O.J.: Made in America (2016)

Peter Hyams: Self - Interviewee

Quotes 

• Peter Hyams - Interviewee : [after the not guilty verdict was announced]  I think the black jubilation was very offensive and very hurtful. The news footage of African Americans of all ages, sexes, backgrounds and occupations cheering and the whites crying... it put a huge red line across the American society. It existed back then, and it exists to this day.

• Peter Hyams - Interviewee : [talking about the studio decision regards to casting O.J. in Capricorn One]  I thought there were worthy African American actors who had paid their dues as actors, who had shown their talent. My first choice was either Robert Hooks or Bernie Casey, so my reaction was less than enthusiastic. I had seen The Towering Inferno. I thought he was not going to frighten Daniel Day-Lewis. O.J. was a celebrity of enormous stature, and somebody who had not shown the chops to play the part. My goal was to see if I could make this guy work for what I wanted. It came time to do his last scene. He's a guy who's parched and delusional. So rather than him acting somebody who was desperately thirsty, I put appliances on his face that made it difficult for him to move and difficult to talk, and it just made him sound like he was in desperate trouble. And he was pretty good. You know, what can I say? He was a charming, terrific guy, he was a positive guy, he tried very hard, and it was clear that he saw a future for himself in film.

• Peter Hyams - Interviewee : I believed he was innocent. I was like everybody else, it was incomprehensible that my friend could do this. I snuck into the jail to see him and there's this guy that was my buddy and he looked emaciated. He was in an orange jumpsuit, and he was shackled to the desk in front of me. Then he looked at me on the other side of plexiglass, close as he could be, and he said, "I swear to God, I didn't do this." I believed him. He asked me if I kind of would be the chronicler of the whole thing. Would I write a book about the whole thing. I backed away from that. Then, in a moment of ultimate surrealism, I'm sitting with OJ and Lyle Menendez walks behind him. And I just went, shit, this is more than my little pea brain can handle.