| Riffing the BLACK SNAKE MOAN with director Craig Brewer and star Samuel L. Jackson. |
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| Written by ed flynn | |
| Tuesday, 27 February 2007 | |
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{litebox}images/stories/INTERVIEWS/2272007/BSM2007/blacksnakemoanposter.jpg{/litebox}BY Samuel D Osborn {Click on images for a larger view} BLACK SNAKE MOAN, Writer/Director Craig Brewers new picture starring Samuel L. Jackson, wants to be the encapsulation of the Blues genre. Its an uncomfortable film, one thats tough to wriggle in to and finally grasp; but its also the most affective and moving stew of controversial filmmaking in recent years. We sat down with Mr. Brewer and Mr. Jackson for a while and riffed on the problems with making exploitation cinema, the intriguing casting decisions of the film, and the nail fungus put on display when Sam Jackson takes fingers to guitar. BLACK SNAKE MOAN will be released nationwide on March 3rd.  Craig Brewer, Director Craig Brewer: No. The whole idea came to me when I was having these really crippling anxiety attacks trying to get ìHustle and Flowî going. We didnt have any money, wed just had a baby, and I had to apply for state health insurance just to have the kid. My dad suffered from a heart attack at the age of 49. He was a healthy guy, never drank, never smoked, just had a blood clot that fell into his heart like a grenade and it took him out. Thats what inspired ìHustle and Flow.î I was on this flight, before ìHustle and Flowî got going, before John Singleton got involved in my career. I was on the flight and my heart started pounded, I couldnt get any oxygen, and then I just started getting dizzy, and I started sweating, and I called the stewardess over and I said, "I dont know if you have the little paddles but I think Im crashing here. Im having a heart attack." She asked if I had ever had a heart attack before and I told her, "Yeah, my dad just recently died of one." And she asked if I was afraid of flying and I said no. And then she asked if Id ever had an anxiety attack and I said no and I actually got a little pissed that she asked that question. I assumed I was a rather strong, corn-fed individual and was stronger than a panic attack over a smooth attack over California. But it passed, and if youve known anyone whos experienced these, but its like a splinter in your head when it first hits you. Its so crippling and you dont really know what triggered it but your mind starts speculating what triggered it. FEARS: Howd you learn to deal with them? Craig Brewer: This one night I was listening to Skip James, a blues guy. He has this one song called "Killing for the Blues," and I was listening to that and another song called "Washington DC Hospital Blues," and I was lighting some candles and I had some Jack Daniels in me and I was just zoning out listening to this music. I had this image - it was back at my Granddads, Marvelous Marvin Throneberrys house. I was going through this door, there was this radiator and there was this chain on the radiator, and it was flying by me, like someone was leaving as I was going to the door. And the anxiety just started happening and I was like, "This. This is the trigger." And then the chain taught and it started yanking against the radiator, and the anxiety passed. So that was how I started getting rid of them, and its not me just trying to be controversial. Its like Rae says in the movie: "Im just a little fucked up."  FEARS: Sam, when I first heard of the premise for BLACK SNAKE MOAN, my first thought was that it could be a really trashy movie for you to do. When you first got the script, what went through your head?Samuel L. Jackson: I just thought it was kinda interesting, kinda gothic, and kind of a southern love story in a way, because these two characters develop a deep affection for one another that never becomes sexual. My character, never knowing anything about nymphomania or sexual dysfunction, running into a girl who meets a man she cant use her sex to manipulate, that kind of friction is always good for character evolution. I thought it would it be something audiences would enjoy, and something I would enjoy encountering as an actor. FEARS: Is nymphomania really a sex addiction? Craig Brewer: Theres no such thing. And I fought the word in the movie. There is sex addiction and its a very real addiction. Its a high and its a crash. And I didnt want to explore that addiction. I wanted to explore the southern iconography, the slutty farmers daughter. Like, "Dont go over there, shell getcha!" FEARS: Sam, did you think it was going to be controversial for you chain her to a radiator? Samuel L. Jackson: In this day and age, I didnt think that it would be a big deal to have a black man chaining a white girl to a radiator in that particular way. But some people, because its set in the south, still see it that way, kind of controversial. FEAR: Do you feel like your film is perceived differently between southern and non-southern audiences, or white and black audiences? Craig Brewer: I found that people who try to intellectualize it get nervous. They dont know if its racist or misogynist, but theyre very concerned about it. Sam and Christina, with him so tall and so old and so black, and her so young and so small and so white, its funny to see an audience go from terrified to titillated. And theyre nervous. And thats not my doing. I think thats partly the audience and partly the casting. Anyway, they all seemed to eat it up. But I have met a majority of middle-aged white men who immediately start looking around when the movie starts, checking to see if theres something they need to be offended about. I find that very interesting, but I dont know the answer to it. FEARS: Craig, when did you think of Christina Ricci for Rae? Because, Ill be honest, I almost didnt even recognize her. Craig Brewer: Well, I didnt think of her. I dont want to say I was against her, but her agent called me and said, "Never in my experience with Christina Ricci have I seen her react like this to a role. Shes saying shes going to quit the business unless she gets it." My problem was that this film is like a stew of all my southern obsessions. And as much as I have the R.L. Burns, black bluesman with Lazarus, I needed that Sadie Hawkins-Lil Abner-Eighteen-Wheeler Silhouette-Redneck dream. I needed that blonde wham-bam-thank-you-maam. FEARS: Sort of like Jessica Simpson? Craig Brewer: Well that would be an archetypeÖI dont know if that would be a casting choice though. No disrespect to Jessica. But I didnt see Christina immediately and I think thats fair. But she insisted to come in and read for me so we put her in first. It was riveting. Where everybody else just came in and tried to be sexy, Christinas character would be broken into all these little pieces. She would be a thirteen-year-old girl yelling at her mom, and then it would shift to just being filled with rage, and then she would fall to the floor crying like she was just a little kid. And I was thinking to myself, "Well thats what the movie is about." I met her for a drink and gave her a box. There was a big ole chrome chain in it and I said, "Lets go put this on." FEARS: How brave was Christina Ricci in this role?  Samuel L. Jackson: Awesomely gutsy performance. During the rehearsal period we could see that something special was going to happen and that our relationship was a lot larger off the page than it was on the page. Christina and I have a very close relationship, we interact socially, and we have the same agent. But wed never worked together before. There was an enormous amount of respect we had for each other. As we started to rehearse we gained this trust that was essential for these two characters to do what they had to do inside that house. FEARS: Can you talk a little bit about casting Justin Timberlake? I know Sam has been critical before about musicians acting in the pastÖ Samuel L. Jackson: No, Justin and I are friends. We golfed together and we interact socially. Justins cool. Its an incredibly brave thing for him to do. I mean it would have been very easy for Justin Timberlake to pass this role up and do something that was in Justin Timberlake mode. I mean he could be sexyback or whatever. In this community, young men dont want to be perceived as weak. And so for him to take this role wheres he a sniveling, weak, anxiety-ridden kid is a very brave thing to do, and, I guess, a way to prove that hes in this business to do something serious and make you forget that hes Justin Timberlake when hes being an actor.  FEARS: Craig, has directing gotten any easier, this being your third film?Craig Brewer: No. I mean you make that first movie and youre just happy its in focus. But I think when youre a young filmmaker, you think you want to know everything. You storyboard everything. But you show up on set to Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci and you see these are powerhouse artists. You got them to see what they want to do. So I matured on BLACK SNAKE MOAN. I didnt storyboard at all. Maybe one. But we usually just rehearsed, got them comfortable, turned to Amy Vincent, my Director of Photography and asked her what she wanted to do. We hit off a shot list and thats it. Samuel L. Jackson: Craig was a kid actor. So he writes in an actors head. He has a specific idea of tone and how he wants that to work, he has a good sense of the rhythm of southern people and how they speak, and he writes dialogue thats interesting to say. And thats what I say about Quentin (Tarantino). Hes familiar with the territory he writes about. Now I think what he needs to do, or at least what I told him to do, was make a film about white people. You know, hes done these two films about black idioms, rap and the blues, and in order to cement his place in Hollywood he has to write a film about white people. So hes writing this country music movie. And hell be ok. Then he can go back to doing black movies. Because he keeps handing me these scripts about black people and I say "Craig you cant do all these things. You gotta do a film about your own people for a while." FEARS: Sam, theres been a lot of talk about the music in this movie. Did you form your character around the music? Samuel L. Jackson: Well, first being able to kind of disappear into a character, put moles on my face and change the shape of my nose and stuff, its always good for me so I can look in the mirror and know Im somebody different. So we found an interesting way to make Lazarus, my character, look like my Grandfathers brothers. It made it so I was able to actually go down into the Mississippi Delta with Craig and the music director Scott Bomar and actually hang out in juke joints. We sat and talked to old blues musicians on their porches and played with them and tried to figure out what I was trying to do with my guitar. I had to get in the mindset of these guys who work really hard all week doing something else, when on the weekends theyre rock stars. The guys we were meeting were super-famous for a twenty-mile radius. But outside those twenty miles, nobody knew who he or she was. But they were famous in that twenty miles and they were awesome, awesome musicians. FEARS: Blues music is now what white people dress up to go hear in concert halls. Black music is rap music. But what were seeing in BLACK SNAKE MOAN is the real blues. Craig Brewer: Yeah. Im very comfortable with saying African-Americans have all but abandoned the blues. And its a bunch of rich, white college kids that now respond to it immediately. But I always look at this thing from a historical perspective, especially with the south. It was music that made people feel down, and when the civil rights movement rose up in the south I dont think they wanted to sing about being torn down to the ground. They needed, "we shall overcome." They needed gospel music. The thing that I wish I could explain to kids that are into rap is that these bluesmen are the original OGs. The original guys of that time when blacks even expressed injustice, legally, socially or emotionally; there was true fear for their lives. And these men were calling it out in clubs, and that was brave. And with the right amount of white lightning in people, it would inspire this outpouring of emotion. And I look at that as incredibly brave. FEARS: And is that how music played a role in making this film? Craig Brewer: You gotta understand that ìHustle and Flowî was the rap movie. Im not just making movies and thinking itd be cool to throw in rap music or blues music. Im really trying to do these music projects where I think, "Well, what is the blues?" I see blues a lot like rap. Its exorcism music, articulating things that we arent otherwise comfortable articulating. Theyíre dances between reality and fantasy. There may be a lyric, "Im gonna buy me a bulldog and chain it in my front yard. Thatll keep my woman from sneakin off at night." Ive never done that but, boy, Ive felt that. Ive felt that kind of jealousy. That rage. But Im not going to go out and do something like that. No more than I would with some violent rap song, saying Im going to put two bullets in your dome. Well, Im not. But Id like to and its good to be riding around in a car blaring that shit and getting it out of my system before I go in and talk to that person. So really with the blues in particular thats where Im starting from. I want to deal with the essence of the music before I go to the specifics of the narrative.  FEARS: Sam, how hard was it learning how to play and sing?Samuel L. Jackson: Daunting at first. And as I got more and more familiar with the guitar and what my skill level was and how I was advancing at it, I got a lot more comfortable with playing and singing at the same time. We had to reach a point where Craig would be able to go from my hands to my face and you wouldnt know they were cutting away to somebody else. So I wouldnt say I learned how to play the guitar, but I learned to play those songs. And there was a great deal of satisfaction in being able to do that. FEARS: So every time we see fingers on frets, theyre yours? Samuel L. Jackson: Yeah. I have a nail fungus thats very distinctive. So when you look at the film, look for my fungus. It means theyre my nails. FEARS: How important is Lazarus role as a musician to the story? Samuel L. Jackson: You have to see that Lazarus is missing something in his life. And whats wrong with him is that hes given up a very essential part of himself, the music, to be a farmer, to be a husband, and its taken some of the joy out of his life and the joy of people being around him. Because that was a very essential part of who he was. Being able to find the music and find what part it played in his existence was very important to me. So when you first see him reach under that bed and pull out that guitar and play a song about his wife leaving him, it gives him another kind of life that we hadnt seen already.  FEARS: Are you still playing the guitar?Samuel L. Jackson: Yeah, actually Ive got a guitar with me now. I had no guitars when I started. Now I have seven. LINK THIS ARTICLE             |
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