Alan Parker

Alan Parker was interested for years in the novel behind Angel Heart; the producer Elliott Kastner gave him a copy of the book early in 1985. Having taken on the screenplay and the directing, he made changes to the story: he set one of the locations in New Orleans and pulled the year of the events back from 1959 to 1955, so that the film would have an older look. He wanted to shoot in black and white, and when he saw that this was not commercially possible he worked with the set and costume designers and took out all the primary colours, after a monochromatic look close to film noir. The MPAA gave the film an R, but two versions sent in before that had been given an X. On Mississippi Burning he clashed with the writer Chris Gerolmo; Gerolmo could not be on the set because of a strike, and Parker says he rewrote the screenplay after an attempt at revising it together had failed. He began shooting with night scenes one after another, after a documentary feel.