the film, which was, largely, with available light, fast, handheld, and really risky.

What was the budget?

ED: It was under three million dollars, physically. But I can’t put a dollar value on the love that came from the cast and crew. They really gave a lot of themselves to do this film. We had very long days, and we were working very fast, but everyone was game for doing a movie where they had to think their way through problems. We didn’t have money to throw at a problem-solver. Everyone had to think their way through.

What made this specific novel the one that be turned into the first movie of Goines’ novels?

ED: Really kind of by chance. Jim Gibson had written a script on Never Die Alone, purely as a spec. And through a lot of chance, it was never made with the original company. And then when DMX and Content Films—DMX’s company is called Bloodline—when Bloodline and Content Films got together and wanted to do something, DMX mentioned that he wanted to do a Goines adaptation. I think Allesandro Camon remembered the Never Die Alone script and bought it out.

Were you worried with adapting a Goines novel that it would only appeal to a certain type of audience and alienate another?

ED: You know what I found out that‘s really amazing about Goine’s work? He’s not known in America but he’s huge in Europe. In Europe he’s given the same respect as someone like Chester Himes. In America, none of his books have ever gone hardcover. He’s a pulp fiction writer. All of his books are soft cover; you buy them on magazine stands. In Europe, they’ve gone hardcover. They’ve done a lot of analysis of his stories. So I was interested to see how the movie was going to travel. But I’m hoping that it will spark an interest in Goines here because he was an interesting guy; a tortured individual. And it’s as fascinating to know that all of his books are filled with situations and people he actually had seen. If he didn’t experience them himself, then they were situations experienced by people he knew. It’s really kind of scary to think that someone like King David actually walked the earth at one time.

Do you think that there will be interest in making more films out of his books, starting with Never Die Alone?

ED: I hope so. Doing some of the screenings that we’ve had for audiences for the past couple of weeks, I’m surprised by how many people have read him. He’s still widely read. I think since he started publishing in the late 60’s/early 70’s, I don’t think he’s gone out of print, which is good, because he had several kids, and I like to think it’s helping to feed them.

What was the spine of the movie that you found would make King David work?

ED: The thing about it is that, in order to draw the audience into a story, we had to make him charismatic and interesting. The best monsters are always charismatic and interesting. What makes the devil so dangerous is his attractiveness. But as the story goes on, and as Paul finds out more and more about who this guy really was, I think that charisma is totally stripped away. That, to me, was the key to getting into him; make him attractive at first, like Paul did. Paul found him attractive, found him interesting. He wanted to find out more about him. He felt sorry for him and ran to his aid. But the more he learned about him, he realized he deserved everything that he got, and more. So that was the key. Also, the voice-overs were really interesting. Because I love the irony of Jim Gibson’s script; the fact that even in death, King David still doesn’t get it. If he comes around a second time, it’s not going to help him. He has to come back a few more times.

Can you tell us about what it was like directing DMX. ED: It was great. Looking at X’s other films; I always felt that he was underutilized. I felt that he was capable of more than what was being asked of him. And when I read this script and knew that he was attached to it, I said it was going to be a challenge for him. But he’s a natural actor. He doesn’t have the training, but he has the instincts. He has the instincts to go into sense memory, or to go into life memory; picking up bits and pieces of people that he might have seen. DMX has lived, so he has a catalogue there to choose from. We had no rehearsal time, and as I said, we shot it really fast. The best that we could do was talk about King David in the beginning and make sure we knew who he was, who he was supposed to be, who DMX was supposed to be creating on the screen, and get on the same page. And he was there. I think the way we worked and the fact that we were shooting so fast helped him out, because in the past he’s been frustrated by having to wait for a long set of times on some of the Joel Silver films. He had no time to wait. So he really hardly ever had a chance to break character. He was able to become King David and stay there most of the day while he was there. And he really appreciated working that way. So I guess that’s the secret for working with fast shooting and short schedule.

Are you worried at all about violence in theaters with this film?

ED: I don’t think the films themselves cause violence. I had an incident that happened where someone was shot at a screening of Juice. But what happened was that the person that had shot the other person hadn’t even seen the film yet. They were standing on line, there was some jostling, and they went across the street to get their guns to shoot whoever it was and they hit the wrong person. So I don’t think the films cause violence. Sometimes, the conditions that theater-owners create when they have a large number of people that are trying to get in to see a film can cause jostling. That can cause hard feelings. But I don’t think the film itself is going to cause violence.

You did a number of cable movies in between Bones and this. What did those cable movies do you for you?

ED: Well, the great thing about the cable movies is that sometimes that’s where some of the most interesting material comes from. The cable movies tackle subjects that you can’t tackle in a theatrical film. I did a movie called Strange Justice that was about the behind-the-scenes of the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy and that would have never been made into a theatrical film. But it gave us a chance to explore what happens when politics in America become showbiz. I couldn’t have done that in a theatrical release.

But how did that affect the making of Never Die Alone?

ED: I don’t know, maybe the fact that I did all those on pretty fast schedules and it helped me shoot Never Die Alone in nineteen days. I guess it’s made me more decisive. I make a hard decision right away. I commit to a viewpoint right away and I don’t deviate from it. I can’t. I don’t have the time to play around. I’ve always been for strong preparation in a film before going in. So maybe I just come a little bit more prepared now than I did before.

You have worked with actors who have either little or no formal training and who have a lot of formal training. Do you have a preference?

ED: Either way. No two actors have the same way of getting into character, whether they’re trained or untrained. There are some people that are just natural actors. They have the natural talent, the raw ability. They just don’t have the training of technique. DMX had the instincts to find King David inside of himself and inside of other people that he might have seen and known. I think so long as the person is committed to creating a character, then I’ll work with them.

What do you think Goines would have thought of this movie?

ED: I don’t know. I think we stayed true to a lot of his vision. We didn’t get as graphic as he got. I mean, he got pretty graphic sometimes. We pulled back a lot from the graphicness. I don’t know if you’ve read Never Die Alone, but Juanita’s death in the book is quite horrible. I mean, he goes into it in anatomical detail. And when the sister gets shot—it’s horrible. I was going more for shock than graphic gore. Although I do have that one quick cut of Blue’s brains splattered on the inside. But I had to go for the shock effect of Goines’ novel, without going into something that works great on a printed page but would just drive the audience out of the theater if we showed it in detail on the screen.

So what do you have next?

ED: That’s a good question. I don’t know.

Take a break?

ED: Umm…no. I can’t afford to take a break. There are several things that I’m looking at. It might be another Donald Goines adaptation. I can’t say which one yet. But there is a script that we’ve been developing and it would be nice if that was going to be the next one. But there are also other projects that I’ve been developing as well.

Do you plan on doing an action film ever again?

ED: It depends on the story. In the great action films that I grew up with the action always had consequences. People were changed by the actions. It’s hard for me to look at most American movies now. I used to love action films, but now most American action films are very empty. It’s not like the classic action films where people were changed by the events that they went through. I’d like to see more of that come back. But we’ll see.

Do you feel that it happened with your action movie, Bulletproof? ED: Bulletproof was a case where we shot an R-rated film and the studio made us cut it to PG-13. So Bulletproof is a big sore point with me because it’s the only time I’ve ever kicked a hole in an editing room wall. Because of the frustration of dealing with the studios and dealing with a producer who when the studio said “Jump!” he said “How high?” You make a movie with an R-rating, and then they tell you to cut it to PG-13. So it meant butchering performances, storylines, and really simplifying the film. The story is scripted by Lewis Colick, who is much deeper. It was about the responsibilities of friendship. The relationship that Damon Wayans had with Kristen Wilson was much stronger and all that was taken out. The movie was castrated.

Did it change how you deal before you sign onto a project? How you negotiate?

ED: Yeah. I took Bulletproof because there was a project I had been working on for a while, but it looked like it was going to take forever to get set up. And I have a family, so I had to make money. So I took it on, and it looked like it was going to be a great movie. But you shoot an R-rated movie, then on the preview screenings, you see that the studio is inviting 14/15/16-year olds. And you wonder what’s going on. And then the mandate comes from the studio: “Well, fellas, we know we wanted you to shoot an R-rated film, and you did, you did, but the action scenes have too much impact, we want you to soften the sound effects, and we want you to cut it as close to a PG-13 as you can get.” So, it was painful.

Did that personal project ever get off the ground?

ED: Yeah, but it was made with another director, all with the cast that I had suggested. And it wasn’t very good.

What movie was it?

ED: You really want me to say?

Yeah.

ED: In Too Deep. Because the original script that Michael Henry Brown and Paul Aaron wrote was a fascinating study of a man who was deep cover. And it was a fascinating story about a character who was a natural actor. He was a natural born actor, but he didn’t want to act on stage or in front of the camera. He wanted to become an undercover guy. And the first case he did become undercover, he got too close to someone that he wound up hurting, and it really messed with him. It really bothered him. He fell in love with a girl whose brothers he had to send to prison for dealing cocaine. Because they were cocaine-dealing and sending her to college. He successfully created a character who was everything that he was brought up not to be. And as an actor, he was deep cover for so long that he lost track of who he was. Because the character he created was a very brutal gangster and he had to prove his brutality several times to save himself in deep cover. And it was a true story. Because the guy that the story was based on, Jeff Coy, ultimately lost track of who he was and committed suicide. He actually committed suicide. But all that was taken out of the story when they did it. It was turned into a deep cover story, but the psychological ramifications of being deep cover for so long were left out But when I left, all that went out the window. Ok…I vented. You got me to vent.

Never Die Alone is currently available on video and DVD.

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