CineMontage

Q1 2023

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chance to explore a brutal passage in Amer- ican history. "History is seductive for me," Buff told CineMontage in a recent phone interview. "When Antoine informed me that he and Will were working on a script, and told me what the subject matter was, I thought, 'Oh my goodness. I'd love to be involved with that.' . . . The period for me is just very, very interesting, so that was a big seduction." What follows are excerpts from Cin- eMontage's conversation with Buff. CineMontage: Can you talk about your collaboration with Antoine Fuqua? Conrad Buff: "Training Day " was, I believe, his second feature. He was greener, but he certainly had a strong hand and a lovely demeanor. That was a strange film to put together. It was so shot out of sequence that I never had scenes that I could neces- sarily connect and get any kind of run at. . . . Finally, when I had enough material, I re- member running out of this bathroom-sized editing room I had at Warner Bros. saying to my crew, "My God, this is a really good movie." I had no idea, putting it together, how it would come out. But honestly, it's one of my favorite films on my resume. CineMontage: After making "Shooter" with Fuqua in 2007, you didn't resume your collaboration until "The Equalizer 2" in 2018. Was he the same director when you got back together? Buff: Clearly, he was more experienced, more sophisticated. There was a confidence there to begin with, but not an ego that was difficult to work with by any means. [He says], "Here's the material. Have your way with it, and then we'll talk about it." Today, we have PIX, which is a great communica- tor. For instance, on "Emancipation," it was the first time I was not on location on a film. There wasn't much point. They were in the swamps of Louisiana. We communicated by text a great deal — later on, I had Evercast available — and I could post sequences to him on PIX and we could talk about it. Because there's a certain amount of comfort that we have, we can speak our minds. CineMontage: Was there any particular reason you didn't go on location on "Emancipation"? Buff: They weren't able to accomplish a lot within a day — exacerbated by COVID, hurricanes, the physical conditions. It was very challenging physically for production. I was in the comfort of my home. In spite of the very difficult subject matter, for me it was very easy to work on, and honestly quite a pleasure and an honor for me to get to do it. Once we got into director-cut mode, again it was the COVID world. Antoine and I worked with Evercast. He was at home, I was at home. . . . A great deal of what I did pretty much remained unchanged. In fact, 27 S P R I N G Q 1 I S S U E F E A T U R E Will Smith, center, in "Emancipation." P H OT O : A P P L E T V +

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