‘Devil In A Blue Dress’: Carl Franklin On His Classic, Denzel Washington-Starring Noir Now On Criterion [Interview]

For too long, writer/director Carl Franklin’s neo-noir “Devil in a Blue Dress” existed as a little-known gem. Then two Blu-ray releases through Twilight Time and Kino brought the film to a new generation of cinephiles. Now, it’s finally been added to Criterion Collection as a Blu-ray and 4K release replete with illuminating supplementals. 

Why did a film starring a peak level of hotness, Denzel Washington, initially struggle to gain an audience? Well, it’s complicated. In the last few decades, the noir film has fought valiantly to regain the attention of the movie-going public. “Devil in a Blue Dress,” however, should’ve been different. 

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Adapted by Franklin from Walter Mosley’s same-titled novel, “Devil in a Blue Dress” takes place in Los Angeles in 1948. World War II veteran Easy Rawlins (Washington), laid off from his job, is dangerously close to losing the home he bought using the money from the GI Bill. Out of desperation, he takes an odd job from underworld goon DeWitt Albright (Tom Sizemore) to find the vanished white wife, Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals), of the city’s former mayoral candidate Todd Carter (Terry Kinney). It doesn’t take very long for Easy to realize he’s mixed himself up in a mess of backstabbing and overt power plays. And yet, Easy isn’t your prototypical noir lead: He steers away from killing and is rarely wholly cynical. It’s why when the city becomes too hairy; he calls his tempestuous cousin Mouse (Don Cheadle) to come in from down South to be his muscle. 

In the smoke-laden narrative crossfire, “Devil in a Blue Dress” interrogates race, police brutality, economic and social inequality, and the insipidness of the American dream. With every narrative gear that turns, another well-calibrated performance from this deep ensemble arises. In particular, a hilarious, fly-off-the-handle Cheadle and a smoldering Washington. 

During our conversation, Franklin talked about creating lived-in onscreen environments, casting Cheadle, and the after-effects of the Great Migration.     

The period detail in your film is so fantastic and precise. Especially the cars in the opening tracking shot where we sweep through a raucous street. How did you set up for that shot, and where did the cars come from?
Well, you know, we wanted to make sure that the cars approached [the story] from a social realism perspective. Knowing that in 1948, we were only a couple of years out from the war, and many people wouldn’t have had new cars. So we wanted the cars to go all the way back to the 1920s. So there were some cars from the ’20s and ’30s, and then, of course, the ’40s — because there weren’t many that weren’t made in the United States between 1941 and ’45. But the car company… we got ’em from a business that was actually owned by a couple of black men. We had the largest number of antique cars, I think ever, onscreen [laughs] in that first opening and that opening scene on Central Ave.

And what was the set-up for that raucous opening scene? Because between the extras, the vitality in it, and the cars, there are many moving parts. 
Well, P. Scott Sakamoto, who was one of our Steadicam operators, he’s the star of the Steadicam [laugh]. And so we started with him walking across the street, Steadicaming this couple across the street, and then a woman, etcetera. And then he steps up onto a crane, and we take the crane all the way up to the window and look inside. I wanted to do an exterior-interior shot because what it does, I think, is immediately; it makes people believe much more in the environment. 

When you look at a period piece, you’ll often see a car or a coach pull up, and they’ll cut to the inside, and something in you subliminally still has to be convinced that you are in an environment that is from the past. But if you take people and you walk them right in from the outside, then they know that that’s a practical location. They know that’s a practical environment. And so that upstairs was actually an artist’s loft that we made into a bar. I just wanted people to feel all of that life. And once you were there to look out the window and see the bus pull off, you just immediately got absorbed in the world of 1948 Los Angeles. 

Denzel doesn’t play your prototypical urgent hero here. Was there any temptation to alter the character to feel more Hollywood hero, so to speak?
Well, I’ll tell you something very interesting. When I first read the script, we had managed to get our hands on the script; Universal was developing it, I think. And Walter had written a draft of it, and he had been so harassed by the executives there, you know, in terms of what they wanted to do in terms of crafting the story, that he actually had been forced to make a much more take-charge character, to the extent that Mouse wasn’t in the movie.

The two characters were fused together so that the Easy character would be a much more take-charge guy, which violated the book because one of the themes in the book was Easy having gone through the war, was war-weary, and did not really want to kill anymore. He really wanted to get away from that. And of course, then he’s got his friend who’s never been to the military but, at the same time, has a high body count associated with him.

And did you and Walter Mosely ever talk about what to keep from his script as you were developing your own?
There wasn’t a conversation. Walter left me alone with it. And I think he was just so weary. Depending upon who your executives are, sometimes you can get sent off in the wrong direction. And I think he felt that. At that point, I don’t think he was that comfortable. He was like, “Let me see what you do with it.” So basically, I just wanted to try to represent on film what I felt he had done in the book

Don Cheadle’s screen test is much more restrained and serious than what we see in the film. How did you work with Cheadle to build the fly-off-the-handle beats of Mouse? Especially because apparently, Cheadle didn’t initially believe he should play the part. 
Don is a very collaborative guy. And I had worked with Don before; I knew Don from my AFI thesis film. I had already met him. But I wouldn’t say it was a close relationship. It became much closer once we started doing “Devil in a Blue Dress.” But I was aware of his talents, and there were opportunities for humor; he [had] already showed signs of that. So, you know, it was just a lot of fun, and it was a situation where both of us rolled up our sleeves, along with Denzel and Jennifer to do the research. They came armed with a lot of information about these people. And there was just a lot that we could exchange and have fun with in rehearsal. That was where a lot of that came from. And, of course, I had written some things that Don was excited about saying. And so that was a lot of fun for him [laughs].

I’ve heard that you were concerned about Jennifer Beals being cast. What pulled you over to keeping her?
When she came in, she was clearly the best actress. She clearly was just such a good actress that I was always tempted, but what I was afraid of, and it would’ve been an easy choice, had it not been for the fact that she had done “Flashdance,” and she’d gotten so much press at that time. And she publicly stated that she was mixed race. With that being kind of a major reveal in the movie, I was concerned really, only that people might know the [twist] from the start. Fortunately, many people were either unaware of it, or they simply went along with a mixed-race woman playing white. But that was my only genuine concern with Jennifer. It had nothing to do with whether or not she could do the role. She obviously was fantastic. It just was a question of whether or not, you know, the audience was gonna get ahead of this.

There’s also the character in this movie who goes around chopping trees in the neighborhood: What’s the story behind him?
[Laughs] I had a few purposes for that character. First off, there was a guy I had seen when I was researching who came home kind of damaged. I don’t know if he was the first one to integrate the fire department, but I’m not sure if I should start that rumor, but he actually planted trees, and he had gone off the deep end a little bit. And I’m not sure what his history was or who this guy was, but it was something I ran across from talking with different people during my research. Well, one of the things that I thought was important at the end of Walter’s book, well, actually throughout the book, was Easy. While he’s dealing with characters like Albright, Matthew Terrell, and these killers and all of this skullduggery, you know, below the surface in LA and LA politics, et cetera, all that dirt and filth and grime and whatever, he keeps coming back to his house.

In the book, he’s planting his flowers in the garden. But that’s not really that active. In film, you need something a little more active to engage the audience. And one of the things about a black neighborhood oftentimes is that you know, it’ll be a nice neighborhood. And yet there will be somebody in that neighborhood who’s just a little bit off [laughs], and they become the signature of the neighborhood and a nuisance. But if anything ever happened to that person, you know everybody would be very upset because you just associate him with your whole feeling for the neighborhood. At the end of the book, when Easy finally solves the crime, and he’s come back to his house, and he’s sitting with his friend, there’s this emotional swell that I felt when I read the book. And it was him sitting there with his neighborhood, in his element, with those people that were his neighbors — I wanted to make sure that we rooted that in someone. And so that’s why that character is there. 

I love that final shot of the neighborhood. This film often carries a cynical tone in terms of what Easy goes through. But that ending, with the swell and sunshine, it’s a flickering of the American dream, almost.
I was part of that migration. I shouldn’t say I was, but my family was cuz I was actually born in California, my brother and I, but my older sister and all, you know, my half-brothers and sisters and parents were from Texas. When you go to the South, you go to Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana; people sit out on the porch. People are out on the street. At least they were back in the day. With their neighborhoods, they transplanted that Southern community and brought it to California. That’s really what happened in Los Angeles, Oakland, the Bay Area, and other parts of the country. 

My dad also made the trek from Mississippi during the Great Migration, and he always talked about wanting to own a home. But never got a chance to. Here, the GI bill leading to Black home ownership is so important. How did you balance that history with the dramatic heft of the murder mystery?
Well, remember that’s the whole reason why Easy gets into the whole association with Albright is that he’s trying to get enough money to pay for his house’s mortgage. He was trying to protect that throughout. That was the whole emphasis for him, even getting into the noir. For the film audience, they’re gonna want the story. They’re gonna want it to be plotted as a mystery. So we had to satisfy that genre. Now the social realistic elements, I decided not to really lean into the film noir elements as much because that’s actually built into the story. It tried to honor these social realistic elements, simply with the way that we shot it, simply with the wardrobe with the cars, and with the various little details that you mentioned earlier.

Was there any thought about adapting more of Mosely’s stories about Easy Rawlins? I had heard that the studio originally optioned the first three books, so have conversations ever been revisited?
There have been several rumblings about creating a television series. But nothing in film. The problem, of course, is that the genre, the gumshoe genre, is not a big moneymaker. It’s not a big box office draw. I mean, even “LA Confidential” didn’t really start to make any money until it won awards at Oscar time. “Chinatown,” which, of course, is iconic, one of the great films, was not a big moneymaker. It’s not a genre that, unfortunately, young people go to see. Also, [the film] was not marketed well. I mean, at the time, the people who brought the film, by the time the movie came out, they had moved on and left Sony. So it was left in the hands of people who had not originally signed on to it. And there’s a kind of a standard way that people who inherit someone else’s agenda have a tendency to treat it as their new stepchildren. Let’s put it that way.

“The Devil In A Blue Dress” is now available via the Criterion Collection.