But did-- You, you felt-- You, you didn't feel any of the racial tension that existed in America as the white guy coming in and telling them how to work?

Well, I, I did from, uh, from Richard.

He has very edgy wiring.

He goes off.

One of the reasons he was so good, but also he, he, he goes, "You have to be contained." And he had a bodyguard, Rashaan, whose job was also to contain him, to chill him out, to calm him down.

When he got agitated, his mind naturally went to white, Black, and so his frustration and his anger would often come out as racial anger, which is much harder to deal with than regular anger.

You know, I remember him-- I've said this before Where he said to me, he said, "You know, the first white man I ever met c- came on my mama's door to fuck her." His mother was a part-time prostitute.

This is not what the scene is about." But you let him go with it.

How would you say you've changed as a filmmaker in the last decades? How did you start and how would you define yourself now?

I don't know if I've changed as much as I have.

I mean, I think that in order to do a film, there has to be something new.

So even though some of these films look very similar, there's always something new for me to explore.

And in this one, it was this notion of, as the character says, I think I have changed, but I have not been forgiven.

Mm-hmm.

and the complexity of can we really change and can we really forgive ourselves.

I'm really curious about how you see us film

all

driven by technology.

So when I began, you would shoot a film in 45, 46 days.

Today, you shoot it in 20.

Old Canada was 17.

Wow.

First Reformed was 20.

Right.