RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan talks 'Iron Fists,' Kung Fu flicks, and more

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Last month, while making his way across the country, promoting his feature-length directorial debut, The Man With the Iron Fists, Robert Diggs, aka RZA of the Wu Tang Clan, made an Atlanta stop. The following excerpts are taken from a conversation at Vinyl, where we talked about his reverence for Quentin Tarantino, Sun Tzu and The Art of War, and how his life-long love of Kung Fu films has influenced his art and music.

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On life as a director ...
This was a nerve-wracking process, and what I did to conquer it was stay sober. With music, I can smoke weed and be in the studio all night, and just let the energy flow. But with this much money under my control, and this kind of A-class talent in my hands I had to be focused. I was not going to let myself not rise to he occasion. ... And I knew that I had risen to the occasion when I saw the actors trust me with ideas that weren't always on paper. At the same time, they knew that they were in the hands of a director who was an artist first. I understand what it's like to be in front of a camera and maybe you've gotta fuckin' fart. Who knows what you've gotta do? But they understood that.

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On working with Quentin Tarantino ...
First and foremost, Quentin Tarantino is my mentor and my teacher, and if I belong to a Kung Fu school, I belong to Quentin Tarantino. But I did meet Jim Jarmsuch first, and Jim gave me a lot of his wisdom that I absorbed. What Jim does, to me, is capture an image with his movies ... He'll stay on the image, or stay on the character so long that sometimes your mind drifts, which is cool. You can watch that guy and start thinking about what he's thinking about. That's his tactic. Quentin, if he gives you a long static shot, his dialogue is so potent that he makes your imagination follow the dialogue. If you think about something like Reservoir Dogs, you never see the heist! But in your mind you feel like you saw the entire heist because of the way they talk about it.