This is close up, I'm Kelly Carter and this one is for the culture y'all.

My guest today is Ernest Dickerson and he was a cinematographer on several of

Spike Lee's most iconic films like Do the Right Thing and Mobeta Blues before

writing and directing the cult favorite juice. It has been 30 years since the

Seminole coming to Vage Story. A film that followed four friends growing up in

Harlem and it was the film that made rapper Tupac Shakur a movie star.

That film came one year after John Singleton's voice in the hood which was

another brilliant piece that three decades later we also still celebrate and

here's how the two films and the two directors align. They both took brave

steps in casting rappers, ice-given boys and pockin' juice as leading men.

Fast forward to this weekend's close of a very competitive award season all

signs are pointing to Will Smith for the best actor victory for his work in King

Richard. If that rapper turned actor wins he'll be the first rapper to win an

Oscar for acting and I'm not sure if we would have gotten here with thought

a movie like juice or Dickerson.

We talk about that and the one project that he and Spike Lee tried to make

happen but couldn't quite get off the ground and he teases the big biopic and

the huge names attached to it that he's currently working on. We also

discuss his new HBO Max series DMZ which is an adaptation of the hit vertical

comic which is also produced by Avery DuVernay and stars Rosario Dawson and

Benjamin Bratt. That was pre-war and he tells me why he loves the thriller

horror genre so much and as we always do I'm gonna let you guys inside of my

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