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She and her partner, Ben Myron, wanted to start producing.
Jesse had met with Larry Estes, who at the time was a rep for Columbia TriStar video.
They were funding projects through I.R.S.
Records with Miles Copeland, Stewart Copelands brother.
Larry told Jesse that if I.R.S.
They had the script.
Then Jesse brought me on as a director.
Now we had to get the star.
Was Bill Paxton a star at that point?No.
But I always wanted Bill from the start because he just felt like the guy.
Bill was this guileless person.
If you ever met Bill Paxton, you know that what you saw was what you got.
I interviewed him back whenOne False Movecame out, and I did get that impression.
There was something genuinely warm and open about him.Thats what he was.
Bill was always a clear vessel.
I just dont think he was capable of lying.
He said what he felt.
But even though I knew Bill was the guy, we still had to go through the dance.
They wanted us to see Tim Robbins, and he turned us down.
Jeff Daniels turned us down.
All these various people turned us down.
You gotta do what you want to do, which was great.
Can we talk about the frankness of the scripts discussion of race?
Its the backbone of the script and has to be, consideringwhere everything ends up.
But yeah, in this environment now, theres so much tiptoeing going on about everything.
Its a different world now.
But I think the use of the N-word in the movie is necessary.
And then what his wife says afterward: He just grew up talking that way.
Thats not something that is probably a suitable explanation today.
We talk about the golden ages of cinema.
I think there probably have been three.
Certainly the 1970s was another.
And the 1990s I think would qualify as well.
I think especially in independent film, the 90s really was a signature time.
Why then, do you think?I dont know.
I think some of it was because society was changing.
Art of that quality usually comes from upheavals in society, and there definitely was something going on.
Hip-hop had hit the scene, and music was changing.
But then you got something likeEasy Riderand, after that,Sweet Sweetbacks Baadasssss Song.
There had also been a lot of interesting imports from Brazil in the early 80s and Germany, too.
An adventurous, renegade spirit was starting to germinate among filmmakers then.
I dont shoot a lot of film anyway.
I was always looking for realism.
Me, Im always looking for the subtext:Whats happening inside of the visual?
He was a guy who had these dreams of being a big-city cop.
He was looking at it in a fantastical kind of a way.
That had to break his heart.
And the best way to show that is by staying on his face.
Hes there for the job interview, but hes falling in love.
Where do you place the camera to communicate all that?
Can we talk a little bit about film noir?
Of courseDevil in a Blue Dressis the big one.
I never thought of noir when I was shootingOne False Move.
But there are certain noir elements.
Fantasia, the Cynda Williams character, becomes a femme fatale.
But then again, maybe not really because shes a victim herself.
Maybe its a more complex kind of noir.
Dale basically is not cynical.
His illusions are shattered, and not just his illusions about being a big-city cop.
Its also that he had this false image of himself as a straight-arrow, honorable guy.
And so he comes face-to-face with himself in some ways.
Thats where the noir element gets turned on its head a little bit.
Many characters have to confront their failures in this film.Yes, absolutely.
I wanted to talk to you a little bit more about the character of Fantasia.
I thought that she was too pretty to be with these two guys.
I was talked into casting her, and that was such a great gift because she was fantastic.
It was the best role for a Black woman at the time.
It was just thebest.
There used to be a restaurant on Cahuenga called the House of Chan Dara.
It looked like at one time it had been a residence.
It was two small rooms.
I met the interviewer at lunchtime to do this interview.
She says, What were the films that inspired you to make movies?
Who were the directors that you were inspired by?
What kinds of movies would you like to make?
What kinds of statements would you like to make?
Oh my.And its her audition!
Dales next line is supposed to be I cant let you go because I dont have the legal authority.
Well, I didnt say that.
I didnt say anything!
You coulda bought me for a dime.
I dont know what happened to that lady.
She sent me a basket of cookies.
I dont even know how she knew where I lived!
It was a trip.
Fantasia is my favorite Cynda Williams performance.
So true, so connected with her emotions.
But I think its symbiotic, too.
I think they needed each other.
She loved him, you know?
Clearly, she loved him, because she chooses him over Dale in the end.
He gets shot trying to get between them.
At some point, remember, they find out that the child is still alive.
Billy Bob accuses her in the car, and we know that she did let the kid live.
They felt that thats part of what allowed them to be found out, though it wasnt the case.
But theres also a racial angle to it as well.
Also, I think that she probably wants toplaysome of that stuff.
How do I somehow gain some control over my journey?
Thats also an element of noir in that description.
America was a place where a different ideal was projected and advertised.
The Europeans had another view of the country that we on the inside did not have.
Do you think sometimes it takes a foreigner to explain a country to itself?Yeah.
It takes somebody from the outside to tell you whats happening!
Hey, brother, I dont know if you realize this, but … That feeling was there in the script; it had talked aboutHigh Noon.
Theres almost a folktale or a curse aspect to the story.
Situations keep repeating, like the one you just mentioned.
Thats all part of that southern thing.
The South, man!
My familys from Texas, and my grandfathers wife is from Louisiana.
Theres all of that superstition, even among the whites in the South.
Theres a haunt in the South.
Related to the whip-poor-will, perhaps, is the harmonica player.
Are the gods stirring the pot?Yeah.
And it reminded me of Howlin Wolfs song Smokestack Lightnin.
You know that song, right?
Smokestack Lightnin, dont you hear me callin?
It is a folktale in a lot of ways.
And blues is a lyrical, musical expression of that, too.
So, yeah, I definitely think there is a thematic connection between noir and blues.
Was that shot specified in the script?
When we first visited that location, there were cotton fields all around.
So the location no longer had that same value.
Hes getting closer to this child, and we get closer to them.
And that was where we improvised.
We had the little boy ask him questions.
I dont remember those questions being in the script.
I didnt want to tie it up to know whether Dale lived or died.
My feeling is that he did live but that he wouldnt get to be a police officer anymore.
Because when youre injured like that, thats pretty hard to come back from.
And I believe that.
