The whole audience was dying laughing.
I truly believe that there isn't any experience like a movie in theaters.
Next time, I'm bringing George Lucas in here.
Oh, man.
What's up, man?
Sir.
Good to see you.
Likewise.
Coming clean with the corduroy.
I'm coming to you.
New York.
You know what I mean?
I knew you was gonna be looking nice.
You flew in last night, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But you're queen, right?
No, no, no.
She sat this one out.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, she at home in the bay with the kids and handling stuff there.
Yeah, well, congrats.
Congrats.
Thank you, man.
Thank you.
How you doing, man?
I'm good.
You on the tour?
Yeah.
Yeah, feeling gratitude, and I'm excited.
I get to see the cast and everybody.
It's really since you rapped, right?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
We got real close, all of us in New Orleans last year, so it's nice to be able to get back together again.
Reconnect.
Exactly, exactly.
It's nice to be out here to see you.
Well, you know, it's always great to see you and your film.
Let me get it out from the jump.
It's phenomenal.
You know I waited for you.
Shit, well, I don't know why in the hell you gonna do that.
Because you told me you loved me.
Well, I told you to stay the fuck away from me, too, but I guess you didn't hear that part, huh?
Oh, I heard you.
You know what?
Let's tell the audience about the phone call.
Yep.
All right.
Yep.
Go ahead.
So, yeah, we at IMAX headquarters.
In LA, right?
Yeah, in LA.
And we keep seeing the print.
We got the print, and we got the DCP for- It's like the final check, right?
For the audience, yeah.
Yeah, final check, making sure that everything is looking good.
There's no- Hunky dory.
Nothing we missed.
Yeah, VFX or checking the sound mix.
And it's like in pristine condition.
It's at the IMAX headquarters in Playa Vista.
It's one of my favorite places to watch a movie.
And I was at the headquarters and I was thinking it's kind of a waste to screen it like that if people can't be there to appreciate it.
Because we sick of looking at the movie at this point.
You know what I mean?
Everybody, the producers and the VFX folks.
And you made a big mistake.
Tell us, tell us, tell us.
So I said, oh, man, I should see it, because I wanted to show you the movie.
You know, it's got so many inspirations, but many of them from your movies.
Thank you.
So I was just thinking like man, I should just check and see on the offhand chance that Spike is in LA.
You know what I mean.
And I called you, and you was like, yeah, I'm here.
And I was like, yo, can you get here?
That's the crazy thing, that I'm in L.A.
Yep.
Yeah, that's some spiritual thing right there because definitely not, you know, I'm in and out.
Yeah.
So a lot of times I take I'm at the JetBlue 6 a.m.
JFK land.
Do I got to do run around?
I'm on the ready at night.
I think I think he was going to a game when I saw you when I saw you as you was flying.
You was flying back for for a playoff game.
I think I've been thinking about it was not a mistake. that I happened to be in L.A.
Yeah.
And he said, let me try it.
Yeah, it was a shot in the dark.
And then he made a mistake, though.
Yeah.
Because his mistake is just the three of us.
Yeah, me, you, and Zingy.
And I'm sitting there.
And the whole film.
First thing you said, you was like, you don't want to sit next to me.
And I was like, man, that's how I do.
I told you.
I was giving you a warning.
And I'm watching my brother's film.
And it's like me sitting courtside at the world's most famous basketball garden.
And we're kicking a Celtics ass.
I'm jumping up and down.
I'm going like this.
Yup.
Yup.
Yeah.
Hey, I was bugging.
And then that, what's the music?
Do you have a name for it?
We call it the surreal montage.
Conjuring spirits from the past.
Somebody take me.
And the future.
Now I know what it was.
Yeah.
I've been telling people, you know.
Yeah.
When that's real montage.
I was like, I lost it, man.
Yeah.
And I know your queen was like, look, you know what?
I want to be around at that lift.
But what you said about it.
We was just fired up.
Like, we was just happy that you liked it, you know?
Liked?
I just said I was at the world's most famous reading management garden and we were kicking ourselves to the ass.
What more is bigger than that?
I mean, it's a dream come true, man, to be able to play that movie for somebody who you look up to.
So many of your movies affected me.
But it was an honor not to cut you off.
It was an honor for me that you would think of me like on a one in a million chance I was going to be in LA.
Yeah.
And then you had to be like, you like, had like 45 minutes.
It was quick.
We were hauling ass.
You really got there.
But I mean.
We were doing, we were doing.
Wait, wait.
We'll give you a cinema thing.
We were doing Gene Hackman in the French Connection.
Oh, man.
We were doing Steve McQueen, Bullitt.
Oh, man.
My God.
On the heels.
I said, you gave me the time.
I said, I got to be there.
Lucky we didn't get a ticket.
What was funny too, was man, you got to do the same thing for me when we got to see Highest to Lowest in New York.
But, you know, your queen was there, though.
So it was the four of us.
We had an IMAX, man.
We had a little.
It was nice, though, man.
We were in the closet.
No, it was nice.
And we got dinner afterwards.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, like, can I ask you, can I ask you, why Kurosawa and why that movie?
Great question.
One of the great things about film school, but particularly NYU graduate film school, is that I was introduced to world cinema.
When I was little, I had an older friend in the family who would take us to see Samurai films.
I was like 10, 11 years old.
I didn't know what the fuck was happening.
I mean, I liked it when people got their heads cut off and see blood gushing, but I didn't know.
I mean, I'm 10 years old.
So it was at NYU graduate film school first year My classmates Ernest Dickerson who shot all my up to Malcolm X.
He was my DP.
Also, there's Demon Knight, which was an influence on Cynic.
And Ang Lee.
They're my classmates.
That's crazy, man.
And so I saw Rashomon.
Oh, yeah.
And Rashomon really was the basis for She's Gonna Happen because in Rashomon there's a rape and a murder and various people get their idea of their vision of what happened.
So I just hijacked that and I have this woman.
Nola Dollar has three boyfriends jugged at the same time.
So it was the same thing.
And so jump many decades later, The phone rings.
And I don't recognize the number.
And it's Denzel.
And he says, what's up, Spike?
You know, we go through our thing.
And he says, I'm going to send you a script.
You get it at FedEx Smart.
I said, what's it about?
He said, just read the script.
Let me know what's happening.
He FedExed you?
FedEx.
So when the FedEx truck pulled up the next day, I was waiting.
I ain't going to let a brother man get up.
You ran up on him before he got out of the car?
Not the bed, the bed.
I said, give me that thing.
So I read it.
But here's the thing, though.
Even before I hung up the phone, I knew I was doing it.
Because Denzel was calling me to do something.
I knew he knows what my wheelhouse is.
Baseball terminology.
You know, if you're a baseball fan, you know about the 27th world-time world champion, New York Yankees.
Thank you very much.
But anyway, that script had been going around for years.
And like I said before, I knew I was doing it even before reading the script.
And it wasn't until Denzel was doing press after we finished the film that journalists were alerted to the fact that Inside Man was 18 or 18.
19 years had passed.
Denzel and I didn't even know that.
For like yesterday.
It didn't seem like it was 19 since Inside Man.
Right.
So... But I mean, I think maybe because you guys have been in each other's orbit so much.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But here's the thing, though.
We don't really hang out.
I understand.
Here's the thing, though.
You can have relationships, great relations, while being each other's mug.
You know every single minute right right, and then you know when mba schedule comes out.
I'm looking with a nixon being in la, he got courtside seats, i got courtside seats.
And another thing though, even more importantly, is that our families are really close.
That's the thing.
Yeah.
You know, John David was a star in the movie.
Black Klansman.
So, you know, it's something that I've learned, you know, as I've gotten older.
That when you had, and you know this too, my brother.
I'm not even telling you something you don't know.
When the foundation is love and trust.
It's got your limit.
Boom shakalaka.
Yeah.
That's that.
And here's another thing is that.
Highest and lowest, right away I read the script, I said, number one, we've got to change the title.
So it's not high and low, it's highest and lowest and then number two.
And also with that thinking I knew it had to be.
We were doing Dennis and I were doing a reinterpretation and not a remake.
And that's a big, big thing.
And for you, what's the difference between a reinterpretation versus a remake for you?
Well, number one, of course, that film was post-war, Japan, 1963.
This is the current date.
The Tishima Foon character was a shoe executive.
And this one...
Denzel's a music executive.
He's like Barry Gordy, Quincy Jones.
So that's my thing, music.
But the thing that made it, which we kept, which is a lot of, of course, our films about morality morals,
What will you do for money?
What will you do and what you won't do?
And we use that for dialogue in the film.
Where Denzel's character says, all money ain't good money.
Yeah.
My daddy used to tell me that all the time.
All money ain't good money.
Yeah.
I got to tell you, man, like, there's some powerful scenes in it.
You're not God no more.
I am.
All right, listen, God give you everything you want, right?
No, God give you everything you need.
So the question is, what do you need?
How can I help you?
I ain't saying I'm God, but I could help.
It's great.
Some great action set pieces, man.
Like French Connection.
Oh, man.
Billy Friedkin.
Dean Hackman.
So what's your process?
Like when you're getting ready to do a scene like that money handoff with all the coordination between the motorcycles and the train, you know when you.
I'm glad you asked that.
Yeah, when you earmark a sequence, it's like, man, Spike Lee's about to make a big, giant sequence.
What's the first step?
Well, I love that film.
And my office alongside your sitters.
My man did not just sign. mind, send this poster for me.
He wrote an essay on it.
And thank you for that.
And it's prominent in my office.
Thank you for that.
And Black Panther too.
So, in the French connection, that one of the greatest chasings ever starts at a subway station called named Bay 50th.
And that was to stop for my high school.
Wow.
John Dewey.
So they were shooting a film while we were in class.
And so we went to see the movie, and we see the subway station.
We went crazy.
And the late great Billy Friedman talked about this all the time.
Like, they didn't have any permits.
They just, you know, somebody got killed, run over.
They just went crazy.
So anyway, I knew that was in there.
And this is post-Exorcist, right?
I forgot which came first.
I always forget which one was first.
I'll tell you, since you brought up the Exorcist, I saw it at the old Paramount Theater, Columbus Circle.
And we waited two hours in line And that was a thing.
People were vomiting in the theater, screaming.
I mean, that was a... I can't imagine.
Linda Blair, her head turned around.
Yeah, I can't imagine.
It was And that was before.
I'm telling you when you go to, When you went to a movie back in the day, you ain't online.
Hot, cold, the theater's... Real cinephiles.
Aliens.
Yeah.
Star Wars.
Jaws, people screaming.
I mean, it's hard to explain, but back in the day when a film was a hit, we packed.
I feel similar.
I hear the stories about the 70s, but I came up in the multiplex era.
That kind of came in the wake of that.
I remember seeing Jurassic Park.
I remember seeing Jurassic Park.
We was in a drive-in.
You know what I'm saying?
Like speaker on the car and I'm in the car Spike and the T-Rex is chasing them you know, Goldblum and they're driving trying to get away from the thing, and they got the shot of the T-Rex in the side view mirror.
It says, objects are closer, and they appear.
And I'm looking in the, you know what I'm saying, in the screen.
I'm also, like, looking in the, I'm checking my... How old are you now?
Oh, man.
Jurassic Park was, it was the same year as Schindler's List, so it's got to be, what is it, 93?
How old would that make you?
I would have been seven.
Yeah.
But I seen Malcolm X. I told you, that was one of my first movies I ever seen.
Yeah.
Let me get back to... Where was we at?
We was on, oh, yeah, Fresh Connection.
So when you do a big set piece.
So here's the thing, though.
I wanted the audience... to understand that this character played by A$AP Rocky is smart.
He's already coming out of the pen, out of Reich.
He doesn't want to go back to the river.
He has to get the money, the drop.
So me being a sports fan, he should take the four train to Yankee Stadium.
I want to say, oh, wait a minute.
The hated motherfucking Red Sox are coming to Yankee Stadium.
Weekend series.
It's usually a Friday night, Saturday night, and a Sunday afternoon.
I said, what's on a Sunday afternoon?
Then I want to amplify.
I said, oh, the Puerto Rican Day Parade is usually on Sundays.
Boom.
Oh, let's have Eddie Palmieri, the late, great Eddie Palmieri and his house orchestra play.
And then I thought about the first connection.
So we're going to have my brother, Dean.
Mr. Allstate.
Or is it State?
I get it mixed up.
Anyway.
Yeah, I think he, State, no, Allstate.
Mayhem.
Let's add him.
So let him be Gene Hackman.
And that's...
Did y'all sit down and map it out with stunts and everything?
Like, I thought I just must have took, like, crazy coordination.
No, I just wrote it.
You just wrote it?
Yeah, you know, and... And it went and got it done?
It was fun, too.
And that's Totoro's brother on the... Yeah, yeah, Nick.
Boston sucks!
Yeah.
Boston sucks!
And the funny thing is, they got the guy who's in on it, pulls the... Emergency brake.
And then the back Yankee subway car, they start singing, Boston pulled the verse right.
Oh, my God.
Boston pulled the verse right.
Look, you know what I'm talking about.
L.A., San Francisco, Boston, New York.
You know, we don't.
The rivalry.
The rivalry.
Can I ask another question?
How you land on A-side?
I thought you killed it.
He's a good actor.
My wife produced the film he was in, so I would go to the set he had.
It has it, and so I wanted him.
But there's certain roles that you know, we have to see if Mr Washington approves right right, right.
So we brought him in, and he did his thing, and Denzel gave the thumbs up.
And here's another thing though, that I'd like to say.
A lot of actors, when they have to go toe-to-toe with Dee, it's like, you scared?
Yeah.
Charlie Brown.
You can't be scared of the dude if you can't have a kid.
He's so powerful force.
And in a film where the way those roles are written, they got to go toe-to-toe.
Right.
It then overwhelms that person, though.
It's a knockout.
Not even a TKO.
It's just like, boom.
So you need somebody who's going to stand toe-to-toe.
And Ace was like, yo, I'm from uptown Harlem.
Got Harlem and Mount Vernon.
Yeah, money under Mount Vernon.
Asap, he held his ground.
And that just elevated the whole film, especially in the two scenes together at the end.
Yeah, I love how there's glass between them both times.
What we did, though, is two dollies.
And we jerry-rigged them together so they moved and sank.
Because if you don't do that, you know, they're human beings.
It could be off.
Yeah, yeah.
But they were jerry-rigged together.
Oh, here's a real good story.
Recording studio.
Action.
Denzel starts rapping.
I'm looking like... I'm looking at my slides.
I'm like, where did it come from?
And Ace has credit.
He was with him.
And in fact, Ace has a line right there.
He says, what, this is a rap battle?
I got the blicky on me, OG, so don't try nothing tricky on me, OG.
I got mine too, young G, 9mm.
A lot of reasons why you shouldn't fuck with me either, young G. I'm the one that can pay you.
I don't need to be the one that's going to slay you.
Is this a battle right now?
But here's the thing, though.
Denzel... without anybody knowing it, was studying Nas, his Illmatic album.
And that raised the whole level.
What they did was way better than what was written.
So again, that's the genius of Denzel.
And also I could give Rocky credit because he had to go with the flow too, because there was a scripted scene, you know.
But Yeah, out the window.
Yeah, out the window.
And Ace was right there with him.
I love you.
I love you.
So what's the box office number?
You guys bring it back.
You bring it back?
We back for a week.
When?
Coming up.
The 14th?
The 12th.
Yeah.
Yeah, we'll be back for a week starting December 12th.
All right.
We'll be back in IMAX, you know, film.
All IMAX theaters?
Yeah, and a few.
I think 10.
How many?
I think 10.
Back on film print, which is amazing.
We got amazing support for Warner Bros., you know.
Oh, yeah, big time.
So much like good timing for us, with this movie and Mike DeLuca Pam Abdi at the studio at this time.
DeLuca and Pam, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, they did.
Yeah, they did.
But just for them taking so many bets on... Let me ask a question.
I don't think a lot of franchise.
A lot of the audience knows that there were several studios that turned it down.
What was the issue?
We don't want people to hear this.
Why?
What was your ask that a lot of studios said, nah?
Man, it'd be hard to get into all the details.
I mean, to be honest, man.
That was the biggest one.
Final cut?
I mean, nah.
Like, I think, um.
Ownership.
Let's hear it.
Ownership.
I think that was a part of it, man.
Like, but truthfully, we were fortunate that a lot of people, you know, wanted the project.
On certain conditions.
On certain, yeah, certain conditions.
In other words, they fucked up, right?
I'm not going to say that.
I can say it.
I'm happy we were able to find a home with Warner Brothers, though.
Well, that was the right home.
Yeah, exactly.
And it's not often that time it works out.
I feel really fortunate that Warner You know, we had the release date that we had.
Everything worked out.
Yeah, exactly.
We were able to get film prints made, get those out.
And just people came out, which is something that you can never control, right?
You know what this is?
Roll of the dice.
I've never seen these movies.
You gotta be like, mama needs a new pair of shoes.
Man, new pair, yeah, yeah.
Nah, it's risk.
It's risk there, but for us, You know, it's like you said before, I believe in the cinema.
I'm willing to bet on a good story connecting.
To the audience, right?
Yeah, and if the studio believes in it and we're able to put it out at the right time, the right way, you work hard and you hope that people show up.
But I truly believe that there isn't an experience like a movie in theaters.
You know what I'm saying.
Like, especially at this time.
Like you know, it's so many ways that we disconnected from each other, right.
Like I can, you know, I can get groceries delivered to my house.
I can order food from my favorite restaurant to my house.
I can buy Clothes.
You know, all of these experiences are things that we used to go out and do in public.
Go to the mall, go to the pros and cons, all of it.
But for me like going to sit in a movie theater, man where, and the thing for me is like not being able to press pause or stop it.
You know what I mean?
Like you know, because the first thing I'll do especially when I'm watching something scary or I'm watching something that's too funny or too shocking if I'm at home, I press pause.
You know what I'm saying?
Like give myself a chance to catch up.
Let me give you another example of technology.
Yeah.
People in the movie theater on the phone.
Oh, yeah.
That's tough.
On the phone?
Yes.
That's tough, man.
Yeah, I try not to do that.
What word you say?
Try.
I don't do it.
Yeah.
I'm trying not to pass judgment, you know what I'm saying?
I'm really not going to say it because in my class, when somebody says we're trying, I go, oh!
And my TA puts in front of them the quote.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
It's do or do not do.
There's no try, right?
Right away.
Oh!
Yeah.
And my teeth, like.
Yeah, boom.
Boom.
Yeah, no.
No, but I mean, like, it's a sacred experience, man.
Like, I'll never forget watching Malcolm X for the first time, you know?
Yeah.
Like, film reel, projected, Grand Lake Theater.
Oh, let me tell you a story.
Yeah.
The reason I become a filmmaker is my mother was a cinephile.
My father hated Hollywood films.
So I'm the oldest of five.
So I was my mother's movie date.
And one of the first films I remember, she took me to see Goldfinger.
I was six years old.
My mother always, if she wanted to go to film, she would go that opening weekend.
And she loved Sean Connery.
Loved Sean Connery.
And she took me to see, the theater's packed.
I mean, packed.
Like, you're talking about, it was like, packed.
And there's, you know, those films are loud, explosions, gunshots, everything.
So there was a lull in the action, and it was quiet.
So I looked at my mom and said, Mommy, why is that lady named Pussy Galore?
My mother grabbed me by the neck.
Don't you see?
What'd I do?
What'd I do?
What'd I do?
The whole audience was dying laughing.
Oh, man.
They heard a kid in there.
Like, man, who is this kid?
Bro.
It was quiet.
So everybody heard my voice.
I was like.
You're choking me!
You're choking me!
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
For those who've heard that story before, too bad.
Oh, my God.
Did y'all stay?
Yeah.
But, you know, took the subway home.
So talk about your brother, Michael B.
I decided I was gonna do a movie about this young man who had been murdered by a... Say his name.
By a transit cop, Oscar Grant, yeah.
Right, right.
Yeah, man, Oscar Grant.
San Francisco, right?
That's correct.
Yeah, a young man from Hayward, around the same age as me.
I mean, it was really simple in that, You know, we needed an actor that looked like Oscar, somebody around the same age.
Because I was thinking the movie was only going to play in the Bay Area.
You know what I mean?
And I figured, like, if... Little did you know.
But I figured like if the actor didn't look like Oscar Grant then people would write the movie off as being BS, like out the gate.
So I literally was like, man, who could play this guy?
And I started thinking about Mike B for that.
Have you seen him in something?
Oh yeah, I seen him in a bunch of stuff.
Like he had been in The Wire.
The Wire, yeah.
But he had done a bunch of shows with Jason Kadams, like Parenthood, Friday Night Lights.
But I was seeing him in movies.
So he did a movie called Chronicle by Josh Trank.
And he did another movie called Red Tails that had like a bunch of young black actors in it.
Yeah, George Lucas did that one, yeah, yeah.
Yup.
Louie was great.
And the other thing about Mike, too, was people He had a lot of fans.
Like, a lot of people had seen him in things.
And it was interesting.
It was also, like, different types of people.
You know what I mean?
You had people who watched The Wire, who was on some street shit.
You know what I'm saying?
You had people who watched The Wire that was on some academic.
You know, I remember, like, a lot of moms watched the show Parenthood.
That was actually set in the Bay Area.
And it was like, that young man is great.
People who were sports fans who watched Friday Night Lights.
And everybody kind of agreed on him being, like, the next thing, you know?
And I met with him.
And just we really got along, bro.
Like, he seemed really solid.
You know, we came from similar backgrounds.
He was talking about his parents a lot, his younger siblings, you know.
Where'd he grow up?
Mike's from Newark.
Yeah, he was born in Aledo.
He's from Brick City?
From Brick City.
Newark, all right.
Newark.
And he the oldest of three.
He got a little sister, a little brother.
I got two little brothers.
I'm about a year older than he is.
So, just so yeah, we just line it lined up real smooth And then when we got to work, that's when it really lined up, you know.
You know, I'm saying Mike also played a lot of sports coming up.
So I was an athlete before I before I started Going to film school.
So it's a football, right?
Yeah, I play football.
Yes.
It's a a work rhythm, a work mentality that we both really, really understood.
He's phenomenally gifted, bro.
He's been doing it for a couple decades now, but he's a great actor in that you don't see the work.
You know what I mean?
Like, he just is the thing that's in front of you.
Great line.
So, yeah, like, we got on well, man.
And while we were making Fruville, like getting ready to get it off the ground, I was meeting with Stallone, you know, like to see about getting Creed done.
And that was when I kind of told Mike about it.
You approached Stallone about Creed?
Yeah.
I mean, about...
Rocky?
About Creed, yeah.
Met with him before we shot Fruitvale.
And then he came back around after.
And then he and Mike met.
They got along.
So it was kind of two movies back to back like that.
And so vastly different from each other.
You know what I'm saying?
Like some spiritual connections as far as what Mike had to do as a performer.
We shot maybe two, three stunt days on Fruitvale out of 20.
You know, Creed, man, he had a whole month that was just fights.
No stunt doubling.
We didn't have one stunt doubling.
Were there any fights that you looked at?
Yeah, yeah.
So what we did, Stallone was like a big fight fan.
I'm a big fight fan.
And we worked with our editors, one of them, Michael Sharver, who cut centers for us.
But we, you know, I wrote out the fights.
And then I had him find moments from fights.
Like Kaival footage, right?
Exactly.
So we cut together basically like a rip reel.
You know like, and we would put text on the screen like here's Adonis, here's this fighter for this punch from this fight, or this moment, this tie-up from this other fight.
And then we got with our stunt coordinator.
I don't know if it had ever been done before what he did for us on that movie in terms of the physicality of it.
You got to go back to Stallone like a Rocky II or Rocky III.
You know where he's just fighting half the movie and it's actually the actor.
So each time we get together, I'm trying to challenge him more.
He's trying to challenge me.
How does he challenge you?
Man, I think... And does that come on the set?
Yeah, yeah.
I think it's actually on set where he's trying to get to the truth of a moment, where he's trying to find it.
He'll also demand a lot of me, you know what I'm saying?
Like sometimes where he's going through a lot, for instance in Sinners, he's basically got to hold himself as he dies.
You know, he's playing both characters.
One character dies in the other character's arms.
We got to keep everybody inside and the dead body out.
There ain't no dead body.
It's stacked.
So he's gotta give a dying performance with a huge blood prosthetic coming out and he's gotta turn around and hold himself.
That was done the same day?
Done the same day, yeah.
With a lot of technical specifications, but we in a room that's the size of this stage.
And he's on the ground, just basically essentially glued to the ground in prosthetic blood.
So he'll say, hey man, I need you.
You know, I need you right here.
Keep talking to me.
And usually like I pride myself on being there for actors, but I'm usually putting him in a situation that's so crazy.
You know what I mean?
He'll have to say hey man, I still need you know, I still need your reminder, still need to be there because he can handle it.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, it's kind of on me to make sure that I'm, you know, providing him those roles.
Like, I feel like you do the same thing with Denzel, right?
I don't know if he gets a more better blues, a Malcolm X, a highest to lowest, if it's not for you existing as a filmmaker and saying hey, I think you could play Malcolm.
I think you could learn the trumpet.
You know what I'm saying?
But he was attached to Malcolm way before, you know.
Oh, was it Norman Jewison?
Yeah.
Yeah, but still the amount of things you had him do.
I think I got to The amount of things you had him do.
Oh yeah yeah, yeah.
Well, look, here's the thing, though.
We're both very blessed to have our leading men.
And it's a give and take, and you support each other.
That's what our job is, and that's what we got to do to get the best out of our leading men.
And they expect same you and like i said earlier, is all this stuff is.
What we do is based upon love and trust.
That's the foundation.
Because you don't have that, then yeah yeah no, for sure you have to creek.
Sure for sure.
In the script was was, it was was.
When you decide you, our brother's gonna play both roles.
Did that come?
When did that come?
From the get-go?
Yeah, the idea I had was for Twins, for the Smokestack Twins.
Brilliant move.
Oh, thank you.
Yeah, thank you, bro.
And I think a lot of it is knowing, I kind of ran out of ways to challenge Mike.
It's always like, man, what's the next step?
What's the next level?
And for these characters, it just started to make a lot of sense for him to be these guys and to stretch himself in opposite ways.
And to really like, for me, it was a test of like how far we could get the audience to go with Mike.
Cause he's so endearing and charismatic.
You know what I'm saying?
And these guys are, these are bad dudes.
You know what I'm saying?
Like both, like the film is very much- at the opposite ends of the spectrum, you know what I mean?
One can be a cold-hearted killer, and the other one is a manipulator, you know what I mean?
Like extremely manipulative, you know what I mean?
And seeing these guys unapologetically be portrayed by an actor who kind of I think Mike's superpower is.
The audience is kind of always with him.
You know what I mean.
You flipped the script.
Yeah, this was putting it to the test a little bit, you know?
Amazing film, amazing film.
You know, I'm 68.
And next year is going to be the 40th anniversary she's going to have it.
So, God damn!
And I ain't done nothing for 40 years, bro.
So this is something, look, it's not no supernatural thing, just things you learn.
Absolutely.
You know, you just learn, you know.
Hopefully, the older you get, you know, the wiser you get.
So it didn't take me too long to say, Spike, shut the fuck up.
Don't say a mother .
Oh, man.
I hear you.
I probably got to learn from that, bro.
Nah, man.
You don't need to change.
Keep doing what you're doing.
Keep doing what you're doing.
Because you're killing the game, man.
You're killing it.
You're killing it.
I'm trying to... No!
I'm following your footsteps.
Oh, whoa, whoa.
Oh, my TA.
Come on.
Come on.
Next time, I'm bringing George Lucas in here.
Oh, man.
And Yoda, too.
Don't put George on me, man.
Oh, man.
Well, Spike, it was a pleasure being here in New York.
You know what we got to do?
We got to with our families too.
I know we're very busy, but we probably see each other like once a year.
I mean, this year it was probably four times.
Yeah, yeah, but I'm just saying.
Yeah, we got to do better.
Going forward, going forward.
We're both busy, but we just got to make time.
You know, our families, you know, our wives, you know, our bedrocks, you know.
We do like...
Home and home.
Yeah.
You come to New York, I go to San Francisco.
And sometimes we might be in the middle.
We could be in Chicago.
Love, baby.
Love you too, baby.
