INT: Music is almost a third character?
MVP: Well music is not almost a character music is a character for me and for example SWEETBACK was called SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSS SONG. That was not a hyperbole. I mean I find it that music can tell so much; you can use it in so many ways. You can use sound in so many ways, and you can use images in so many ways that people don’t. I still can’t really read or write music but I numbered all the keys on the piano so that way I could keep the melody do you know what I mean? I keep the time in my head. When I do Earth, Wind, and Fire I hum it. I remember you guys, I don’t know if you remember, but I had you guys, you go: da dee da dee daa and then I’d lay the stuff over that: da dee da dee daa. Now I don’t know why I heard that. “Gee man all you got is a D Minor there a juxtapose, that’s interesting.” What do I know? I just know as I’m always saying I like it. I do cinema like I cook I put in what I like in case no one else likes it I’m going to have to eat it the rest of the week. So that’s what I do. I do what I like or what I think is fair.

MVP: When I was editing SWEETBACK for example I finally got tired of picking up one piece of film, looking at it, putting it down, picking up another piece of film and then going back and forth to make a decision. Hey. Why not have two cameras running, two monitors running simultaneously, so I could compare them in real time? They thought I was nuttier than a fruitcake and that’s why one of the reasons my eyes went bad because the Moviola was sort of chunky and the screens started small so you had to stand back and try and see two screens and then I tried do it with three screens all at the same time but that allowed me to get certain effects synchronized. Later on they came out with a Steenbeck and then the Chem-Table and then from there they have the AVID and Lightworks etcetera but at the beginning everybody thought I was nuttier than a fruitcake but it worked, but it worked. So I do all these little innovations and I would just use sound the way I heard it.

MVP: A great advantage Mario, son, is that I did not have the technical bias that comes often when you’re being taught. Since I taught myself the only thing I could refer to was logic or what I hoped was logic and many things that were being done hadn’t caught up with the technology that had gone further but the logic had been hotwired already into a completely different animal. So that allowed me to make a lot of the steps forward that hadn’t been done. You know, but go ahead with your questions. You know as strange as it seems when I did this crew a third of which, the crew on Sweetback, a third of which had never even seen a camera before they had to approach it with logic and so they were completely, they didn’t know any better except than to follow me. And another, just a stroke of just miraculous, is that the people who did the sound engineer and the director of photography had open minds. The first day of course the director of photography when I said, “Well no. You can’t have an orange like that because you got a pink one there.” “But I put them there.” “Do it.” So he did it grumbling but as soon as he saw the rushes he never ever, ever gave me any grief again. So there you are. So those people became supportive. So I had in the two fields where I really needed technical work they were ready to take any leaps with me. And the same thing happened when the sound mixers, much later on when I was editing the film, I was very blessed with my sound guys.

INT: When I did BAADASSSSS! I had to go do a lot of researching and I must have seen SWEETBACK upwards of ten times sometimes fifteen times. Still holds up. The use of sound, the use of color, is very advanced. Often surreal, often doing something that we do now in rap where something repeats a phrase. Can you talk to me at all about the use of color or the use of sound? Where that comes from in you or how did you arrive at that?
MVP: Well, that’s one of my cockamamie theories about the use of color and images and so forth. Sound wise we think nothing even the most conservative of film of having somebody talking, a truck crashing outside, and music going along. All at the same time and even it’s your classical reduction of film. You you’re your effects track, your music track, and your dialogue track. But in image you only have the image track, a single image track. You very rarely think of images where you put three or four or five or six images all at the same time. I believe that you can see imagery with the same degree of separation and the same faculties that you have for sound. If you ever can recall your dream, why it’s so difficult to recall a dream sometimes because you try and make sense of a dream linearly. Where as however you really dream quite often it triplicate but you’ve only been exposed to see it in linearly. But you can show people three things at the same time and they can see it so that’s just what I did. There’s the this and there’s the other part and the other and you can put them all at the same time and people understand. They don’t even know why they understand but they get it. We have the same faculty visually that we have audio but we don’t use it that way. And I used it that way. People said, “You’re nuts.” If you understood it yeah but I don’t know why. That’s close enough for government work.

INT: How many writers do you generally work with to complete your shooting script?
MVP: It varies from one to sixty. That is anybody on the crew if they have a good idea or thought they can always pull me aside that’s one of the rules I said, I explained very, very clear at the beginning of the thing. If anybody has a good idea, write it down and pass it to me so if I like it I can take credit for it. Everybody snickers because of that and I get a lot of good ideas that way.

INT: Do you think it's useful for a writer to be on your set?
MVP: In my case it's unavoidable.

INT: What about having the writer attend casting sessions? Dailies?
MVP: I remember once I was doing a film and I was not the writer. And I found it very useful. There are really two questions here and it’s a proprietary interest. If you think the writer’s a dummy that just happened to stumble on something in certain ways then you want to keep him as far away as possible. If you think you are his assistant then you should have him around as much as possible. Then that begs there are two types of writers, if you go to the second type of writer who you want around, there’s some who want magic, that impossible achievement. There are others who will explain to you what they want and if I get a joy out of doing what I want, when it’s my thing, then I get another joy out of making what that guy wants. That can be fun. It ain’t my way or the highway. So if it’s his way, if he will understand the limitations of the next step because you see when you got it in your head or when you got it on the paper you can do anything. It’s wonderful but if you’re going to have to translate that and it’s raining or you don’t have the money or the machinery that hasn’t been built yet he has to understand the difference of that and make the translation or not and some people can’t do that. Some people are absolutely, they end up being enemies against the limitations that you represent. And the limitations is not a willful limitation. It can be just a limitation of a thousand other things.

INT: Overall, how have the initial scripts you’ve read different from your shooting scripts and the final script that is conformed to be a completed film? What accounts for these differences? Can you give me an example?
MVP: In my particular case, only when I worked as an actor sometimes, somebody would show me one thing and it’ll end up as something else. The final initial script should be pretty close to the script sometime and half way through in the editing process at a certain stage it’s like a kid you straighten his teeth and let him go to college but then after a while you have to be able to step back and start letting the kid be all that he can be. The script, sometimes it comes out exactly on, sometimes it’s a little different than where you start. I often see when I’m writing something and I go back over my notes it’s not what I thought it was going to be.

INT: Talking about pre-production and casting what methods do you use to choose your actors?
MVP: It’s all over the map. I’m very story oriented and I shut my eyes and I imagine generally the ensemble. And then I go to the two or three most important things. And then the actors and then put the rest of the ensemble in function to those people. That’s pretty much how I choose them.

INT: Do you rehearse? Can you describe your process?
MVP: It really depends. It depends on the scene and depend what I want from the actors. I remember sometimes you have to outwit the actor. I remember for example THE STORY OF A THREE-DAY PASS the actress I wanted her to be vulnerable driving along in this car. When she was learning her lines she was just great. Then she learned the lines and she got to be terrible because she got comfortable with it and she lost her vulnerability, wasn’t that good an actress. So what I did I had an assistant sit down between her legs and pull hairs out of her leg luckily it was France and she didn’t shave her legs. So she never knew when her hair was going to get pulled and so she stayed very alert, very vulnerable, very pain. Worked like a charm. She was like that but now she knew her lines. On WATERMELON MAN, this was the first movie that I’d shot in Hollywood itself, and everybody else was getting short time, forty-five, sixty days, ninety days. They gave me twenty-three days to shoot the movie. But they didn’t put a time on rehearsal time so I rehearsed them while they were building the set so by the time, and luckily it was sort of a contained comedy, and I rehearsed them and rehearsed them and rehearsed them and Estelle Parsons who was just sensational because she had done theatre etcetera. So when the time came and then I was shooting with two cameras which wasn’t that unheard of because the main camera guy was sort of a stick in the mud but I tell the other guy what I wanted and so his job was to get any other angle that the other guy didn’t use and that was the angle I really wanted to use. So that’s how I did it. SO I was able to do the thing in twenty-one shooting days instead of twenty-three.

INT: How do you hire a cinematographer? What are you looking for in your director of photography?
MVP: I usually look for two things. I look at the reel and if it’s technically good within the framework of what I’m doing, fine. And then if the guy doesn’t give me any grief. If I say I want to do it exactly the way I want to do it and I don’t want any lip about it. Sometimes some people can live with some people can’t. From there within that very restricted framework they then can do any kind of genius that they want to extra bring to it. I look at it like sort of like jazz. I mean you can sing a song one way but when you’re with the orchestra and you’ve got a tempo, boom, boom, boom you can’t start going into Gregorian chant if it’s going this way. Here’s the framework, here’s the [unintelligible], I want this, this, this, now you’re free to dance all you want to with these restrictions. [INT: With this beat.] This is the beat. That’s how I do it.

INT: OK. Production designer?
MVP: With my budgets it’s never been a major problem. My production design is life itself, it’s called availability.

INT: Costume designer?
MVP: Pretty much the same thing. What clothes they got?

INT: Assistant Director?
MVP: Assistant Director is, I like somebody smarter than me or at least faster than me and we run around. That’s what I like in an Assistant Director. I like a buddy who’s got my back from one end to the other but has the technical knowledge to have my back which is not exactly the same thing.

INT: Design? How do you prepare the design of a picture?
MVP: All those things actually are all grouped together. The design of the picture is pretty much dictated by the dead presidents. The amount of money available then I have the luxury of being able to work bass akwards. That is I take all of these situations and I take all of my assets and liabilities and I then work the final stage of the script in the function of what those assets and liabilities are. I find out my AD’s strengths and I then drop that part of the AD’ness in myself and let him handle that. Mostly for me all these things are getting, knowing the best that a person has to offer and try and use him in a way that allows that part of what he can do, or she can do best to flourish. That’s the real trick in the thing. It’s the same thing with the actors, with the designers, with the whole thing. Then I have, I thought, an idea about how I want the film to look, to feel for them to be clothed. That idea usually is so strong I don’t say anybody else could not have exactly that idea so then it becomes incumbent on me to go over and over and over and over and over it until everybody is looking through my eyes and then they become like fingers for me. As long as they have good will and the possibility to spin on the dime that’s normally how I work. Funny but I have a definite idea usually about what I want to see. I don’t worry about where I’m going to put the camera because when I see a scene in a setting because money if you’re shooting and not able to build a set you don’t really have that worry. In fact it’s a lot of aid not to have that worry because you have to make it work within the framework of what you’ve got and that’s interesting, that’s fun, and sometimes it can be magical. Sometimes it can be not so magical but then you keep at it until you do get it magical.

MVP: When I decided to do SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG because I didn’t feel the studio, in this particular case COLUMBIA [COLUMBIA PICTURES], after WATERMELON MAN was going to give me the opportunity to say what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. And I went out looking for the crew and all those other things and the final analysis with all the problems which you know as second as best as anybody in the world because of doing BAADASSSSS!, and researching it. It was still easier, it was still a much happier experience. It was still a much more joyous experience even if I lost my eye, lost weight, lost this, lost that, than trying to explain something to people who had a sword over your head before you had a chance to bring it to fruition. And after I bring something to fruition somebody says, “Yeah, it sucks.” I got no problem with that. Or even if I get it close but usually my particular worry this is just a fault with my work is it doesn’t come into focus, what I’m doing, until it’s very, very close to the end. Since it’s usually sort of seemingly four hours until it all comes in everyone says, “Oh, I see what you’re doing. Oh, that’s great” But if you try and pre-think it, if you could pre-think then you would be me. Take for example when I decided we’re going to make the film or, go back to what I said about sermon, to the sermon I wanted to talk about a powerful black hero. Well I look around my crew and the crew, excepting a couple of places, where very inexperienced so I did not then design a script where you’d have to have high technical expertise at the beginning. I had a great deal of confidence with the magic I could do in the editing room but you’ve got to get to the editing room. There’s a French expression: Don’t fart higher than your asshole. So I kept the script within the technical range of the people I could count on to help me and when that did happen, when the movie was there and then I could get it to the editing room, OK, there was another day but was still again this other sharp point after I got it edited to a certain stage was this other part that nobody could even begin to understand that was the sound i.e. music, etcetera. But when I could get all of that together and then the film was such a huge hit that then became a threat because here was an independent film made with just a rag tag bunch of hippies, and old guys, and women, and Latinos, and Asians and folks from the hood. That is slick in its way, it had this faux grit to it, but really as slick as anything that Hollywood was doing. That’s how I broke the unions, that’s what broke the unions because making the movie as immersed in the urban experience you couldn’t fake it anymore after that. After seeing Paris how you going to keep down on the farm? So that forced the studios to start making more authentic and for more authentic therefore you needed some people who knew the authenticity and that authenticity thereby implicitly needed some of these people who had heretofore been excluded. That was that major change there, that was a major change, that’s what I was aiming for and I was able to do it. Because I wasn’t worried, Assistant Director was, I guess I was the Assistant Director, or I had to fire the script because the script guy he knew classic script what you had to shoot and had to have. Had my ass.

MVP: If you tell somebody to write something you go and get music paper for him you’ve already put him in a box. You’d normally bring him the eight note music paper but there are other music’s that’s not written for eight note but you’ve already made an assumption. You already made an assumption. Luckily EARTH, WIND, AND FIRE had no assumptions. They didn’t know a movie a sound stage or anything else so they followed my orders. That again was a great advantage music-wise. That’s how I was able to do it. Let’s go on. INT: Should we go to budget? MVP: Well, yeah before but there’s a question of screen tests. Do you do screen tests?

INT: OK. Do you do screen tests?
MVP: Not really. I remember I was shooting a little bit ago and a guy came to me panicked because the monitor was broken. He says, “The monitors broken. What are we going to do?” Nothing. No big, this is long before monitors you had to be able to see it and calculate it in your head. I just got used to being able to calculate in my head so then when it, it’s a nice toy, but when you don’t you have to be able see it anyway. Then we don’t have a lot of money you better be very clear because you don’t want to print it before.

INT: Budget?
MVP: Well, budget is about, somebody said, “What’s the important part of making a film, making a film good?” He said, “The story, the story, the story.” There are three things; the story, the story, the story, and getting to tell the story is one thing. The budget, the budget, the budget. Budget considerations have always been tantamount in everything I did. I never had budget. Never had a budget.

INT: The shoot. Can I just do these questions quick? How do you prepare for the night before the first day of shooting? How do you prepare the night before for the first day of shooting?
MVP: Well, it depends. If I’m ahead of the game I go to sleep. If I’m not ahead of the game I keep on working till the guys say, “Hey, we’ve got to be on set.”

INT: What homework do you do each day for the next day of the shoot?
MVP: Whatever’s called for.

INT: When you get to work what’s your process?
MVP: Depends on the budget. If there’s any food around I usually grab a coffee and it depends on the shot. “Come on you guys let’s go!”

INT: How do you work with actors? Give an example.
MVP: It really depends. I say, “Here’s what I have in mind. This is what I thought I wanted, where I wanted to go and this is where I want you to stand.” Now if it’s an emotional scene that I want some nuance I ask them what do they think about that nuance and give me that nuance give me the reading. If it’s a little off I go with them a couple times and then I tell them, “Fine” If they give me their versions of it it’s usually an excuse to add a couple more lines. I pretend to listen and then I say, “OK, now do what I say.”

INT: What do you say to actors to get performances? Any words you’d use?
MVP: There you’re pretty much a shrink, it really depends, but a lot of times I work with actors, you treat them fairly human and they act fairly human. If they don’t they don’t really stay around a lot with me. I’m not running a general discussion pool because normally the pieces I have fits in such a way that I assume they know their craft. I say, “I need this type of thing.” because I need it to fit into a specific spot. I don’t usually go all over the place and then when it’s in that specific spot sometimes they can do all the improvisation they want. [INT: When you’re not getting what you want from an actor what do you do?] I fire them.

INT: How do you prepare for the visual imagery? With storyboards, shot lists?
MVP: It depends. Sometimes if something’s rather complicated the way it has to evolve physically, usually. Sometimes there’s a combination of both of those things and I usually think of the film in its finished form. The scene in its finished form and so I say I’m going to need a shot here I’m going to need it here and I’m going to have it going from there to there to this to that. And in function of how successful an angle is as I’m going along I may adjust a little bit here or there.

INT: If your film has special effects how do you do them?
MVP: It depends. There are two things. Sometimes you have them outside, sometimes you have them inside, and sometimes you do, by outside I mean sometimes you do it while the film is being shot, and sometimes you do them, it just depends what the scene calls for. I don’t have a style except I suppose my style would be called: Make Do. Whatever I think advances the story most clearly.

INT: Look at any of these dad because I’m not sure. Some of these seem to be repetitive to me but you seem to want to do these all so take a look.
MVP: Well, I’ll just do them fast. [INT: Take a look in here. See if there’s anything that you like.] Your film aspects? You know how I do them. I do them whatever. If it’s blue screen it can work. Physical stunts. [INT: These are just suggestions, you don’t have to do all this stuff so just do the ones you’re attracted to.] I find them interesting. [INT: OK, so let’s do them all.] Physical stunts most of the time I haven’t had to do any major physical stunts and if you have wires and things you just do them technically, you just figure out how to do them. There are guys around for that.

MVP: My relationship to producers? Some have been great and some have been even better.

MVP: I haven't had enough experience with studios.

MVP: Agents? I don’t know much about agents. I don’t have an agent. I haven’t had an agent in a long time.

MVP: Editing process? I do the editing. Sometimes if I can’t be allowed I’ll give somebody editing credit but I do the editing. For me someone else editing is like writing a novel and giving it to someone else and saying, “OK. Here’s the alphabet put it in the order you want to.” and that becomes a novel. Editing for me is not only extremely important but it’s a lot of fun.