Looking back on his 1990 film, “To Sleep With Anger,” director Charles Burnett told Rocky Friedman that he was just barely able to get the film made.

During Friedman’s Sept. 21 interview of Burnett and Danny Glover, the film’s lead actor, Burnett told Friedman, and the audience at the Port Townsend American Legion Hall, that Glover coming aboard the project bolstered support for it.

At the same time, Burnett made sure to praise his entire cast as talented, “quality people,” who made the experience of making the movie an enlightening and enjoyable experience.

In 2017, “To Sleep With Anger” was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

So, in 2018, the Port Townsend Film Festival made it one of the films they screened for attendees, with the Sept. 21 screening featuring Burnett and Glover, answering questions from the audience.

“Was it crushing, when this film aired in fewer than 20 theaters?” Friedman asked.

Burnett conceded the limited distribution was “very difficult to take,” since he sees part of the point of making a movie as sharing an experience with others.

While Glover’s memory lagged slightly, Burnett ultimately succeeded in reminding him how they’d met at the San Francisco International Film Festival in the late 1980s, since Glover is a native San Franciscan who believes in supporting the film scene there.

A question from Friedman about who Glover considers an inspiration led to blanket praise of “everyone I’ve ever worked with,” before Glover narrowed it down a bit, first by naming frequent costar Alfre Woodard as his favorite actress.

“There’s just something about her, every time I look in her eyes,” said Glover, who also gushed over the enthusiasm of working with Robert Redford, on what was supposedly Redford’s final film. “He had so much energy, though, I don’t think it’ll be his last.”

At the age of 16, Glover looked up to legendary boxer Muhammad Ali for his rebelliousness, and 36 years ago, Glover first met Harry Belafonte, whom he regarded as something of a father figure, but he also described his own parents, and especially his actual father, as “the most beautiful people I’ve ever met.”

Glover recounted how Belafonte knew fellow actor, musician and political activist Paul Robeson, near the end of Robeson’s life. When Belafonte asked Robeson what he’d change, Robeson reportedly told him, “Not one thing, because it’s the people you meet on this journey who make it worthwhile.”

Glover noted that, in 1946, the same year he was born, Robeson co-chaired an anti-lynching group with Albert Einstein.

“I would have loved to have done a movie about that relationship,” Glover said.

Both Glover and Burnett admitted to drawing from real-life experiences, either their own or those of friends and family, to inform their art.

“I’m not pretending to reflect the black experience as a whole, but I can say it reflects a certain reality,” Burnett said, before laughing, “Folks who know me will say, ‘Don’t say that, or Charles will use it in one of his movies.’”

Glover likewise drew from a broad base of experience, as a native of urban San Francisco, by recalling his visits to his grandparents when he was young.

“My grandparents were mythical to me,” Glover said. “My grandmother frightened me. When she saw you, it was like she could look into you, and see everything you were trying to hide.”

Glover pointed out his grandmother was the same age in 1909 as Celie, Whoopi Goldberg’s character in the movie adaptation of Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple,” in which Glover played the abusive “Mister.”

“My grandmother saw that film and was like, ‘I’m gonna get a switch after that boy,’” Glover said, drawing laughter from the audience.

Glover added his great-grandmother was born in 1854, making her old enough to have lived through the events of Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” whose movie adaptation Glover also starred in.

“And they all lived to be in their 90s, even 100 years old,” Glover said. “When you have that duality of experiences, it expands your vision of who you are.”