A lot of very, very big stars were going down and not being seen or heard from again. Kirk took a huge chance in putting a blacklisted writer's name on the screen and somehow or other, he survived it, like he survives everything.
Every actor in the room honored Sidney for being there so many years before. And everybody was so moved to be at a place where history was being made again. It was tangible.
I am proud of Kirk. I think he drums to his own drummer in every way.
I did my very first film with Kirk in Detective Story when he was the greatest, greatest star in the world. I fell in love with him, had a crush on him then.
I don't think I fit the Marilyn Maxwell mode.
I don't think there was any problem in drawing Kirk out about any of his dalliances, his affairs. He loved them all. Fortunately he loved Anne most of all.
I know what you go through when you learn someone close to you has died.
I've been married to one Marxist and one Fascist, and neither one would take the garbage out.
It's a very good feeling to be around a man who thinks women are juicy.
It's only when you make something for posterity that you're able to ask all the things that you're curious about.
Kirk is a man, and he loves it. He loves women.
Michael and I have been friends for about 30 years and we've talked about doing a film with Michael and his father, Kirk.
My character was an Eastern woman who had never been exposed to racist attitudes.
My instinct was that it was Sidney's childhood in the Bahamas that gave him the fearlessness to fight racism. So this documentary was a kind of rounding out of what had begun in that scene in In the Heat of the Night.
Nobody wants to see anyone who has been there all their lives disintegrate. I'm vulnerable. Unfortunately, we all are.
People break down after a couple of hours. All the defenses go down, and there's a kind of communication that if I spent 20 years in a living room with one of these people, I would never, never know as much about them as I do in that one day.
The performances in In the Heat of the Night went way beyond the screenplay. Sidney and Rod Steiger found a chemistry in each other that formed a new truth, in a previously unexplored relationship.
This is our lives. The way to give it dignity is to tell the truth.
What goes on between a father and a son, which is usually such a private matter, is that they are able to be honest with each other, and be honest with me, as a director. It's just remarkable.
When Halle Berry won an Oscar as leading lady and Denzel Washington as leading man, it was the end of another kind of circle-39 years since Sidney had broken through.
When I became a director, I wanted to convince a very reluctant Sidney into allowing me to go on the journey of his life. Sidney had gone ahead of every other African American actor.
You don't need a love scene to show love.
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