From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. You can also hear the show at KCRW.com.

It's a thrill to have writer-director, Charles Burnett, here. Last year was, I guess, the 30th anniversary of his amazing film, Killer of Sheep, which I guess had been made in, what was 74? Did you first show?

Yeah, it's around that time. It's a thesis film in UCLA.

Yeah. And then Miles Stone put out an incredible box set last year of some of his films, including a recut version of my brother's wedding, which I'm sure has to be better.

One of the tragedies of my life is that somewhere United Airlines flight attendant has a really great box set of films.

I'm heartbroken.

But Charles Films, of course, have included the amazing to sleep with anger.

And it's a thrill avenue.

Thank you so much for doing this, first of all.

That's a pleasure being here.

One of the reasons that Killer Sheep touched a long time to get released is because of

the music clearance, right?

Well, sort of, you know, it was made as a thesis film, so it was a long period in between

the time that milestone, I wanted to distribute it late in the 90s or something like

that. Milestone, wanted to distribute it late in the 90s or something like that, there wasn't

really meant to be shown.

And because, you know, as a student film, you didn't have to clear the music rights

as long as it wasn't shown for profit.

So it wasn't meant to be shown theatrically.

Only until when Milestone came aboard and wanted to distribute the film that they had to go

and secure the rights to it, and that took them a while to do it. It's funny because it's a film that so many people have seen, I mean, even movies like

...