Last week, I interviewed Ed Solomon, the screenwriter and director of the upcoming drama, "Levity," starring Billy Bob Thornton, Morgan Freeman, Holly Hunter and Kirsten Dunst. Solomon was kind enough to elaborate on the movie, as well as his experiences as a veteran screenwriter and first-time director.

justArts: How did you get into the film business?

Solomon: I started as a joke writer when I was 19 and then wrote plays. In college, I wrote a lot of comedy and drama. A TV producer saw one of the plays I wrote and hired me on "Laverne and Shirley" (1976) as a little staff writer, which was very difficult. I wasn't very good at it, but I got an agent. Then it took about a year of writer's block after that to figure out what I was doing. It was one thing writing jokes, plays in college, and it's another thing sitting in a room with really funny people professionally. So then after about a year, I started writing screenplays. But, I mean, it's been a series of ups and downs ... That's show business.

justArts: Do you think the feeling of novelty comes from doing so many different types of genres?

Solomon: Well, that's a good question. I still think that every individual project is like a child. There are certain things that every child needs, but every child is different, and every child is raised differently. Each project has to be judged on its own rules. They all write differently, and they all get written differently ... Part of the weirdness of this whole job ... is trying to know what is right for this particular project. What's the right mood for it, what's the right writing style, when is it done and when are you just making it worse by re-writing it? That's really tricky. That's kind of the fun of it, too. The only real pleasures in it are those private moments of discovery. The most satisfying are the private moments.

justArts: Is it correct that you were the writer of the blockbuster "Men In Black" (1997), but not the mediocre "Men In Black II" (2002)? Did they ask you to write the sequel, but you refused?

Solomon: Yeah. It's hard to know ... They kind of asked me, but it was when I was working on something else. To be honest, I wanted to do other things.

justArts: How was the experience of working on the first movie?

Solomon: What was fun about working on the first one, which was a long process of four years, was that it started as a quirky, sort of weird little comedy-detective story ... and then gradually it started to mutate into this big studio film. So, it sort of had its roots in the discovery of trying to invent this ridiculous universe, but what was hard about it was that it became a franchise.

justArts: How was the transition from screenwriting to directing?

Solomon: As a writer you work alone, and you sort of entertain yourself with these imaginary characters and creatures and ideas, and there's something wonderful about that solitude. There's a relationship between control and lack of control that is really tantalizing. As a director, you're absolutely in the world of reality trying to clear a space for this delicate little thing, which is a narrative story, ... You're taking all these physical things and arranging them to try to create the illusion of something ephemeral or something organic. It's a very very different process.

justArts: How did you persuade very famous actors (Morgan Freeman, Billy Bob Thornton, etc.) to be in your small, low-budget film, "Levity?"

Solomon: I gave him (Morgan) the script in '97 when I first finished it, and he liked the characters and the ideas and a lot of the writing, but didn't like the way the story went. So he turned it down, but I took his notes. I truly admire Morgan as a person and an artist. And then he committed to it after Billy Bob Thornton came on board a few years later. I actually really wanted Billy to be one of the guys in the film "Leaving Normal" (1992). He was just an auditioning actor, and twelve years later I had this screenplay of "Levity" that I had been working on for years, and luckily he remembered me and read it over and wanted to do it.

justArts: The cinematography was excellent in this film. Can you comment on it?

Solomon: I think imperfection is underrated. I think film art that's made by a committee has the same resonance as an imperfect piece made by a singular person. Imperfection is beauty.

justArts: Did you and the director of photography, Roger Deakins ("A Beautiful Mind"), have the same visual ideas for the movie?

Solomon: Well, he has a far more sophisticated visual eye than me. He is a genius, and so we agreed on the themes of the movie and we always approached it from the theme - what's this scene about, what's this moment about, how does this fit into the overall theme of the filming - and then we would approach the scenes from there, and talk it through ... He would challenge me, and even sort of buffet me. I really admired him all around.

justArts: How did the name "Levity" come about?

Solomon: It was the only title I could ever think of for it. There's a scene in the middle, where a dead voice says, "What are you thinking about?" and he (Thorton) says, "Gravity," and the voice says, "It won't last long." I liked the title because it is sort of the inverse of the theme and provided a sense of airiness and density, which I thought would play out well.

justArts: Any future projects?

Solomon: There's a movie that has my name on it as a writer, "The In-Laws" (2003). I'm not really the main writer on it, but did a re-write based on the script. It has Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks ... The director did the final draft, though. Also, the guy that I wrote "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" (1989) with is working with me on an animated film. At the moment we're doing the voices too, but I think we just fired ourselves.