A. Listen, "Alien 3" was a $60 million-plus movie. When it's a big franchise movie, there are a lot of interlopers, a lot of people watching how things get spent. And when you're making a dirty, skeevy little serial-killer movie for New Line, there's a lot less oversight. I think everybody came into it thinking, "Oh, my God, this is that problem child from the 'Alien' movies?" And then, six weeks into it, they were like: "He is consistent. We're watching the dailies and we like what we see. So maybe that was then and this is now?"

Q. You're talking about projecting a kind of confidence. Did you always have that?

A. Yeah, I've never been lacking for confidence, only because everybody makes mistakes. I'm going to make mistakes. The thing was, with "Alien 3," I never liked being forced to make other people's mistakes. I want to believe in the thing I'm doing. And (with "Seven") I finally had a piece of material that expressed that. The kind of movie I wanted to see. I like movies that challenge me, movies that make me go: Really? You want to get this close?

Q. This was your first movie with Brad Pitt, whom you would go on to work with on two more films, "Fight Club" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." How tricky was it to cast your detective duo?

A. Oh, boy. They really wanted Al Pacino, and Al Pacino said no. I got involved after that. And I think the first person I spoke with was Gene Hackman. I went to meet Gene Hackman, who I was entirely intimidated by because, for my money, he might be the greatest motion picture actor of all time — just the kind of effortlessness, well-traveled humanness was something I really wanted. And I met with Gene and he said, "It sounds like there's a lot of night shoots." I think we had a 40-minute conversation. And I said, "Yeah, there is." He said, "Count me out." So that was that.

Then I had a meeting with Brad. I called my great friend and partner at Propaganda, Dominic Sena, who had directed him in "Kalifornia." And I said, "Tell me about this Brad Pitt guy." And he said, "You're going to love him — so much fun, so honest, so on it. He only wants to do stuff that's interesting." So we met at a coffee shop and out of that, a deal was imminent. I think it was within 48 hours, they closed that. And then (producer) Arnold Kopelson called me and said, "What do you think about Morgan Freeman?" I had a phone conversation with Morgan and he said, "I would love to be in this." And I said, "Really? There's a lot of night shooting."

Q. At least you learned to ask. Let's talk about another key collaborator you had on "Seven," cinematographer Darius Khondji , whose lustrous work is extraordinary. How did he come on board?

A. He had done a condom commercial that was just astoundingly beautiful. And we had done a package of spots for Nike in Paris. But it was down to the wire because New Line's big worry was: Why do you want to get a guy who shoots perfume commercials to do a serial-killer movie? And I was like: Because of what you just said, because I want the movie to be really beautiful at the same time that it's utterly dystopian. The thing that Darius does so incredibly well is he has a real sensitivity for how light falls on the human face. It is not difficult to make a room really dark and creepy-looking. It's difficult to figure out where the light's going to come from to hit the person who's moving through that dark, creepy room so that they have real weight and power.

Q. But the production ran into problems, right? It was slowed by bad luck.

A. Some bad stuff happened. It was El Niño and there was an awful lot of rain. So we ended up having to make an executive decision. And I know that there are dorks out there with their YouTube channels going: Why does it have to rain? It's because we had to put together five days of continuity shooting during El Niño.

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