(2010 -- on landing Candyman (1992)) I had just done a film where I had gone to Africa for the first time, so I was all into that. Then I get a call one day, I was getting a lot of work at this point, a lot of television, we were booking easily twice a month, but I didn't know I was successful yet, because I was worried about my little baby. Anyway, I get a call from my agent saying "This director wants to see you, wants to just meet you about this movie called Candyman (1992)." I thought he was fucking joking. I mean, what is that? A Sammy Davis thing? What is that? He said, "No no no. They won't give us the script, but they said it's a major studio film, and they want to just meet you." I said, "Okay." And I met Bernard Rose, who's a crazy maniacal Englishman who had a habit of twisting his hair between his fingers. He said, "I saw your film that you did in Africa, and you're my guy. The only problem is, we got to convince the studio." So I knew I had his blessings, and he slipped me a copy of the script. I read it, and word leaked out to me, it was the whole thing of the urban mythology, and the fact that this was a possibility of an African-American, I don't know, icon, but a horror figure. 'Cause I was heavy into the whole Dracula, Phantom of the Opera thing. I had to do what they call a "Personality Test," where I had to go to the studio at literally 8 in the morning, in front of a bunch of suits, and display whether I had a personality. So I did my best not to spill the coffee or insult them, and at the end of it, I heard they didn't think I had a personality. They said, "Well, we don't know if he has personality, but if you believe that he can do the film... Okay... Are you sure? He said, "Yeah. That's the guy." And then the last hurdle was meeting Virginia Madsen, who's from the Chicago area, and she just had it in her contract that she had to sign off on me. Then we met, went to lunch, and she said "Yes," and that was it. And I remember we came here to Chicago, and it was my first time in Chicago, we went to the Kingston Mines, me and Bernard, listening to some great blues. Keith Richards stopped by that night, and he was just saying, "This role is going to change your life." And at the time, I'm going "Okay, I've heard this before. I've done some things. I've had some life interruptions, but change my life? I'm going to do the best I can, but I don't know if your ego is stating that this is going to change my life." But in fact, he was right, because not a day goes by, to this day, 17 years later, without people, I mean multiple people, coming up and saying "Candyman!" Which amazes me, because usually film does not have that much of an attention span.
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