‘After The Hunt’ Coaxed D.O.P. Malik Hassan Sayeed Back To Features After Decades-Long Hiatus, Recalls “Irate” Stanley Kurbick Response After ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ Misquote

Luca Guadagnino‘s latest movie, “After The Hunt,” was the first time in decades that cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed (“He Got Game”) had lensed a scripted feature film since Hype Williams‘ visually impressive 1998 cult crime pic “Belly” that featured rappers Nas and DMX among the lead cast (coming at a time when every rapper wanted to mirror the acting careers of Ice Cube and the late Tupac Shakur). Since then, Sayeed has been focused on music videos and documentaries, until making his grand return with “After The Hunt,” and he’s explained that reasoning in a new chat with Deadline while the director of photography was in London for the London Film Festival.

Sayeed talked about what attracted him to working with Guadagnino and making his first feature film since 1998, “Luca is super sharp and smart. He has very good taste and broad interests, which are really aligned with my own. If you just look at the cinematographers he’s worked with, you have Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Arseni Khachaturan, and Yorick Le Saux, who works with Olivier Assayas. He’s making precise choices. So actually, by the time he got to meet, I thought, ‘Wow, this is a bespoke list that I’m excited to be a part of.'”

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He also talked about getting back in the saddle after the over 20-year hiatus, and if there were any challenges to his return, “The only thing was the rhythm. The best way to describe it is if you’re a sprinter, you don’t run marathons, but you’re still running. Everything is the same. You just adjust to the rhythm of your specific race. Whether you’re working on fiction or commercials, you’re still doing the same thing. You’re looking for the nugget of the scene, meaning the most important thing in the scene.”

Notably, Sayeed was one of many crew members (part of the second unit camera team and where he got his start) who worked on the infamously extended production (said to have taken over 15 months) of the 1999 Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman thriller “Eyes Wide Shut,” Kubrick’s final film, and painstakingly recreated the streets of New York City in England. Of course, in the wake of Kubrick’s death in 1999, director Steven Spielberg would go on to resurrect and complete Kubrick’s unmade sci-fi odyssey (loosely based on the Brian Aldiss short story “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long“) that morphed into 2001’s “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.”

That connection to Kubrick led to a comment on the iconic filmmaker being taken out of context had led to the director of photography limiting his future interviews, as pointed out by the outlet a rarity they were even able to speak with him, as the his horrible experience led to Kurbick having the exact irate reaction he had been trying to avoid, as his words were twisted by the outlet to make the filmmaker sound “crazy” rather than his noted quirk of being a “meticulous artist.” Thankfully, it sounds like the two mended things before his passing.

“I’ve had terrible experiences. When I did ‘Eyes Wide Shut,’ I interviewed with Entertainment Magazine. They did a piece with me because both ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ and ‘Belly’ were coming out the same year. At the time, with Stanley Kubrick, they wanted to make him look like the crazy guy. So when I did the interview, they took my words and contextualized them around him being crazy, when what I really said was that he’s a meticulous artist. I was praying that he wouldn’t see it, but he did. He was irate, and I was devastated. I handwrote him a multi-page letter just explaining how much he meant to me and how my words had been taken out of context. He was extremely appreciative, and the only thing he said to me was, ‘This is why I don’t do interviews.’ That was triggering and made me realize the importance of owning my words.”

Hopefully, Sayeed eventually come back in the future after his experience with “After The Hunt” (released in theaters last month and you can read The Playlist’s review from the Venice Film Festvial right here), as Sayeed briefly mentioned the failed HBO pilot “Da Brick“ that would have reunited him with director Spike Lee (the two previously worked together on the Denzel Washington basketball drama “He Got Game“), with John Ridley writing/producing the project, and had actor John Boyega‘s involvement as well.

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“If I have another opportunity to be in a working space like ‘After The Hunt,’ then yes. But you can just never predict that,” Sayeed said when asked about continuing to make features in the future. In any event, we’ll keep our fingers crossed that the talented director of photography finds the right partnership, again, to make another return to moviemaking a reality.