Episode 1254 - Liesl Tommy
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:Are you guys all right?
Marc:Holy shit, man.
Marc:Today on the show...
Marc:I talked to Liesl Tommy.
Marc:She's the director of the movie Respect, which I was in.
Marc:It's her first feature film, but she has a lot of experience directing for the stage all over the world, I might add.
Marc:It was a pleasure to work with her.
Marc:She's a smart, intense person.
Marc:It was great to talk to her.
Marc:And you will be able to enjoy that shortly.
Marc:I let some people in on Instagram Live to a band rehearsal.
Marc:As you know,
Marc:I am going to be playing music and hosting a comedy show at Largo on the 26th of this month.
Marc:And I've put together with Flanagan's help, the guy who books Largo, a little combo.
Marc:It's me and a guy named Brandon Schwartzel on bass, a guy named Ned Brower on drums.
Marc:And I've selected these songs.
Marc:I think some of them for reasons, some of them.
Marc:Not necessarily for reasons, just because I like them, but it's an odd collection of songs.
Marc:I think we're doing six songs.
Marc:I might do the song I wrote for Lynn at the end, just solo.
Marc:But, you know, it's coming together.
Marc:And it looks like Jimmy Vivino, the dude who plays, who's taught me a lot of licks, who's one of my primary guitar teachers, really, over the last couple of decades,
Marc:who was Conan O'Brien's band leader.
Marc:He might sit in on a couple, which is very exciting.
Marc:He's actually going to come to rehearsal next week.
Marc:But why am I doing this?
Marc:What am I trying to tell you here?
Marc:I'll tell you why, because I can.
Marc:So it is a bucket list situation, but I've been playing guitar for a long time.
Marc:And I think the hopes on behalf of the establishment, Flanagan over at Largo, is that it goes well and we make it a monthly show.
Marc:I pick a few other songs, we get a few other comics.
Marc:Laurie Kilmartin's gonna do it, and Fahim Anwar are gonna be there.
Marc:So it'll be a couple of songs, and I don't know, man, I got a lot to make up for.
Marc:There's a lot to make up for in terms of my tremendous lack of confidence or discipline around guitar playing.
Marc:I've become something of a unique guitar player for me.
Marc:I can handle it, and we're doing good songs, they're a good band.
Marc:But I've had to figure out what guitar and amp.
Marc:I'm no pro.
Marc:I just like to plug in.
Marc:I'm not a nerd.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't have a pedal board that I can lock into.
Marc:I'm not that detailed.
Marc:I just want the tone that comes out of the amp when I plug the guitar in.
Marc:So I'm settling on something.
Marc:But I guess this is what I wanted to talk about primarily is that years ago when I did some work for Gibson through Brendan Small, I was paid in a Les Paul Custom.
Marc:That's a black Les Paul with gold hardware.
Marc:And you don't see them around a lot, people playing them.
Marc:I don't know if they're out of style.
Marc:It's sort of a rock guitar.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:But it's really a top-notch electric guitar.
Marc:Classic.
Marc:And when I was in high school, my buddy Dave Bishop played one.
Marc:I had my copycat Gibson, then I had a Telecaster, but Dave really knew how to play, even when we were in high school.
Marc:He was a little older than me, and he just really knew how to fucking rock out.
Marc:He was sort of a prodigy, and he had this beautiful black custom, Les Paul, that I just thought was just, I would never be as good or good enough to play that.
Marc:I still I kind of feel that way.
Marc:But because of some of the sound limitations at Largo in that you can't play a single coil pickup without getting an extreme amount of buzz, that means I can't play the guitars that I'm used to and that I love.
Marc:So I had to pull the custom out to see if it would work.
Marc:And I brought it to rehearsal the other day with the Headstrong Deluxe amp straight in with just a boost pedal.
Marc:And it was revelatory.
Marc:It's the perfect guitar.
Marc:And I got that as a homage, as a tribute, as a reminder, as a nostalgia stop that I can take out of its case to remind me of my old buddy, Dave Bishop, who passed away.
Marc:So there's sort of like I'm honoring that.
Marc:I'm honoring Dave by playing this guitar because that's why I got it in the first place.
Marc:And it just feels right.
Marc:So it's kind of loaded up that way, the performance.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But it's loaded up in other ways, too, because of the song selections.
Marc:And maybe I've talked about it, but but things are just coming along.
Marc:Making songs your own is where it's always been apt for me because I I never had the discipline to mimic anybody effective.
Marc:I want to bring this up real quick.
Marc:I want to mention that I've added more dates to my tour.
Marc:Wednesday, September 22nd, 8 p.m.
Marc:at the Neptune in Seattle.
Marc:That's happening.
Marc:Friday, September 24th at 7 p.m.
Marc:at the Aladdin Theater in Portland.
Marc:That's happening.
Marc:And the pre-sale for my show at Town Hall in New York City is going on right now.
Marc:Go to nycomedyfestival.com and use the pre-sale code NYCF.
Marc:The show is Friday, November 13th at 7 p.m.
Marc:All that is happening.
Marc:So some of the songs I'm doing have direct memories attached to them.
Marc:We're doing a version of The Stroll by The Diamonds, which was a song my dad hit me to.
Marc:It's got kind of a greasy, strippery rock vibe with a kind of like droney sax that we're going to replace with a guitar lick because Jimmy's going to play on that one.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We're going to do I Walk With Jesus by Spaceman 3 because I was turned on to Spaceman 3 by Jay Dobis.
Marc:I was way high.
Marc:And he just kept saying, like, you know, Jonathan Richman is my good friend and turned me on to Spaceman 3 and some other psychedelic stuff.
Marc:But that song just kills me.
Marc:It's two chords.
Marc:It's genius.
Marc:I love it.
Marc:We're doing What Goes On by Lou Reed in The Velvet Underground because Lou Reed live in 69.
Marc:was a transitional album for me it was a revelatory album for me i've used that revelatory i'm using revelatory ubiquitous uh a lot lately those two things so the velvet underground live in 69 just uh maybe understand music in a whole different way so that's where we get what goes on we're going to do uh uh we're going to try to do i think we're going to do uh
Marc:Isis by Bob Dylan, which I think I can make my own.
Marc:It's hard not to phrase it like Bob, but I just love that story.
Marc:I'm not even sure what it's about, but it feels like it's about a relationship that I understand.
Marc:And then we're going to do Broke Down Palace by the Grateful Dead because that's one of the prettiest songs ever fucking written.
Marc:And if I can just remember the goddamn chords, it might work out okay.
Marc:And I'm singing all these things and I'm putting myself out there because I have to erase a bad memory.
Marc:I have a bad memory to erase, and I think I've talked to you about this before.
Marc:Some of you may not know because you're new here, or maybe you don't listen to me, but it's real.
Marc:It's real.
Marc:So in an effort, this performance at Largo with my band, I think we'll call them the Three Chords.
Marc:All the songs have only two or three chords except for Broke Down Palace, which has a fucking mess of chords that are weird changes.
Marc:They're not hard chords, but if I don't remember it and I fuck it up...
Marc:It will go against what I'm trying to do here.
Marc:What I'm trying to accomplish, as I've talked to you about before, is a memory.
Marc:It's a memory.
Marc:It's trauma from Lighthouse Arts and Music Camp, where it was a final performance by all the people, you know, doing the performances for the big show at the end of the camp.
Marc:I put together this little band.
Marc:All we had to do was get through Johnny B. Good.
Marc:But of course, I put together not being like I'm just a sloppy player.
Marc:You know, I was even then.
Marc:And somehow or another, I managed to get all the dudes who, you know, right on fucking right on on cue.
Marc:As soon as we had to fucking perform in the band shell for the entire camp, a couple of them got stoned, a couple of them got drunk, were fucking 14, 15 years old, and none of them can play, but they were all giggling.
Marc:I fucking get up there.
Marc:I couldn't even fucking make it through Johnny B. Good.
Marc:I couldn't find the key.
Marc:The entire thing was a fucking disaster.
Marc:Because those are the guys that I hung around with.
Marc:And the other band that was representing rock music at the camp was a bunch of music nerds.
Marc:I don't remember their names anymore.
Marc:But we fucking bungled Johnny B. Goode.
Marc:And I felt like killing myself.
Marc:The rest of the idiots were just laughing and giggling and whatever.
Marc:And then the other band got up there and in my memory played an entire Genesis album.
Marc:Perfectly.
Marc:So now the deal with Largo is I can own who I am, I can own the way I play guitar, and I'm just going to do it to feel it and entertain, perform, play music publicly, share.
Marc:And if I die, this is going to be it.
Marc:So there's a lot hanging on it.
Marc:See, I'm already pressuring myself.
Marc:But I know myself well enough just from all these years that if I don't feel good about what's happening, I can stop in the middle of a song.
Marc:I give zero fucks.
Marc:I don't fucking care.
Marc:I'll be like, we're starting this over.
Marc:I'll get a laugh.
Marc:I'll make it weird.
Marc:And we'll fucking get back on track.
Marc:I'm going to make this fucking work.
Marc:This is a fucking exercise in reversing the effects of
Marc:of the trauma of massive embarrassment.
Marc:Yeah, that's what's happening.
Marc:It's a big night.
Marc:So Liesl Tommy is the director of Respect, and we talked really, I think, the day after the premiere.
Marc:It's in theaters now.
Marc:She's an amazing director, very smart, and I enjoy talking to her.
Marc:So this is that.
Guest:.
Marc:You know, the guy, the prop guy set me up with a guitar in my hotel room and that guitar got lost somewhere.
Marc:He told me it got stolen or lost.
Marc:Do you know about it?
Guest:I don't know about it.
Guest:I did not hear that story.
Marc:Well, I don't think it was a big story because I don't think a lot of them were very expensive guitars.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They looked a period, but they weren't like custom shop guitars.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it somehow disappeared between my room and wherever.
Marc:I don't know what happened to it.
Marc:It was upsetting.
Guest:Very upsetting.
Guest:Am I looking at one of them right now?
Marc:No, I wouldn't have taken it.
Marc:I wouldn't have taken that one.
Marc:No, I'm sure you wouldn't.
Marc:So last night was very exciting, I thought.
Marc:Did you?
Guest:Yeah, it was pretty cool.
Guest:I mean, one of the journalists on the carpet asked me, how do you feel right now?
Guest:And I said...
Guest:I think I'm incandescent with happiness.
Guest:And he just was like, what?
Guest:And I'm like, I'm sure people don't really say that.
Guest:But this has been such a grueling and, you know, scary process because COVID stuck itself into the middle of it.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:At least in the release, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, well, no, because we wrapped last year in the end of February and then I had a week off and then I dove into the edit in New York City and we were editing and we were in the edit bay for maybe seven days and then we got shut down because of COVID.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:And it was such a massive editing job.
Guest:And I basically, we all had to retreat to our apartments and I was in my apartment in Harlem listening to sirens 24 hours a day editing the film.
Guest:Alone.
Marc:It was so brutal in New York at the beginning.
Marc:I mean, it was just like devastating.
Guest:It was devastating.
Guest:I mean, you know, I had a lot of friends in the Broadway community.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:People got sick.
Guest:People died.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it was, we really did not know what was happening.
Guest:And concentrating on work was like an act of just epic will, you know, because we were just, I was talking to writers, you know,
Marc:of the friends and they were like we can't we have no bandwidth we can't focus on anything all we want to do is check the news oh i know yeah i mean i talked to creative people that were sort of like should i be working yeah i mean like well after people realized that we were in it for a while there was this feeling like well i should be using this time yes but a few people did and then you resented people who said they were using it like you know it's like who the fuck is this person i know how how how
Guest:What skill do they have that I don't have that they can actually focus?
Marc:Be inspired and motivated during this plague.
Guest:No, man.
Guest:I mean, it was just... We've never experienced that kind of... No, of course not.
Guest:But what I kept thinking about is people who live in Syria or...
Guest:Yemen.
Guest:People who are living harrowing war-torn lives daily for years.
Guest:How do you keep your nervous system together?
Marc:Broken structure, lack of resources.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:But people do adapt.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I mean, it's amazing what we adapt to.
Marc:For better and worse.
Marc:Some people become completely delusional and just commit to a fucking fiction as a way of life.
Marc:And other people try to...
Marc:To deal.
Marc:For real, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, that was 2020 was just, you know, editing a music movie without being able to, like, feel the vibe with a group of people in a room.
Marc:Oh, right.
Marc:So there was, you couldn't, you could just pass around these cuts to individuals, so there was no real way to screen.
Marc:Well, what the hell?
Marc:I mean, what's the movie at now, time-wise?
Marc:225.
Marc:225.
Marc:So I imagine at the beginning, when you wanted to start testing things out, what was it, at like nine?
Marc:Nine hours?
Yeah.
Guest:Okay, so the assemblage, the first cut of the, you know, the editors was like five and a half hours.
Guest:And my favorite moment in the early process- Did you have a place for the intermission?
Guest:There was a dinner break, yeah.
Guest:I showed the movie to Tracy, the writer, when it was like,
Guest:I just wanted her to see the whole thing because I knew I was going to have to get in there and cut the words.
Marc:So this is the whole thing as the script.
Guest:Just like purely as written.
Guest:And she was just like so happy.
Guest:She was just beaming and she didn't take her eyes at the screen for five and a half hours.
Guest:And then I showed her like I managed to get it down to three hours and 15 minutes.
Guest:She watched it kind of stone faced and then she said to me,
Guest:I feel like the five and a half hour version flowed better.
Marc:No kidding.
Guest:I was like, God, I love writers.
Guest:Of course, she loves it now, but it's just everything was so painful.
Marc:She was willing to release it at five and a half.
Marc:People adapt.
Marc:They adapt.
Guest:Angels in America was a two-part.
Guest:I was like, yes, this is true.
Marc:We could release half now and release the other half in six months.
Guest:But, you know, that's why I love her so much.
Guest:She's so passionate.
Guest:She's, you know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, I can't imagine.
Marc:It must have been difficult.
Marc:I mean, I don't know what the choices were.
Marc:I guess I could ask you because I didn't know who you were coming into it.
Marc:I'm not even sure.
Marc:How did you find me?
Marc:Because someone decided I was the guy, right?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I saw Glow.
Guest:I thought you were awesome in that.
Guest:Oh, thanks.
Guest:I just, you know, I have a style of acting that I respond to.
Guest:And it's like, I don't want people to think they're watching actors act.
Guest:I want people to feel like they're watching people live their lives.
Guest:And you have that.
Guest:It's super organic.
Guest:It's real.
Guest:It's direct.
Guest:You know, it's bullshit.
Guest:And that's what I responded.
Guest:Well, I thought I did pretty well.
Guest:I watched it.
Marc:You did great.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:I mean, the fact that you can actually watch yourself and like it, that always tells you.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, I've grown.
Marc:That's gotten easier for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And Forrest Whitaker.
Marc:Jesus.
Yeah.
Marc:Because, well, that's what I get.
Marc:We can stay on the story of respect for a while.
Marc:Is that because, you know, I talked to David Ritz and I talked to who wrote the was it an autobiography with her or did he do a biography?
Guest:He did two.
Guest:He did one authorized one.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:OK.
Marc:So I talked to him about Jerry because he did Jerry's, too.
Marc:And then I interviewed him about stuff.
Marc:And.
Marc:And I know that he wasn't really involved in this one, but there is this notion about her life and mysteries about her life that have not really come to light or come to pass.
Marc:And they had to be worked around for you to get permission to do this story.
Marc:So what it was, where did this journey to do her story begin and why you?
Guest:Good question, because it was my first movie.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, yeah, you were a Broadway director, really, right?
Guest:Theater director, and I did television for a couple of years.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:I always wanted to make movies.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, sure, of course.
Guest:And there was a period where I was like, I think I had a show on Broadway that did extremely well, and I did this big thing for Disney, this adaptation of Frozen.
Guest:I was like, I think I've directed it.
Guest:My bucket list in theater.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then I moved into TV, but I got this.
Guest:I was actually directing The Walking Dead in Atlanta when I was told that the studio and Scott Bernstein, the creative producer, was going to call me about this movie.
Guest:Walking Dead, huh?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I love zombies.
Marc:I'm a total genre geek.
Marc:Well, I mean, that's a pretty theatrical undertaking.
Guest:It is.
Marc:You got to get a bunch of zombies going for the crowd scenes.
Guest:Got to stage them.
Guest:It's like Shakespeare when everybody's on stage at the end of the final part of the play.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Or like the end of a musical.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:So how many of those did you direct?
Guest:I only directed one, but I plan on directing a full zombie movie in the future, so it's good practice.
Marc:Really?
Marc:That's the next one?
Guest:Wouldn't that be funny?
Guest:It's a horror movie.
Guest:That's my next thing.
Marc:A full zombie.
Marc:Maybe you should make it a musical zombie biopic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, I was in the hotel in Atlanta during prep for this episode, and they said they were going to call me, and I knew that it was as bad a big a long shot as it could get for me to bag this film, having not done a film.
Marc:Wait, did you know you were in the running?
Guest:All I knew is that someone had given them their name and they were calling me.
Marc:Your name.
Guest:My name and they were calling me.
Guest:And it was just a chat.
Guest:It was just like a general chat.
Guest:But, you know, I just knew I couldn't afford a general chat.
Guest:So I had like a whole pitch planned.
Guest:I said it should start in the church.
Guest:It should end in the church.
Guest:I had a tagline.
Guest:I said the songs.
Guest:I talked about the style.
Guest:I said it's childhood in her 20s.
Guest:I don't personally like birth to death biopics.
Guest:I feel like it just everything feels rushed.
Guest:Everything's like you cram and stuff in.
Marc:Then you got to make makeup decisions.
Yeah.
Guest:It's just like I just wanted to really feel like we were in there with her.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And it would just be a specific time period to get to know how she became.
Marc:And you were thinking in terms of story, too.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:There's an arc within the whole life or several.
Marc:So you're like, well, here's the arc.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That makes the most sense.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I mean, I'm always thinking this comes from, you know, being a dramaturgical director.
Guest:Right.
Guest:What is the beginning, middle and end of any story?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What's the central conflict?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So what I pitched them was that this should be a movie about a woman with the greatest voice on earth who did not know what her voice was.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that's pretty smart.
Marc:How'd you figure that out?
Marc:What were they thinking?
Marc:They had no ideas?
Yeah.
Guest:To be brutally honest, they actually got confused because after I did the pitch, they were like, wow, that's pretty great.
Guest:And then they said, you talk like a director.
Guest:Are you a director?
Guest:And I was like, dudes, I am a fucking director.
Guest:And they were like, oh, you don't want to write it?
Guest:No, I'm a director.
Guest:We should hire a professional writer to write it.
Guest:And then they were like, oh, sorry, sorry.
Guest:We just got confused.
Guest:They're like, we'll get back to you.
Guest:We all kind of fled the call, and I was like, motherfucker.
Guest:How's that get?
Marc:Where was the drop in communications?
Marc:Where was the miscommunication?
Guest:Who told them I was a writer?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:But they actually came back two weeks later, and they were like, we really like that take.
Guest:We were going to start with a writer, but we're going to bring you on, and we're going to make that movie.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:So it was like that.
Marc:So you got to choose Tracy?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:And what was your relationship?
Marc:What's her last name again?
Guest:Tracy Scott Wilson.
Marc:What's her history with you?
Guest:So we did a play together in like, I don't even know what year, 2005?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We were baby theater people.
Guest:She wrote this play called The Good Negro about the civil rights movement.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I directed it.
Guest:We developed it for like four years together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We did it together and, you know, you kind of go through fire when you work with somebody that long.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just knew she was the person.
Guest:I knew that I had a shorthand with her and that, you know, the ideas that I had for the film.
Guest:I mean, there were certain scenes that just came to me that I knew had to be in the film.
Guest:Like I had this vision of that scene with her and her mom.
Guest:At the piano or at the end?
Guest:The end.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I just was like, this is... A vision of the vision?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:You know, I was just kind of like, we called it the dark night of the soul.
Guest:I just knew what it would be and that it should, you know, and I knew that I could trust Tracy to, you know, to hear those crazy...
Guest:and make them work.
Marc:Well, I thought that you staged that really well.
Marc:I thought that by that time, you didn't really know, unless you really knew the story of Aretha, where this was going.
Marc:But I thought you handled that well.
Marc:I thought Jennifer did a really good job with that.
Marc:Because you really are, I was talking to somebody today, when you do a biopic of any kind, you're really encapsulating a myth of a person.
Marc:In these stories, you have to choose which stories that many people may know.
Marc:How do you capture those?
Marc:You're all in service of feeding the idea that you want to get across about this woman.
Marc:You can't waste any time.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:People are like, well, what about this?
Guest:CL grew up in...
Guest:We have to focus on Aretha and I've got the spine of the story and every scene has to further that story.
Marc:When I watched it again last night, I really realized the kind of weight that Forrest, the burden he had to sort of be the anchor of darkness.
Marc:For the whole movie, like, you know, whatever the reality of her story is, it's deeper and darker than is revealed here.
Marc:And it revolves around him.
Marc:So you had to sort of, you know, he was a very hard character to empathize with and a very hard character to respect in some ways because he was.
Marc:But, you know, he made some decisions about how he's going to play that guy where whatever was going on inside of that dude, you could see it and feel it.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I mean, that's the thing that I am attracted to with certain actors.
Guest:Forrest is definitely one of them.
Guest:You're one of them.
Guest:Everybody in that film.
Guest:Whereas no matter good guy, bad guy, who cares?
Guest:You are fascinated by what's going on inside of them.
Guest:I just never get tired of looking at Forrest Whitaker think.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:It's so complex.
Yeah.
Guest:You know, he's just he is he's gifted.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He has an emotional complexity that is is so inspiring to work with.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that and for that guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was kind of great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I mean, you know, that's it's the same.
Guest:That character was never going to be an easy character.
Guest:And it would have been in the wrong hands would have just tilted into just one dimensional bad guy.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:But there were some scenes like, you know, where he is somewhat redeemed at the end.
Marc:And also, but like the one, the thing I didn't like, because I only saw it.
Marc:This is the second time I saw it on the big screen was that, you know, when he and Aretha are both sitting there drinking after Martin Luther King dies and you start to realize like, oh, see, like, you know, they're both sitting there drinking almost the same drink.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:You know, like I didn't really sort of notice that stuff, that the demon in her was him.
Guest:Well, I mean, that's right.
Guest:You know, we all have baggage, you know, and that's part of the journey of the film.
Marc:And also like the weird kind of like when I read about Jerry, it was the same thing.
Marc:There was these people in that business at that time, you know, like parenting was certainly the secondary.
Yeah.
Marc:And you sort of have to encapsulate that very quickly where basically the grandmother just takes the kids.
Marc:And I think that's what usually happened.
Marc:Here you go.
Marc:Here's another one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I mean, it's just somebody has to take care of them.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Somebody has to take care of them.
Guest:And, you know, there was certainly no infrastructure for women to have.
Guest:It's still that way to have their own careers.
Guest:So, you know, it's not like that your husband in the 50s and 60s was going to decide to be the parent.
Marc:No.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, like I read stuff about Jerry, like that family situation was kind of turned out very sad.
Marc:But OK, so you guys kind of set out to do this.
Marc:What was the relationship with the Franklin estate in terms of what you could and couldn't do?
Marc:How was that dictated?
Guest:There was really nothing that they said I could or couldn't do.
Guest:And the truth is they were busy with their own, you know, after she died, there was a lot of stuff they had to sort out legally themselves around her estate.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Tracy and I just did our thing.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You know, and the executor, her niece, you know, she came on to set and Brenda, also one of the backup singers and a cousin, came on to set and they were awesome.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I got to say, maybe because, you know, when they met with us, they saw Tracy and I, black women, we were not about to fuck up Aretha Franklin's legacy.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And they really trusted us, you know.
Guest:And we were very...
Guest:I you know, I was like, if I'm on this, I need to I need to have artistic freedom.
Marc:And there was no line.
Marc:I mean, because I know that there were things that, you know, that we don't even need to talk about here that were sort of danced around and suggested that, you know, would have been I would have probably thrown a wrench in the movie.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Around her children and, you know, where they came from.
Guest:Well, I mean, I took I took my lead on that from she said different things at different times in her life about where they came from.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:About who the fathers were.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, that's that's actually fascinating.
Guest:It's part of the story.
Guest:And so that's, you know, I'm going to I'm going to go with that.
Marc:And you just did it in two ways.
Marc:You know, you did the, when she was the kid, and then you did Mary J's character going like, when are we going to find out?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And, you know, it's like, I'm not, it's not, I don't have genetic tests.
Guest:I don't know who, you know, and so I got to go with the fact that she chose to be mysterious about that.
Marc:Yeah, and how did it all come together with Jennifer?
Marc:I mean, she was the one who was supposed to do it, per Aretha's request.
Marc:Who found that?
Marc:How did that all come together?
Guest:So here's something fascinating.
Guest:Jen and I were reunited in Martha's Vineyard last week for the African American Film Festival.
Guest:We had a screening there and we were just hanging out talking and we realized that we were Broadway neighbors together in 2016.
Guest:I had my show eclipsed on Broadway and next door she was doing Color Purple.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We used to call it Black Way because that was, you know, because I think like Hamilton was running at the same time and Forrest was doing Huey, I think, at the same time.
Guest:It was like this crazy, we called it like, you know, Broadway block.
Guest:But we were neighbors and that was when Aretha Franklin asked her to be, to play her in the film.
Marc:Whatever the film might be.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, I don't know what it's going to be.
Guest:She was like, you are going to play me in the film.
Guest:Right.
Right.
Guest:And, you know, we were just talking about how that was 2016.
Guest:And we didn't even, you know, we had no idea that we would be doing this together then.
Marc:Who made the decision to make this movie?
Marc:I mean, like, I mean, where did it come from?
Guest:Well, Scott Bernstein and Harvey Mason Jr.
Guest:had worked together on Straight Outta Compton.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Producers?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Harvey was her music producer for a while.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:So they put it together.
Guest:And she was like, yeah, let's do this.
Guest:And then there's some interview where somebody got a little spicy with her about, why is this movie taking so long?
Guest:And she was like, do you know anything about contracts?
Yeah.
Guest:And she's not wrong.
Guest:I mean, every song is owned by a different entity.
Guest:So it's a long process.
Marc:Oh, the different labels?
Marc:And she didn't have ownership of some of them?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, Ted White had control over some of them.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:So he did all right for himself for life out of a few songs?
Marc:Is he still alive?
Guest:No, he passed last year, actually.
Marc:No kidding.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:And how many kids are there?
Guest:There are four sons.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And they're around?
Guest:Yeah, they are.
Guest:They all came.
Guest:Some of them were there last night.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:How did they feel about it?
Guest:They love it.
Marc:They do?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, we had a screening for them in Detroit.
Guest:Jen and I stopped off in Detroit for a couple of days this past week.
Guest:And we had a screening for them, and it was very emotional.
Guest:Well, one thing that I can tell is people are still grieving her loss.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You know, it's very alive.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And just to hear those songs done like that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And to see that story.
Marc:I mean, what are the reviews like?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:You don't know?
Marc:You haven't seen any of them?
Guest:No, I haven't.
Guest:I mean.
Marc:I don't know if they're out yet.
Marc:They're probably going to be out this week.
Guest:There were a few that were out last night.
Guest:And my friend Jenny Ludge, or my producing partner, she read some things to me.
Guest:And there's some great things out there right now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:But I mean, I just feel like, let me get the movie out first before I dive in.
Marc:Yeah, no, I'm not going to.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:I just scan them for my name.
Guest:Type in the search, Mark Marin.
Marc:Marin, respect.
Marc:Two sentences.
Marc:Marin as Wexler did a fine, convincing job.
Marc:That's a good review.
Marc:That was a rave.
Marc:We're hit.
Marc:Yeah, I did it.
Marc:So where did you evolve from?
Marc:Do you know in terms of...
Marc:So you were a theater director, but where do you, I know you come from South Africa.
Marc:Like really come from that?
Guest:Yeah, I was born and raised in South Africa and Cape Town, South Africa.
Marc:I can't even, I have no idea what that's like.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So in South Africa, you know, during apartheid,
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As you Americans say.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We say apartheid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was, you know, systemic racism legally.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, in the Constitution.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I grew up in what's called a colored township.
Guest:And colored is what they called mixed race.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:Oh, there was a difference between black, colored, and white?
Guest:So what they did is they created townships for Indian people.
Guest:Townships were for colored people and then black people, but then they even went further and separated them by tribe.
Guest:So that was just, everybody was separated and it was a way to control.
Marc:But fenced in or just block to block kind of stuff?
Guest:Block to block and then they created what, you know, we call them homelands, but they are the equivalent of reservations.
Marc:Okay, so totally separate.
Guest:Totally separate, yeah.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:I know.
Marc:I had no idea.
Marc:I should know that, I guess.
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:Well, it's, you know, it's so specific.
Guest:And the colored community, the community I'm from, you know, unlike mixed race, when people think about it here, it's my parents were mixed, their parents were mixed, their parents were mixed.
Guest:Like mixing started very early on.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the Dutch...
Guest:brought in slaves from Indonesia and Malaysia.
Guest:So it's, you know, the mixture of European, Asian.
Marc:So do you know the breakdown?
Guest:My breakdown?
Guest:No, I mean, it's black.
Guest:It's black African.
Guest:It's Indian.
Guest:It's indigenous.
Guest:It's, you know, it's all in there.
Marc:But it's very different than whatever mixed would be here.
Guest:Yes, it is.
Guest:It is different.
Guest:Yeah, because it's generations of it.
Marc:Generations, and it depends on the history of the country.
Marc:It's totally different places.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, so that was my childhood.
Guest:We grew up in a place called Factoryton, which is a pretty... It was called Factoryton because everybody worked in factories.
Marc:Is this how your dad worked in a factory?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No, my dad was a high school teacher.
Guest:And, you know, he was a very political person and he worked at a high school that was known for its student activists.
Marc:Oh, and your mom?
Guest:And my mom worked.
Guest:She left school very early and she went, you know, the women in her family had to leave school like before the seventh grade for the most part.
Guest:Because so that the brothers could get an education.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah, it's pretty normal.
Marc:Like there was no room?
Marc:Oh, so they had to take up whatever work in the family?
Guest:Work and contribute.
Marc:Oh, I get it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:But she's an incredible woman.
Guest:And she basically, when she retired, she was like a controller for a huge engineering firm.
Guest:She was just somebody who started off as a secretary, became a bookkeeper, became an accountant, became, you know, she just very savvy.
Guest:And then she also, when they went back to South Africa.
Guest:They went back?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we immigrated to the States when I was 15.
Marc:So by having a father who was, you know, in tune with the revolution or the possibilities of that type of progress, that kind of freed your mind.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Informed your.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Listen, my dad gave me the communist manifesto to read when I was 11.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, I don't know if you know any Marxists, but being well read is extremely important.
Guest:Being able to defend an argument is extremely important.
Guest:So like as a kid at dinner, you're like, well, I feel like and there was no there's no feeling like what is the evidence based on that?
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It was intense.
Marc:So genuine critical thinking applied.
Guest:Genuine critical thinking at the dinner table, you know, like just no nonsense, no meandering.
Guest:You have to have clear thoughts and, you know, and you would get really reprimanded if you couldn't defend your position.
Marc:So you got to really choose to speak about whatever it is, if you have a position.
Guest:That's correct.
Marc:I imagine some things, there was a little leniency around preferences of food and whatnot.
Guest:Yes, that was acceptable.
Guest:But the thing is, when you grow up in a country that's undergoing struggle and revolution, this kind of thing is not a joke.
Guest:It's not theoretical.
Guest:I was really raised to one day run a country.
Guest:That was the expectation, that you would grow up and participate in a political system and creating a civil society.
Marc:Well, it's interesting because in America, which is supposedly an advanced country, the actual relationship between the civic structure and people is very vague to most people.
Marc:They don't have any idea of what government's supposed to do or what it was built to do.
Marc:Either they know that they hate it for these like weird ideological reasons or they believe that it could be better and service the people more.
Marc:But it must have been much different to grow up in a place that was legally segregated in so many ways.
Marc:And it was very clear every day who was free and who wasn't to do certain things.
Guest:That's absolutely correct.
Guest:And we all have a story of in our childhood when we realized that we were not free.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Every you know, my cousins and I sometimes still like tear up when we talk about it.
Guest:Somebody was five when they realized that they couldn't go, you know, into that store.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You know, it's it's really it's.
Marc:What was yours?
Guest:Visceral.
Guest:It was my cousin and I were going to see a movie because I loved going to the movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my uncle.
Guest:Picked us up and they were having tea at another uncle.
Guest:And so we were in a town, like a little city that we weren't usually in.
Guest:And they were going to drop us off to go to the movies with my cousin and then pick us up afterwards.
Guest:And we went in, went to buy the ticket.
Guest:And there was like a 15-year-old white girl.
Guest:And she said, oh, I'm sorry, whites only.
Guest:And we just all stood looking at each other.
Guest:And I'll, I'll never forget this because it's just like so typical of like how it is to be black person on the receiving end of that.
Guest:And I went, and she just had this look of like confusion and like just, and I went, oh, sorry.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So sorry.
Guest:So sorry.
Guest:And I like apologized to her for trying to buy a ticket from an establishment I didn't belong in.
Guest:And I turned my cousin and I away and we were like, you know, eight.
Yeah.
Guest:And we went to the car and I said, Uncle Edgar, they're not going to let us in.
Guest:And he said, why?
Guest:And I said, it's whites only.
Guest:And my uncle and my aunt, their faces just fell.
Guest:And I could see they were then reprimanding themselves for not figuring that out and exposing us to being... It was just like this cycle of...
Marc:Horror.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, yeah, because the first response is that, you know, you've done something wrong.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:As opposed to like, this is fucked up.
Marc:Who the fuck are you?
Marc:And her weird kind of like self-consciousness.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:The cashier, right?
Guest:Because, you know, the thing is with those kinds of the whites only, coloreds only, blacks only thing was so clear that white people were never actually exposed to having to say, sorry, this is whites only.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So she was just completely thrown that she actually had to say that out loud.
Marc:Right.
Right.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:And it probably, I don't know, I wonder if it had any effect on her.
Guest:Who knows?
Marc:But that system was in place so long, huh?
Guest:It was in place so long.
Guest:I mean, we left in the 80s during the state of emergency.
Marc:For safety?
Guest:Yeah, it was time to leave.
Guest:And my dad had gone to MIT on a Fulbright and studied urban planning in the 70s.
Guest:So he had contacts in Boston, that place of racial harmony.
Guest:And we ended up leaving South Africa.
Marc:The most segregated city in the country.
Marc:Correct.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I went to school there.
Marc:And when you go back there, and I started doing comedy there, you're like, wow.
Marc:this place really hides their black people.
Marc:And it's not like New York that has black neighborhoods, but everybody's sort of around.
Marc:Like in Boston, they're not even around.
Guest:No, in terms of urban planning, it is very clear where it was then, at least.
Guest:Yeah, West Roxbury and Columbia Point, Southie.
Guest:So we immigrated then and I went to high school in a place called Newton, Massachusetts.
Guest:Sure, Newton, yeah.
Marc:It was actually Roxbury was the black part.
Marc:West Roxbury was Jews.
Guest:That's right, correct.
Marc:Yeah, I went to school there too.
Marc:So you went to, when did you guys move there?
Guest:85.
Marc:Okay, and you were how old?
Marc:So Newton, that's nice.
Guest:Yeah, it's very nice.
Guest:So what happened was my dad asked his people, where was the best public school?
Guest:And they said Newton.
Guest:And he said, okay, well, can you help us find a place in Newton?
Guest:And they did.
Guest:And they got there and we were like, it's all white people.
Guest:It was all wealthy white people.
Guest:And I was one of the few black kids in the school.
Guest:It was really intense.
Marc:They must have been so thrilled to have allowed you to go there in Newton.
Marc:All the nice Jews and Catholics were like, we finally have one.
Guest:They were like a handful of us on one hand.
Guest:And then they also had this program called the METCO program where they bused kids from Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan into the school.
Guest:And these kids were traveling for an hour or more, getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning.
Guest:Just to go to school with white people.
Marc:What a gift.
Guest:What a gift.
Guest:And, you know, I'll never forget that first day.
Guest:I was like lunchtime.
Guest:I looked around at all these white kids and there was a table of black kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just went to go sit there and they were like, who the fuck are you?
Guest:I was like, my name is Liesl.
Guest:I'm here from South Africa.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And they were like, first of all, you don't look African.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:So you're getting it from all sides.
Guest:And they were like, you don't sound African.
Yeah.
Guest:I was like, well, I'm sitting my ass down at this table.
Guest:Sort yourselves out.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know that I really was able to, you know, thoroughly.
Marc:You know, it was fairly recent for me.
Marc:It was probably with Ta-Nehisi Coates' book around understanding that self-consciousness of the black body or being in a black body at all times, even with black people at some point.
Marc:And that generated an ability for me to have at least some understanding or attempted empathy around just the daily discomfort and self-consciousness.
Marc:It's insane.
Guest:It is insane.
Guest:It is insane because you can never go a day without having to think about it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And when did you start engaging with the idea of performance and acting and theater?
Marc:Was that in Newton?
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:It was really rough.
Guest:I just felt so alienated.
Guest:No one knew what apartheid was.
Guest:No one knew where South Africa was.
Guest:They thought that was a region, not the name of a country.
Guest:And people were dying.
Guest:I left a culture where we were talking about politics and making a better life every day.
Marc:And then all of a sudden, welcome to Dumb Dumb Land.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it was rough.
Guest:And then a teacher asked me if I wanted to do a play for Black History Month called For Colored Girls Who've Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enough.
Guest:And I was like, yeah.
Guest:And she was going up to the five black kids.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:We need you.
Marc:Time to step up.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And I loved it.
Guest:It was so wonderful.
Guest:I just absolutely loved it.
Marc:The acting?
Yeah.
Guest:The acting, the interacting with literature.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like just spending time with language like that and just all of it.
Guest:And also, you know, finding a community of people who love to read, you know, who love to talk about the stuff that you have to talk about when you work on a play.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just, I loved it.
Guest:And then I did a deep dive and started reading all this other, you know, black American literature plays and so on.
Guest:Like what at first moved you the most?
Guest:I started reading August Wilson.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The plays?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The plays.
Guest:And, you know, and then I started reading poetry like Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou.
Guest:I didn't know, you know, some of these black American writers.
Guest:I mostly knew African writers.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I was just so moved by this literature that,
Marc:That's interesting.
Marc:It must have been sort of, you know, with the promise of America on the minds of many of those black writers and the promise broken must have been very different than the sort of prolonged acceptance of segregation in South Africa.
Marc:The language of freedom must have been totally different.
Guest:Listen, the colonial struggle is very different than, you know, the free slave struggle.
Guest:Correct.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The legacy, you know, just the relationship towards bondage in this country versus the bondage of a colonial nation is just, you know, different.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Very nuanced, but it's different.
Marc:Yeah, again, this is something in the last decade that I sort of was really made aware of through art on some trip to London, I think, at a museum.
Marc:Because in Europe, I mean, that is the racism they address.
Marc:It's post-colonialism.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Marc:And that language isn't even here.
Marc:You know, we're just fully trying to educate ourselves on what we have here, which is a indentured servitude, slavery based racism.
Marc:So the whole colonial racism, I was like, wow, there's a whole other trip, man.
Marc:And it's most everywhere else in the world.
Guest:Correct.
Marc:Other than here.
Guest:That's correct.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, it's exactly.
Guest:And so, you know, just just being able to kind of immerse myself in in in literature, culture and art.
Guest:I started to feel like a human being again.
Guest:I started to feel like a person that had purpose.
Marc:What was the experience of what was being offered to you and was, I imagine, very real freedom here?
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's the real thing.
Guest:I think I signed up for every single extracurricular activity that the school provided because I was so overwhelmed with choice.
Marc:yeah i bet you know and that no one was telling me you can't be in this club right right you might have got some townie stink guy places right but but townie stink guy is different than a law oh that's correct oh man is that true
Guest:So true.
Guest:I felt like I was in Disneyland.
Guest:Once I kind of found my way, I was vice president of my class.
Guest:I was in Model UN.
Guest:I was in the dance club.
Guest:I had terrible grades because I was so busy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Busy being free.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:But with the interests that were sort of built in you from your father and from just having a mind that was progressive, it must have been just amazing to fill it.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:And I do have a voracious curiosity.
Guest:And I love people in every one of those clubs.
Guest:You get to meet new kids and talk to them.
Guest:And I had friends in every corner of the school, which was better than the sad shut-in that I was in the beginning.
Guest:My mom, God bless her, would take me to the movies because I had no friends.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It was just like, that was how it goes.
Marc:Sad kid life.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But it changed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And theater helped me change that.
Guest:Theater did it.
Marc:Freed you.
Marc:Saved your life.
Guest:Literally saved my life.
Marc:You were with the weirdos.
Guest:I wasn't even with the weirdos.
Guest:I was alone.
Guest:And then I was with the weirdos.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Finally, the weirdos.
Marc:Saved by the weirdos.
Marc:Theater kids are always saved by the weirdos.
Marc:It's like the greatest.
Marc:I've talked to a lot of them.
Marc:So you just pursued it.
Marc:And you didn't go back to South Africa.
Marc:You did.
Guest:No.
Guest:So when I was in grad school in Rhode Island, Mandela was freed.
Guest:Mandela was freed.
Guest:And they needed qualified black people to come back.
Guest:And they asked my dad.
Guest:He was an urban planner.
Marc:What was the family experience around Mandela being freed?
Guest:I mean, it was euphoric.
Guest:We didn't actually think it could happen in our lifetime.
Guest:We were always so afraid that he would die in prison.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was, you know, like it was this terrifying, terrifying prospect that, you know, what would happen.
Guest:If he died.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, that scene in the movie where Forrest Whitaker says to her after Emil Cadiz, who's going to lead us now.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that was something that I felt like we lived with all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and so when he was freed it was just like it was it was just crazy it was it was like a religious experience yeah you know and then they asked my my dad to come back and were they were you crying at home or oh my god no we were and then he came through boston to like that the hat shell yeah um and we went you know to listen to him speak and it was just like it was insane i can't it was insane yeah um and as my dad said you know
Guest:When he heard him speak the first time when he came out and he spoke at the parade in Cape Town.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said his politics remains uncompromised, which was like great.
Guest:Did it ultimately?
Guest:Listen, when he became president.
Guest:You got to do what you got to do.
Guest:Economic pressures.
Guest:You know, certainly there are people who wish that he would nationalize the mines.
Guest:He would take all that money away from all the white people, Europeans who owned it and redistribute it.
Guest:But, you know, the wrath of, you know, the capitalist rest of the world would have killed that country.
Marc:It's interesting that, you know, you find over time that, you know, it's most governments become puppets of some kind or another.
Marc:And, you know, the ones that really don't are sort of totalitarian or fascistic.
Guest:It's hard to resist the forces of the power of the market, the hammer that is the market.
Marc:Yeah, well, that's the way the whole thing's built.
Guest:Yeah, it's literally the way the whole thing's built.
Guest:And, you know, if I learned one thing growing up in a Marx household is that economic systems are world systems.
Guest:So if you're either everybody has to be Marxist or communist or everybody has to be, you know, capitalist, and even the more socialist countries, you got to hold on to the ruling system is capitalism.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's definitely not the democracy business.
Yeah.
Guest:Say it.
Marc:That idea.
Marc:Shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, it was, it was, I remember actually, this is a funny story.
Guest:When I was in high school, a history teacher, because of course it's the 80s, the Cold War.
Guest:There was the segment where he was explaining communism, socialism, and capitalism to the class.
Guest:And I will never forget that he said, I know you guys, so you did the reading on what communism and socialism is.
Guest:And I mean, I bet that to you it sounded kind of good.
Guest:And he did this motion with his hands where he kind of like twisted around, kind of good.
Yeah.
Guest:But I'm here to tell you that it is never going to work.
Guest:And our system is the system that makes the most sense.
Guest:Those were experiments.
Guest:I was sitting in the back horrified because, of course, at this point, that was just opposite to everything I'd been taught.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I went home to my dad and I was like, you know what?
Guest:They were telling the children today in history class.
Guest:And I explained this whole thing.
Guest:And he just shook his head and he goes, Americans.
Guest:He goes, just don't say anything.
Guest:Pretend you've never heard of any of it before.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Put your head down while we're here.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You don't want to be identified as one of them.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I know.
Marc:But you must have, though, by the time you got to college, you must have been able to sort of aggregate everything you came from and everything you were learning into some identity.
Guest:Totally.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and the identity was a performer.
Marc:A performer.
Guest:Actor, theater person.
Marc:But what about sort of black woman, Marxist?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, I mean, it was never easy because...
Guest:You know, I had a whole culture and a whole identity that I came from that was not American.
Guest:And I had a whole identity with struggle that was not American.
Guest:And so at times, you know, I think that was difficult to negotiate without seeming like I was above it or I was separate from it.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:But again, I'm just a person who approaches things with a lot of analysis.
Guest:I was trained to speak about politics with a kind of cool intellectual rigor, which is not always endearing.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And also, you know, not that popular in just general conversations, I would imagine, with medium informed Americans at a student level.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And I also when any conversation about race happened, I always want to talk about class.
Marc:Which is not the conversation here.
Marc:But it should be.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:But I mean, but it's.
Guest:No, no, of course.
Guest:And it felt like I was either avoiding it or I was, you know, the question of race or I was trying to, you know, but I was just like, I don't know how to talk about race without talking about class.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I was so fun to be around.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, I mean, but those are the real conversations.
Marc:But somehow or another, this culture, this country, you know, I think in order to keep the blindfolds on the lower classes who believe they're just a paycheck away from middle class have somehow negated that conversation.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And only until like, you know, Bernie Sanders brings it up.
Marc:People are like, what's he talking?
Marc:Like, yeah, it happens here.
Marc:100%.
Marc:Yeah, but we can talk politics.
Marc:But so when does acting in and of itself become limited to you?
Guest:After grad school, I moved to New York, and I had been directing things all along.
Marc:So where'd you go to undergrad?
Guest:I actually didn't go to undergrad.
Guest:I studied.
Guest:I got into Brandeis University like a good Jewish girl from Newton, Massachusetts.
Guest:I totally absorbed that culture.
Guest:And I dropped out, and then my dad forced me to go back, and I went to BC, BU.
Guest:I went through all of the B schools in Boston.
Guest:Because I just wanted to do theater, and he was...
Marc:You didn't study theater anywhere?
Guest:I finally had to like, I had to get my, I escaped to London.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I did this program at Oxford where I studied classical theater and then I got to London because a woman who taught at, Clara Davidson who taught at that program in Oxford had a school, a drama school in London and she offered me a place there.
Guest:And I had to basically tell my parents, I am not going to go to law school.
Guest:This is what I'm going to do.
Guest:And I had to put an ocean between us to get the courage to really say this is what I'm doing.
Marc:How did it land?
Guest:Not well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's very like typical immigrant story.
Marc:No, I know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What are you doing?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:You know, but I just.
Marc:Do you know what we went through?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:All the sacrifices for this.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, it was a compulsion.
Guest:There was no other choice.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Marc:I mean, it's a gift to have that and a curse.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So true.
Guest:But so I studied, you know, acting at this place.
Guest:And then when I was done, I came back to Boston.
Guest:I worked at a place called Project Afrique, which was an experimental federally funded program in Roxbury to take care of families at risk.
Guest:And I worked with the toddlers of these families.
Guest:I was a preschool teacher.
Marc:At risk, what does that include?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It includes, you know, issues of drug abuse in the family, you know, violence in the family.
Guest:And it was an attempt to kind of holistically from all sides, which is what holistic means, help mothers and families.
Guest:So it provided child care.
Guest:Oh, man.
Marc:Was that the first time?
Marc:Did that?
Marc:Well, I guess it wouldn't.
Marc:But I mean, did...
Marc:Was the context of that something that you could identify as the result of these class issues?
Marc:Is that where some sort of awakening might have taken place about the nature of America?
Guest:Well, I think it was just, you know, I couldn't escape the feeling that
Guest:I had to still be contributing something to society.
Guest:And that was one of the biggest arguments we had.
Guest:My dad and I was like, theater is a pursuit of the white bourgeois.
Guest:And come to find out he was not wrong years later.
Guest:But that you had to be making a contribution.
Guest:So I felt like, OK, I was going to be an actor in Boston, which I was.
Guest:I was auditioning and doing shows, but I was also doing that.
Guest:I was like 21, 22.
Guest:in my day.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But that's interesting that, well, giving back, but the idea, I guess the idealistic and probably a bit intellectual and romantic notion of theater being for the people and of the people is really limited by the amount of people that really give a shit about theater.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I mean, you see me directing movies now, right?
Marc:But it's always there, that idea that theater can function as some sort of community space.
Guest:And I still believe it because I've done work where I have seen...
Guest:Community is transformed by what we put on stage.
Guest:But at the end of the day, and honestly, this is why I moved into film and television, the eyeballs are limited.
Guest:And film and television just gets more people looking at it.
Marc:Yeah, but it's not as visceral, obviously.
Marc:And it does not feel like there's nothing like the feeling of being at the theater and watching actors act and the play live.
Marc:But it is not something that we...
Marc:somehow we're taught culturally to respect or engage with.
Marc:No, it is still quite an elitist art form, isn't it?
Marc:Well, I guess so, or seemingly amateur.
Marc:But it's not really.
Guest:No, not at all.
Marc:But I think that anything to a lot of people that isn't off-Broadway or a couple blocks away is somehow like, it's either too weird or it's amateur, right?
Marc:But I don't know where this stuff lives.
Marc:Because I imagine at some point you were doing...
Marc:You know, I don't know your whole resume, but the theater that you started directing seemed to be around, you know, black issues, women issues.
Guest:Well, yes, and.
Guest:So, like, when I was in New York for a couple of years as an actor, and I just felt like, oh, God, I have no control over these projects.
Guest:I have to wait on people.
Guest:And also, like, some of this stuff is shit.
Guest:And I was being, some of the directors I was working with, I was like, these people don't know anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I felt like they didn't know how to block.
Guest:I felt like they didn't know how to talk to actors.
Guest:And, you know, a couple of shows I became a force for darkness because actors love nothing more than to hang out with people who are mad.
Guest:And like, what are you mad at?
Guest:I want to be mad too.
Guest:Like K1, first rehearsal.
Guest:What the fuck is this?
Guest:I know.
Guest:And I was exuding dissatisfaction.
Guest:And, you know, I started getting like this following of actors like, ooh, I'm going to be...
Guest:Pissed with you.
Marc:I barely saw you get mildly cranky on set.
Marc:And I was like, no, if she got real mad, I don't even want to be in the room.
Guest:You were correct.
Guest:But, you know, then I was like, this is actually not how I want to function.
Guest:I want to be this pissed all the time.
Guest:And I certainly don't want groupies of people pissed, you know, like.
Guest:Secondary pissed.
Marc:You don't want to be the leader of the pissed.
Marc:No.
Guest:So I was like, I think I have to put my money where my mouth is.
Guest:And that's when I was like, I'm going to start directing then if I think I'm so damn smart.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I did.
Guest:I worked in New York a series of...
Guest:executive assistant jobs and then restaurant jobs and i saved every penny and i self-produced like downtown off broadway oh really yeah and i what choices were you making so um i did something called shakespeare the parking lot and this parking lot in the lower east side and i did a production oh gosh ludlow okay yeah i did a production of uh love's labor's lost there to get some attention
Yeah.
Guest:And then I did this thing for the fringe, an adaptation of Two Gentlemen of Verona called Two Girls from Vermont.
Guest:And I put like, there's like drag queens in it and a whole bunch of Britney Spears songs.
Guest:It was like a, you know, like a fiesta.
Marc:A fun, funny, campy thing.
Guest:And people came to that and, you know, got a lot of attention.
Guest:And what's funny is like those were my early things when it was just left up to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And then I started working with playwrights like Tracy and Lynn Nottage and all these other incredible women.
Guest:And then I started kind of becoming known as a person who did political theater.
Marc:Did you know Carly and Liz from GLOW?
Guest:Yes, Carly, I knew.
Marc:She's the best.
Guest:So, you know, the...
Guest:The thing just sort of organically morphed into material focused on race and politics.
Guest:When you started working with playwrights.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I have this passion for music, for musicals.
Guest:And so I did that for a while.
Guest:Did you direct musicals?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And then I moved into musicals and Shakespeare.
Guest:I just wanted to do everything.
Marc:Yeah, but it seemed like, just from glancing over some of this stuff about you, that you were willing to move places to do the job.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I love travel.
Marc:Well, what was that?
Marc:Were those like, you would do, why were you in so many different places?
Marc:Where would these places go?
Marc:Did they have you out to do a run?
Marc:Is that how it worked?
Guest:So they bring you out, so I've worked all over East Africa.
Guest:I've worked in Canada, and I've worked with German writers, French writers, and then all over America.
Guest:And what happens is they bring you out to whatever town for the rehearsal process.
Guest:That's like six weeks.
Marc:To direct.
Guest:Six to eight weeks to rehearse and direct.
Guest:Each city has like a multi $10 million, $20 million regional theater.
Guest:But you represent taking an exciting risk.
Guest:Yes, I think that is true.
Guest:And so some places I was the first person who looked like me directing a play in that building.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so sometimes you're met with this hostility and this expectation that you're some kind of affirmative action host.
Guest:even though it's 2010.
Guest:And other places, they're like, thank God, finally.
Guest:Yeah, right, right, right.
Guest:And so you just do your thing.
Guest:You block out the resistance and skepticism.
Marc:That's so interesting, because those are the two ways of seeing it.
Marc:And they still are.
Marc:They still are.
Marc:Because I talk to guys, white writers, who are my age, who are like, no, no, no, man.
Marc:I'm probably not going to get the job.
Marc:They're probably going to give it to another type of person.
Marc:Another type of person.
Marc:Because the threat, I guess it is fundamentally insensitive at the least and racist or misogynistic at the worst, right?
Marc:But what's happening is actually a more competitive environment is unfolding.
Guest:That's exactly correct.
Guest:And, you know, something that really pisses me off is when, you know, you hear...
Guest:A writer or director going, well, you know, it's just like, it's not my time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's been your time for about 500 years, but okay.
Guest:But the point, or like their agent told them that there's just like, there's no way.
Guest:And I want to say to them all, A, agents stop saying that bullshit to clients.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And B...
Guest:Look at the statistics.
Guest:It's not like we're taking over.
Marc:It's still minuscule.
Marc:And it's sincerely representational, but also it's really the fact that so many people have been carried along by the system and their friends that, you know, the system has become myopic.
Marc:And it becomes impossible to have honest representation in the expression.
Marc:So what's really frightening to these guys is not so much they're just aggravated white guys who feel like they're being pushed out, but it's become honestly competitive.
Guest:Honestly competitive.
Guest:Finally.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And what you stand to gain from that is a widening of the vision.
Guest:Listen, look at this movie.
Guest:Me and Tracy working on this movie.
Guest:Even five years ago, a big studio film like this would have probably had a white dude writing it and a white dude directing it, even though it was about a black woman's life.
Guest:So the fact that it was the two of us is still an anomaly.
Guest:A big studio movie like this.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:So it's just like the progress is incremental still.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But they do.
Marc:It's funny because it's like I keep trying to figure out how to phrase this, but they seem to be having some success in integrating fiction, fictional representations of people.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know if it's going to actually fix the things in the real world, but it looks like the fake world is becoming a little more diverse.
Guest:That is correct.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I mean, I think it has to have, you know, positive implications around just, you know, in terms of the, you know, at the helm, but then that spreads out.
Marc:So, you know, whatever Jennifer's comfort level will be.
Marc:I mean, it's just like no matter how non-racist or progressive a white executive or a white director or a white producer is going to be, and we've all learned to live with this, but the connection is going to run deeper if you're like-minded and of the same ilk as the person, right?
Guest:I think that's true.
Guest:And there's also just like a level of authenticity that you have to fight for.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So in terms of like...
Marc:the sort of capturing... Because, like, there is a focus.
Marc:Like, I just watched all of Barry Jenkins' Underground Railroad.
Marc:And it had a profound effect.
Marc:I mean, there's been... Like, the last few weeks have been sort of profound for me somehow around this stuff.
Marc:And I don't know really why.
Marc:But, you know, the attention he pays to this... I didn't read the book, but it becomes sort of like...
Marc:A poetic examination, a filmic examination of the foundation of American racism and the brutality of it.
Marc:And the only counterbalance to it and the only means of survival was community tenderness, some faith, but just that humanity somehow.
Marc:And he really manages that, you know.
Marc:And the way he portrays the black experience and his passion and focus on the aesthetic of the black body is something he's highly aware of.
Marc:And it's a celebration in all its horror.
Guest:His way of shooting the black body is so profound.
Guest:I mean, I thought in Moonlight was a revelation.
Marc:And how did you conceive?
Marc:You must have been aware of how you were going to approach that.
Yeah.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I mean, the way I think about this movie, you know, is so I grew up watching a lot of classic Hollywood movies with my grandma.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she loved Grace Kelly.
Guest:She loved those kinds of glamorous, beautiful, you know, beautifully dressed, highly stylish, you know, Hollywood glamour.
Guest:But we never ever saw any movies with ourselves in them.
Guest:And so I knew that part of what I wanted to do with respect is create a film like that, like a classic Hollywood movie with glamour and beauty where you wanted to wear those clothes and sit on that mid-century chair and drink that cocktail.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Guest:You know, drink that bourbon the way that they are.
Guest:Because that's how I think when you're doing period right, that's what you want.
Guest:You want to just sink into it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so I wanted to make that kind of movie that my grandmother would have just absolutely loved to see herself in.
Guest:So there was definitely an aesthetic to that.
Guest:And also, you know, Kramer and I talked a lot about, you know, lighting the Black characters.
Guest:And I just wanted Black people who watched this film to feel...
Marc:bathed in love you know what was great and I think that that definitely comes through but it was you know black hair when you wake up do you know what I mean yeah like so like that you don't you really see that yeah yeah
Marc:Right?
Marc:So there's a couple of scenes with Jennifer where she's, you know, in bed or getting it together and certainly towards, you know, the breakdown where the honesty of what I think what it implies is the effort it takes to be presentable to a white culture as a black person.
Marc:Yes, 100%.
Guest:Yeah, and that, again, that comes from
Guest:The writer, the director having a lived experience of walking around Earth with our black hair, you know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And, you know, so for me it was really like, I wanted to make a beautiful film.
Guest:I wanted it to be aspirational and romantic and feel like all the things that Hollywood has done to inspire us visually we could have in this movie for black people too.
Marc:Yeah, and I think that came across, and it's great.
Marc:And also, when I've been doing these interviews and talking about it, the movie, where there's a couple of moments that she sort of transcends, like when Aretha had to sing at national events
Marc:well, mostly at Martin Luther King's funeral, a national event of mourning, that Jennifer had to do the song and do the acting.
Marc:I mean, that was sort of amazing.
Guest:It's astounding what she did.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's astounding.
Guest:I remember, actually, at that scene, you're talking about the MLK Memorial, Forrest Whitaker coming up to me and saying, you know, he said, this feels like a religious experience.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you really, like when I watched it last night, I'm like, well, she personally has a resource of grief.
Guest:She does.
Marc:Right?
Guest:She really does.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It was, at times I thought to myself, what kind of an asshole are you asking her to go to these places and to do these things?
Guest:Like, what's wrong with you?
Guest:But all I can say is...
Guest:And we knew that those days were going to be brutal.
Guest:Some of it was not.
Guest:It was really, really hard.
Guest:Was it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I remember one day we were actually working on that scene in the church where she has the breakdown and she's singing Precious Memories and she's singing about her mother.
Yeah.
Guest:And we had to take a break.
Guest:I think we were doing a turnaround.
Guest:She was sitting in the aisles and she was just still crying because whatever she had to do to get herself there, she was still there.
Guest:That's the thing people don't understand.
Guest:You don't say cut and then you wipe your tears.
Guest:As an actor, to get yourself into such a harrowing, emotional place, you don't turn it on and off.
Guest:It's weird when you open it up.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:That's what Marlon was saying to me all the time.
Guest:And
Guest:I went up to her, and she just kind of looked up at me, and there was just like a haze, and she said, is it over yet?
Guest:And I said, no, honey, we're going to do a turnaround.
Guest:Turn it around.
Guest:And then she just sort of sat back, and I literally watched her keep the ball in the air so that she could finish it.
Marc:That was a long day in that church.
Marc:I was there.
Marc:It was a long day.
Marc:When she did the app for the recording of the movie part?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, those extras were getting salty.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Rowdy.
Guest:I mean, all the church scenes, those Atlanta extras, they felt like they were, that it was their movie, and they had ownership, and it was church for them every day.
Marc:It was real.
Marc:So it's really going to be interesting to see how these different communities who hold her so dear.
Marc:I mean, I think most...
Marc:people who like music do but i think that you know the the black community and in the gay community are going to be the deciders you think so do you yeah the the fans are in the church i guess yeah yeah i mean i think people of faith for sure yeah um i mean i this movie has uh has already
Guest:You know, even I've had interviews with journalists who were very moved by it.
Marc:Oh, no, you can tell when you talk to people.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When they've seen it and they're like, hey.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and they're not sort of like, they're not picking angles, you know, where they're trying to avoid saying anything positive.
Guest:Yeah, they don't just want to talk about all the parts of the movie, which is always like, thank God.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, because it's, I just focused on making it, but when I ever allowed myself to take a second and look back, step back and go, you're making the Aretha Franklin biopic,
Guest:you know, you could just want to kill yourself.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:It's so overwhelming.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know, but you just stay focused, you know, in the moment.
Marc:And also you had this chunk, right?
Marc:So you had this story.
Marc:So, I mean, on some level, you must have found a certain amount of solace in that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're making the biopic, but just till 72.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I'm no fool.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, congratulations.
Guest:Aw, thanks, Mark.
Marc:It was great talking to you, great working with you.
Marc:Likewise.
Marc:I appreciate you casting me.
Guest:True pleasure, and you killed it.
Marc:Thank you.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Liesl Tommy and me talking about the movie she directed with me in it.
Marc:Respect starring me and Jennifer Hudson and Marlon Wayans.
Marc:Respect with me in it is in theaters now.
Marc:Here, I'm going to play that Les Paul now.
Marc:Yeah, it's going to happen.
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey La Fonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.