 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
Diamond in the Rough |
|
|
Interview with LEE DANIELS, Director of PRECIOUS |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
LEE DANIELS began his career in entertainment as a manager representing a talent pool that included several Academy Award nominees and winners. Monster’s Ball, the first production by Lee Daniels Entertainment, was nominated for two Academy Awards in 2002 – Best Original Screenplay and Best Actress, for which Halle Berry won an Oscar.
Daniels followed that up with the controversial drama The Woodsman, starring Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick and Mos Def, while most recently he teamed up with an old friend Mariah Carey to produce the road movie Tennessee.
In 2006, Daniels made his directorial debut with Shadowboxer, starring Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr., and he’s now enjoyed another taste of Oscar success with his second directorial outing PRECIOUS, which is out on DVD and Blu-ray on July 7. Below, he talks about the challenges of bringing Sapphire’s novel to the big screen.
Initially, the author, Sapphire, was against a film adaptation. Yet you won her round…
LD: Love her. Love her for that. It took me nine, probably ten years to stalk her. I have stalked her for ten years. Sapphire is a scholar. She is a genius. She is a poet. She is an intellect beyond belief. She doesn’t give a f*#k about Hollywood. She don’t care about it, just doesn’t. It is about literature and I think that Lady Luck must have been on my side because she finally embraced the idea. I think that even if I did a bad movie, it would not affect her brilliant masterpiece and I think that she saw the difference in both. She finally realised it and I was there the right time stalking her.
Do you know why she changed her mind? Did she see one of your other films maybe?
LD: I think it was a combination of things, but I think she saw Shadowboxer and she really thought I could bring something to the world that she created and she is very excited that I am doing it.
Did she come to the film set?
LD: She came down once or twice. I think she had to watch some of what I was doing because I am dealing with her very profound book. She laughed at something that only Mo’Nique and I thought was funny and she was laughing with us because she got it. She understood that there is humour and that she was still the creator. There was a moment when Mo’Nique was laughing at something and I was laughing at something and Sapphire was laughing at something and we realised that nobody else was laughing but us and that we were on another plane. It was a surreal moment.
It is a tough film but also a very tough book. You have had to soften the delivery a little bit, and add a few more rays of light…
LD: A little bit!! A lot of a bit. If I had done the book it would have been X-rated. Not that I have a problem with doing X-rated films. I haven’t yet. But this would have lost an audience. I think that the audience should be entitled to breathe. I think with the book, if it gets too much, emotionally, you can put it down. It affected me so that I had to stop. I had to digest it. I put it down and picked it up again later on and I think that the sequences and the touches of humour that we put in the script really do it justice. Geoffrey Fletcher really did a marvellous job translating this book, this script, and we just took it to another place on the screen. We had to let the audience breathe. If you’ve read that book you will know what I am talking about.
With Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry as producers on your movie, did that help get the movie made?
LD: No. They came on after the movie was made.
In what capacity?
LD: Executive producers. I make these little movies and I pray that people see them. When I made Shadowboxer, I was sure that we were going to end up straight to DVD. I had no idea that it would be a theatrical release. It is mind-jarring because I am actually a filmmaker who just wants his movie to be seen by people on a screen. So the reward for me is that my writer who wrote this magnificent book embraced me and the film and that we didn’t go straight to DVD. We took Precious to Cannes and I was in Toronto and I was in Spain and Germany and for a filmmaker, that’s pretty exciting.
You’re friends with Mariah Carey as you say. But was it a tough sell to get her to play the Ms. Weiss character, with no makeup and glitz?
LD: She was like, ‘Oh, no, what’s he doing now?’ I said, ‘Mariah, you’ve got to come solo. You can’t come with your posse, you can’t come with a scrubbed face, there’s no makeup. We’ve got to make you more ugly!’ And I think that she embraced it with gusto. She was so excited to be on an independent set and, oh, God I love her! I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love her. I am so proud of her, too. I am just so proud of her, man, because you don’t know what it is like to step outside of that bubble that she’s in. Bringing her out of that bubble with all of those people, and that machine she has around her, and getting her into my cocoon, that was a triumph for me. It was like Christmas time for me, and for her, too. It was liberating. I was out of sorts in the beginning and her too. As I put the costume on, her hands were shaking because the fabric was a cheap rayon and she was, ‘What am I doing?’ And she kept looking at the lighting and the overhead lighting was beating down on her. She actually had no control and it just drove her and then she finally succumbed and through that submission came this life and I tell you, man, that was a highlight for me. I knew she could do it, but I didn’t think she would go to where she went. And though I feel validated about Mo’Nique, I feel extra validated about Mariah and Lenny Kravitz, because those characters really are not the people that they are. But I knew Mo’Nique had the chops. And though you don’t see that much of Lenny in the movie, that is a huge departure for the Kravitz I know. So it’s a massive jump for the rock star that I know, and the diva that I know as my friend.
Finally, what was the most important thing that you wanted to convey with this film?
LD: That never again should we look at Precious and not look at Precious. When you stumble across this girl you will acknowledge her. Because I have cousins that are her, friends that are her and even having friends and cousins that are her, I still disassociate myself. It is so important for me that I embrace this girl with all my gusto, because she is embracing me. The other important part of this story is about learning to love yourself, and accepting who you are. Those are the two big points I hope people will walk away with from this film. Who knows if they will? But I pray to God that they do.
Discover Precious on DVD and Blu-ray at JB Hi-Fi » |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
