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CLOCKERS
STARRING Mekhi Phifer, Harvey Keitel, John Turturro, Delroy Lindo. DIRECTED BY Spike Lee.
WHEN MARTIN SCORSESE and Robert De Niro opted to make Casino instead of this urban drama, Universal was in a jam. The studio had reportedly paid Richard Price $1.9 million to adapt his 599-page novel about cops and dope dealers for the director-star duo and didn't want to dump it. So Universal offered it to Spike Lee, with Scorsese staying on as producer. ''I was hesitant at first,'' admits Lee. ''I'm sick and tired of this whole hip-hop gangsta black shoot-'em-up drug film genre. This had to be good enough so that maybe it would be the final nail in the coffin.'' Recalls Price: ''When Spike took over, he said to me he only directs what he writes. I said, 'Good luck!''' Lee's primary alteration was to downplay Rocco Klein, the cop role intended for De Niro and eventually taken by Keitel, in favor of Strike, a crack lord's teenage employee played by 20-year-old newcomer Phifer. ''I wanted to tell Strike's story,'' says Lee. ''That stuff with Rocco going through a midlife crisis -- we got rid of that s -- -. We've seen that stuff in cop movies before.'' But Clockers' most compelling character may be Rodney, a paternal drug kingpin played by Crooklyn's Lindo. ''I really wanted to present somebody who wasn't a stereotypical bad guy,'' says Lindo. ''The horror of a man like Rodney is that he has a very genuine attraction for the kids.'' Clockers could do for Lindo what Lee's Jungle Fever did for Samuel L. Jackson. ''Right now, Sam Jackson is Hollywood's boy,'' laughs Lee. ''When Sam cools off, maybe it'll be Delroy's turn.'' (Sept. 13)
BUZZ: May be too grim to be a breakout hit, but Lindo does give a star-making performance.
DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS
STARRING Denzel Washington, Jennifer Beals, Tom Sizemore, Don Cheadle. DIRECTED BY Carl Franklin.
FRANKLIN (ONE FALSE MOVE) was all too aware of the potential for novelist-versus-screenwriter spats when executive producer Jonathan Demme contacted him about adapting and directing Walter Mosley's 1990 novel, in which amateur sleuth Easy Rawlins (Washington) finds himself embroiled in a political and racial scandal in 1948 Los Angeles. ''I called Walter whenever there was a departure I was making, just to get feedback,'' says Franklin, who altered the plot to focus on a mayoral election. ''Carl and I worked on what we felt was important,'' says Washington, ''We didn't have the luxury of 200 or 300 pages to explain everything.'' One omission Mosley's fans are sure to notice is the romance -- torrid on the page, nonexistent on the screen -- between Easy and the elusive Daphne (Beals). That loss didn't bother Beals, though; she was just relieved to have the part. ''I had to jump through hoops, each progressively smaller and burning brighter and more furiously,'' she says of Franklin's resistance to cast a known actress as the femme fatale with a secret (we're not telling). ''In total arrogance, I said to Carl, 'You're not going to find her, because you're talking to her.''' Casting was easy compared with shooting. ''Nothing from Los Angeles in 1948 was saved,'' says Franklin, who re-created South Central L.A. from scratch. ''We paid a lot for security because we were shooting in neighborhoods that, let's just say, weren't the best.'' Maybe he should hold on to those sets: Franklin, Washington, and TriStar have optioned the rights to two more Easy Rawlins novels. (Sept. 29)
