Never Die Alone

As Black History Month draws to a close, we've just introduced a primer on Black Cinema at the main site and, spotting my admiration for Spike Lee, Jonathan Marlow wondered if I might be interested in a few comments he nabbed during Ernest Dickerson's Q&A following a screening of Never Die Alone at Sundance. Absolutely.

On DMX:

DMX was a pussycat; he was cool to work with. I think we had a great atmosphere on the set. We had enormous support from (producers) Alessandro (Camon) and Mark (Gerald). I always try to have a family atmosphere on my set. The job is hard enough, you may as well have a good time while you're doing it. I think in his other films, they were so big that he was just moved to the side until he was needed and he felt out of place, but he felt a part of Never Die Alone. He showed up. On other movies there were days where he didn't show up. But he did show up every day for us.

On the other actors:

Clifton Powell's been around for a long time. He's one of those guys you see in a lot of movies and you always go, "I've seen that guy before, where did I see him?" He's a solid, dependable actor. Michael Ealy, this is one of his first films. He did Barbershop before this and he did Barbershop 2 and I think he's a great. Reagan Gomez-Preston used to be on a TV show, The Parent 'Hood, so I think Robert Townsend played her father. Jennifer Sky, who's been around for a while, she plays Janet, but there are some new faces [in the film].

On the tight production schedule:

Well, we went one day over schedule, 19 days. We had five-day weeks. But we had a lot of 16-hour days.

A few comments from DP Matthew Libatique:

We had a lot of time at the beginning of the day. It was intense; we didn't really stop working. At that schedule, we would typically have five scenes to do in a day. We'd have to shoot, try to get eight pages done, and it was hectic, you know, sometimes it was a kind of stream of consciousness thing, just keep moving.

To which Dickerson says, comparing filmmaking to running in front of a train:

If you slow down, you die; if you stop, you die; if you trip and fall, you die.

Posted by dwhudson at February 25, 2004 8:45 AM