Doing it right

Though perhaps still known to many as “Spike Lee’s cinematographer,” Ernest Dickerson hasn’t worked with the director since “Malcolm X” in 1992.

Though he started as cameraman on such early Lee projects as “She’s Gotta Have It,” “School Daze” and “Do the Right Thing,” Dickerson subsequently has segued into directing, building a diverse filmography that stretches from the urban drama of “Juice” to the hip-hop horror of “Bones.”

With the new “Never Die Alone,” Dickerson directs the first movie adaptation of writer Donald Goines, whose first-person reportage of life on the streets has made him a seminal literary figure. Starring DMX (also a producer on the project), David Arquette and Michael Ealy, the film is a gritty mood piece all the more accomplished because it was shot on a grueling 18-day schedule.

As someone who began his career as a cinematographer, do you ever find you want to do it all yourself? Is it difficult letting someone else handle the photography when you’ve got your own idea of how it should be done?

Not really. There was one movie I did where I did direct and shoot, and it was very schizophrenic. I found myself always trying to direct a scene and then being distracted by adjusting the lights. I’m a visual thinker, and whenever I approach a film I start out by thinking about the look and the color palette. When I bring that to my cinematographer, we can talk the same language.

This film is an interesting choice for you, because it’s a moody art film crossed with the grit of an exploitation crime picture.

I think it was the attraction to Goines’ material, realizing it was well past time for Goines to be adapted to the screen. For myself, yeah, it is part exploitation film.

And it’s trash, there are trash elements to it, but there’s a fine line between trash and art. And when you can combine the two, it’s a pretty potent mix.

I realize most of the films I’ve always loved, the films that have influenced me, have been a mixture of art and exploitation. It’s an immediate, visceral thrill that exploitation films give you, that in-your-face thrill, and the art comes from approaching it from a different direction, trying to find new ways of telling the story.

Some of the music and iconography of “Never Die Alone” reference the “blaxploitation” films of the 1970s. Were you trying to bring those films into the present?

My influences weren’t so much blaxploitation films, because most of those aren’t really good filmmaking. My biggest influences were the films of Jean-Pierre Melville and Kinji Fukasaku. Those were the films I looked at, because those are the films I love and that move me. Fukasaku did a series of yakuza films in the ‘70s that were in your face. To try and do something like that in the Goines world was a natural. To me Goines is a noir writer; to me this is a noir film. I wanted Michael Ealy to look at Melville’s “Le Samourai” because of the focus that Alain Delon had in bringing that killer to life. I wanted to bring that stylized feel to the hip-hop generation.

When you were at the Sundance Film Festival presenting “Never Die Alone,” you were on a panel discussion regarding African American filmmaking. Do you find you’re still talking about the same issues as 10 or 15 years ago? Is the state of black cinema a topic you ever get tired of discussing?

I do find we are often talking about the same things. But I think we do need to talk about it. I want black cinema to be more daring, I want African American cinema to take more chances. I’ve always maintained our cinema needs to be as diverse as our music and our literature. Lately, a lot of black films have become like filmed sitcoms. That’s not all there is to it. If you want to make a science fiction film or a horror film, please do that. I want our films to explore other themes and other genres.

Much more interesting films are being made in other parts of the world, where people are really taking the medium and stretching it. In Japan, Takashi Miike is doing them fast and low and his films are incredibly creative. That’s what I’d want black filmmakers to look at -- to stretch the craft, to take more chances.

-- Mark Olsen