The price of city life

Interview, Oct, 1995

DL: What about those stylized killings in the movie?

RP: Some of them are almost surreal. He really uses film. By and large, he did some pretty magical stuff.

DL: Are you a pessimist? Do you see no hope out there on the streets?

RP: I don't see how anybody with two eyes in their head and half a brain can get involved in what's out there and not feel like it's hopeless. It's an awful thing to say, but the problems are so deeply entrenched, and with the Republicans coming back into power it's just going to get worse. In Clockers I was trying to de-demonize both the cops and the dealers. I'm trying to say, "Look, if you were born in 1973 in the projects, where do you think you'd be right now? what do you think you'd be doing? Would you be writing for Interview magazine? I don't think so. Would you be writing a novel? don't think so. You'd be lucky if you had a high school diploma. All you know is what's in front of you, all you learn is what is taught you. And I don't believe you can attack people for not being what they've never seen. That's why I'm saying it's so hopeless.

DL: I sense an underlying idealism in you, though.

RP: There are success stories, kids who graduate and get a job, but the ones you hear about are the ones that wind up in prison or dead. I did a documentary portrait for [ABC's] Nightline about one of the kids who'd succeeded. The news about this kid is that there's no news. He's average. And there are just as many kids like him as there are these little crack knuckleheads and drug dealers. To come out of the projects and to hold it together like a functioning, responsible citizen is pretty damn heroic.

DL: You seem fascinated by cops.

RP: If you want to catch a ride, catch a ride with a cop. If you want to see how this country works and doesn't work, go out with the police. It's like having a backstage pass to the greatest show on earth, in terms of the extremities of human behavior. I don't particularly like or dislike cops per se. I'm not a cop groupie. I don't want to be a cop. I don't wish I had a badge and a nightstick and a gun. I'm not a physical person and I don't want to be a big hero or anything. I come from a housing-project background myself. I was always working-class and my work gravitates to that. You write about what you are compelled to write.

DL: Women seem absent or marginal in your work.

RP: That tends to be a whole missing link. When I did write about women, it's like I was looking for romance and I was pumping myself up. But I'm happy with my wife. If I ever get a divorce, I'll write about it.

DL: Yet you're comfortable creating black male characters.

RP: It took a while to get there. If I'm going to be so presumptuous as to create a nineteen-year-old black kid, I'd better know what the hell I'm talking about, because I don't want to be accused of cultural piracy. In a way, it's racist to say that a black kid's nature is so cryptic and mysterious that it's totally unlike a white kid's. What you realize at some point is, people are people. Everybody's experience could be different, but everybody's yearnings are the same. If I can't write about gay people because I'm straight, about Christian people because I'm Jewish, about women because I'm male, I'm going to end up writing about my shoes.