Posted on January 13, 2014 at 8:57 pm
In honor of my DVD Pick of the Week, Lee Daniels’ The Butler
For your chance to win a copy, send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with Butler in the subject line and tell me which White House moment you would like to have witnessed. Don’t forget your address! (US addresses only.) I’ll choose a winner at random on January 19. Good luck!
Posted on December 9, 2013 at 8:15 am
And the winners are….
Best Film:
12 Years a Slave
Best Director:
Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity)
Best Actor:
Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)
Best Actress:
Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)
Best Supporting Actor:
Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)
Best Supporting Actress:
Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave)
Best Acting Ensemble:
12 Years a Slave
Best Youth Performance:
Tye Sheridan (Mud)
Best Adapted Screenplay:
John Ridley (12 Years a Slave)
Best Original Screenplay:
Spike Jonze (Her)
Best Animated Feature:
Frozen
Best Documentary:
Blackfish
Best Foreign Language Film:
The Broken Circle Breakdown
Best Art Direction:
Production Designer: Catherine Martin, Set Decorator: Beverley Dunn (The Great Gatsby)
Best Cinematography:
Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, A.M.C. (Gravity)
Best Editing:
Alfonso Cuarón, Mark Sanger (Gravity)
Best Original Score:
Hans Zimmer (12 Years a Slave)
The Joe Barber Award for Best Portrayal of Washington, DC:
Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Members of WAFCA discuss the awards on this special edition of Keeping it Reel:
Posted on August 19, 2013 at 4:20 pm
I highly recommended my friend Rebecca Cusey’s very thoughtful essay on Patheos, Hey Conservatives, Don’t Blast ‘The Butler’ (From a Conservative). I am strongly opposed to reducing complex human stories to us-vs-them political bullet points (indeed, opposed to us-vs-them political bullet points of any kind). As Cusey points out, this is particularly foolish and inconsistent with “Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” which is inspired by the true story of a man who served as a butler in the White House for eight Presidents, over a period that included the tumult of the Civil Rights Era.
The first reason that conservatives should like this movie is that its main character upholds core conservative principles of self-reliance, honor, hard work, and devotion to family. Of course, these are liberal values as well, but right now we are focusing on the “conservative” criticisms that Cusey rebuts so resoundingly. The movie makes the point that the butler and his son each devote their lives to service, an idea that should be embraced by people of all political views, even Libertarians, who may say they are acting only out of self-interest but who in their own way are trying to make the world more equitable. Cusey writes:
We need more, not less, of this in our culture because exploring the African-American experience through film is exploring our shared history and creates a conversation we all can share.
The conversation will not go very far if we conservatives immediately overreact to perceived slights in an excellent film.
The skill of the screenplay and direction in The Butler make it clear that the political views in the movie flow from and are expressions of the characters in the film. The movie itself does not make judgements on any of the presidents, but some of its characters sure do. And some of the characters disagree with each other.
That’s called good movie-making.
I think it is a beautiful and moving film for anyone to enjoy. Even whites. Even conservatives. Especially white conservatives. Try to understand the other side a little. Buying a movie ticket isn’t conceding every political point made by a character in the movie. It is simply learning.
Let me repeat that last point for emphasis.
Buying a movie ticket isn’t conceding every political point made by a character in the movie. It is simply learning.
In the first place, this movie in no way attacks conservative principles or those who espouse them. In the second place, even if it does, the way to respond is with empathy and respectful engagement. I found the movie’s portrayal of the Reagans to be very sympathetic. Some of the critics (not professional movie critics, just people who have expressed views about the movie) wanted it to be more laudatory. But Reagan, as all of the Presidents portrayed, was a complex figure who was not always willing to take on issues that in retrospect we might have wished him to, and apartheid was one of them. That is a historical fact. So were lynchings, which were frequent in the early 20th century and even proudly featured on postcard souvenirs. Thoughtful, sincere films like this one are intended to start conversations about ideas and experiences.
Cusey concludes her essay with a thought I wish everyone shared:
I maintain that every conservative should see this movie. Sure, there are things about which I disagree, but so what? It is excellent and we just might find we understand each other a bit better afterwards.
Posted on August 16, 2013 at 3:58 pm
I spoke to Oscar-winner Cuba Gooding, Jr. about his role in “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” as Carter, a colleague and friend of Cecil, the character played by Forest Whitaker.
My favorite scene with your character is when you had to post bail for Cecil’s son, Louis.
The whole idea behind it and reason I was so attracted to this screenplay was that it is an expose of the times all the way back from slavery to the inauguration of Barack Obama, and specifically the turmoil of the era after JFK and Martin Luther King were assassinated. There were different thoughts about how best to respond to racism. One was the view of Martin Luther King, Jr. mindset that we should be seen as accessible and approachable and lead by example, and the other more aggressive frame of mind, the “by any means necessary” views of the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. What’s beautifully expressed in this movie is how it doesn’t alienate people but shows these two approaches in a way that’s accessible and open and un-opinionated. That’s what makes Lee Daniels such a brilliant director. I always say to him, “If Spike Lee did this movie, no one would see it. He would have had his opinions and his personal beliefs encroaching on it. As a gay, black filmmaker, there is so much truth in his life that Lee’s willing to expose. There will be raw and uncomfortable moments because he does not know anything but the truth. And in that scene, you have Carter, a butler who is forced to wear a certain face to those around him, dignitaries, he has to be professional to the nth degree. Louis is trying to find his way with a more aggressive stance. But he knew he could come to Carter because they had a relationship. My character is there to show that even though they had to act in a particular way, they had to be representative of something they were still human. That is a very humanistic scene, so people can identify that this is a family with very real issues.
Yes, your character had an upstairs face and a downstairs face.
I fell in love with the idea of doing this script when Lee sent it to me five or six years ago. This is a powerful, encompassing tale of what African-American men have been dealing with since the formation of this country. I’m a huge fan of boxing and I have studied the history of pugilism. When Jack Johnson was the first black heavyweight. He was dominating boxers. He was only looking to fight white boxers because they wouldn’t fight him. When they finally did get rid of him, they looked for any opportunity and finally found it. It took 40, 50 years for another black champion to come along because it was like “we’re not going to have that scenario again.” And then came Joe Louis. Was he any less talented or ferocious? No. But he knew he had to act different to be accepted. He was the polar opposite of everything Jack Johnson did. That’s what makes this movie great. You have these butlers who have to be “invisible in the room — the room should feel empty with them in it,” as it says in the script. That is their job. And then there are the locker room scenes, which are full of life! You see that these were living, breathing, powerful men. And that is why being in this film has been such a blessing.
That’s one of the reasons the first scene with Richard Nixon is so meaningful — he comes into the kitchen, the private, backstairs, backstage space.
My favorite scene!
What do you hope the teenagers and who are too young to remember the 60’s and 70’s will get from this film?
There’s such a disconnect with today’s youth in understanding the atrocities that happened on American soil. That’s how “Django Unchained” can be a huge hit because they aren’t identifying what it really meant to be a slave, to watch a man rape your wife and allow it to happen. This next generation of kids will be making decisions for us and they’re not up to date on understanding the past. It’s horrifying to me. I want people to talk in the car on the way home — about the love story or about the freedom riders or about the politics. As long as they’re talking, we know we did our job.
Posted on August 16, 2013 at 8:00 am
David Oyelowo (“Red Tails”) plays the son of the title character in “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.” Louis is a rebellious young man who becomes deeply involved in the 1960’s and 70’s struggle for equal rights, first through sit-ins and voter registration and then with the Black Panthers. His estrangement and reconciliation with his father, a White House butler, is the heart of the film.
Your character aged over decades and you seemed very specific about the choices you made in showing that the character was getting older.
When Lee Daniels approached me about playing the role I was very clear that I really wanted the opportunity to play it all the way through. Early on, he was thinking about splitting it with a younger actor. But I had played Henry VI on stage, and he goes from age 14 to his sixties. I learned just how much you can depict through the eyes, the body movement, what’s going on emotionally. Even moreso on film than in the theater because you have the eyes, the small gestures that indicate a wealth of experience or a lack of that. I had to employ more technical aspects over the three month shoot. I would sleep for 10 hours the night before I had to play a teenager and I’d sleep four or five hours when I had to play older. I’d go to the gym to shed weight very quickly to play the younger character and I’d eat a lot of salty food and drink a lot of water that bloats me out to play the older character. All of those things help as well. But when you have a good script that goes to the heart of what a character’s going through at any time that helps with the details.
How did you and Forest Whitaker, who plays your character’s father, work together to develop that relationship?
We didn’t spend a lot of time talking through it as that was appropriate because what you’re seeing for a lot of the movie is a disconnect. The generational divide manifests because they are both products of their environment. He grew up in the South and grew up with lynching and saw his father shot before his eyes. That’s entirely different to my character’s experience, a middle-class upbringing, and my life by comparison is a lot nicer. But the inequality that we both suffered, the injustice that is intrinsic to American society is undeniable and something that we both feel a need to fight but in very different ways. We both felt a need to just trust that as we go on very separate paths, the payoff is going to be at the end of the movie, a shared appreciation of each other’s journey toward what was effectively the same goal. It was that butting of heads internally that led to the combustive elements that led to bringing about irrevocable change, that internal argument about what it is to be a man, a woman, a human being in America regardless of the color of your skin.
You are from Great Britain and much of this happened before you were born. What did you do to research the era?
You name it, “Eyes on the Prize,” many books. One of the great things about the era is that it is in living memory for lots of people who are able to be very articulate about it. The resources personally for me as an actor were infinite. Can one person really go through all those things? Yes, there are people who were at the sit-ins and rode on the bus and went into politics. My character is a composite but he represents the experience of real people.
