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Speaker 1: percent off time for another archive drop. Josh and we
Speaker 1: are continuing our best Picture winners theme building up to
Speaker 1: the Oscars. We've got a look back at Barry Jenkins
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen. Yes it won not La La Land. Moonlight
Speaker 1: one best picture that year, surprise at the moment, and
Speaker 1: seems like the better and better choice every year that
Speaker 1: has gone by, which isn't always the case necessarily for
Speaker 1: Best Picture winners. I think people and sometimes us we
Speaker 1: like to joke about them, but in this case, I
Speaker 1: think they probably got it right. And that's no shade
Speaker 1: on Lalla Land, which I still love and think is
Speaker 1: an incredible film. But yeah, for me at least, there's
Speaker 1: increasing resonance with Moonlight, even beyond what we found in
Speaker 1: our original review.
Speaker 2: Well, let's see what we had to say in our
Speaker 2: original review, and also we'll get to hear what Barry
Speaker 2: Jenkins himself, along with his star Naomi Harris, had to
Speaker 2: say about the film. I had the opportunity to talk
Speaker 2: to them back when the film was released in October
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, So you're going to get that conversation followed
Speaker 2: by our review.
Speaker 3: What happened?
Speaker 4: What happens? Chiron?
Speaker 5: Why you didn't come home like you're supposed to?
Speaker 4: Huh?
Speaker 2: And who is you?
Speaker 3: Nobody? I found him yesterday, found him in a hold
Speaker 3: on fifteen, Yeah, that one.
Speaker 4: Some boys chased him in a cut scared more than anything.
Speaker 4: Wouldn't tell me where he lived on this morning.
Speaker 5: Wow. Thanks for seeing to them. You usually can take
Speaker 5: care of itself.
Speaker 4: Be good that way, Barry. I'll start with you.
Speaker 2: Medicine from Melancholy was a movie that certainly earned some acclaim.
Speaker 2: I remember it got generally very favorable reviews. But the
Speaker 2: response to this movie Moonlight seems to be its own
Speaker 2: kind of whirlwind. Do you have a sense of what
Speaker 2: it is that audiences are connecting with so strongly and
Speaker 2: is it the same thing as what drew you to
Speaker 2: the material?
Speaker 3: Yeah? You know, I think it's really the movie's very personal,
Speaker 3: you know, and I think people just sort of they
Speaker 3: identify with, you know how specifically we sort of engage
Speaker 3: Hyonn's struggle, you know, and it's not this thing where
Speaker 3: what Chiron goes through is relatable to everyone. I think
Speaker 3: people see just how deep we dove into that one character,
Speaker 3: and they go, oh, I wish someone could add the
Speaker 3: deeply into me. You know, they see themselves in the character.
Speaker 3: They don't see everyone in the character. And I think
Speaker 3: in that one to one exchange, the movie is just spreading,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 4: And you don't have to get too personal, but what
Speaker 4: you see in the.
Speaker 3: Character, well, you know, for Chirone, you know, and Naomi
Speaker 3: sitting next to me, And to be brutally honest, you know,
Speaker 3: when I first read Suel's Peace, which was written here
Speaker 3: in Chicago actually when he was an undergrader to Paul
Speaker 3: Naomi plays his character Paula, who is a composite of
Speaker 3: my mom and t Where's Mom? And so I could
Speaker 3: just relate to Chirone as a kid who was watching
Speaker 3: this person who he loves, you know, go through this
Speaker 3: is just terrible ordeal.
Speaker 2: And now we speaking of your character Paula. As viewers,
Speaker 2: we make certain assumptions and judgments about her. I think
Speaker 2: before we even meet her, her son is so determined
Speaker 2: not to go home and to hang out with these
Speaker 2: total strangers, we wonder how horrible his home life must be.
Speaker 2: When we do meet her, we recognize she may not
Speaker 2: be perfect, but she is caring and she is protective,
Speaker 2: like we expect a mother to be. There's a decline
Speaker 2: from there. But how did you go about not judging
Speaker 2: this incredibly flawed character.
Speaker 5: I didn't, I think initially. I think that was my
Speaker 5: biggest discovery. Actually when I started, when I took on
Speaker 5: the role, I thought initially that I didn't want to
Speaker 5: play paul Or. I had some resistance to playing her
Speaker 5: because I wanted to portray positive images of women and
Speaker 5: positive images of black women in particular. But actually, once
Speaker 5: I started researching the character, I really realized I had
Speaker 5: to be honest with myself that a lot of the
Speaker 5: resistance was about my own judgment about addiction. I'm miscontrol freak.
Speaker 5: I'm teetotal and a drink and of smoke and don't
Speaker 5: even drink coffee. So I had a real problem getting
Speaker 5: wrapping my head around what drives someone to have an
Speaker 5: addiction to something like crack cocaine. And it was a
Speaker 5: wonderful journey where I had to learn deep compassion well,
Speaker 5: first of all, understanding and then deep empathy for Paula's choices.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and without spoiling too much of the movie and
Speaker 2: the journey Paula goes on, did you come to see
Speaker 2: her journey as a positive one?
Speaker 5: Absolutely? I think it's a shining example of how you
Speaker 5: know you can only give to others what you have
Speaker 5: received yourself. You know, if your love tank is empty
Speaker 5: because you didn't receive what you needed as a child, wild,
Speaker 5: it's very difficult to give that to another human being.
Speaker 5: And also another human being is who that's your child
Speaker 5: because often your child is you know, your child is
Speaker 5: an extension of yourself. So I think your self loathing
Speaker 5: and Paula has a lot of that is taken out
Speaker 5: on your child because when you look at them, you
Speaker 5: see yourself. So until you heal that relationship with yourself,
Speaker 5: I think it's very difficult to have another.
Speaker 2: Human I think that really comes through in particular in
Speaker 2: one scene kind of at her worst moment, where she
Speaker 2: says almost in a hunting way but also in a
Speaker 2: loving way, that you're my only and I'm yours. There
Speaker 2: is that reflection back in those characters. So what's more
Speaker 2: challenging than shooting a Bond film in this den bowl
Speaker 2: with all these action scenes, or playing someone so opposite
Speaker 2: who you really are?
Speaker 5: I would say, actually, yeah, yes, because of all the stunts.
Speaker 5: Yeah it's that's no. They're just completely different challenges, aren't they.
Speaker 5: They're sure and yeah, it's challenging in a completely different way.
Speaker 2: Well, so I guess the more serious version of that
Speaker 2: question is why is it important to you as an
Speaker 2: actress to take both kinds of roles, these big action spectacles,
Speaker 2: but do these smaller, more intimate movies as.
Speaker 5: Well, Because I think because I'm ultimately interested both as
Speaker 5: a performer and as an individual in growth and learning.
Speaker 5: I think that in life we often play one character,
Speaker 5: and actually we are made up of multiple characters that
Speaker 5: usually most people don't get to discover. And I think
Speaker 5: the joy in acting is discovering all those different parts
Speaker 5: of yourself. And that's what acting allows you to do.
Speaker 5: And if I play varied roles and I get to
Speaker 5: exercise those parts of myself I never knew existed.
Speaker 2: Barry, I wanted to ask you about the influences, because
Speaker 2: I know you've gotten this question a lot. At the
Speaker 2: Chicago Film Fest Q and A after the movie, you
Speaker 2: throughout the three movies that you said had the biggest
Speaker 2: influence on the style of this film, both Travia, three
Speaker 2: Times Happy Together, and I think you can definitely see
Speaker 2: those influences in the film and the way that it's
Speaker 2: quite lyrical. It's certainly not focused on gritty realism necessarily.
Speaker 2: And the moments that, as I reflect back on it
Speaker 2: to stand out to me in the movie are actually
Speaker 2: just those There. There are moments, There are the moments
Speaker 2: that you kind of draw out or heighten or return to.
Speaker 2: There are kind of moments that these tableaux kind of
Speaker 2: moments that almost take you out of time and space.
Speaker 2: And I thought that was appropriate because I think those
Speaker 2: those are the moments we remember from our childhoods. As
Speaker 2: we reflect back, we think of those. We we forget
Speaker 2: a lot, but we remember just certain images and certain sounds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And as a person who has you know, kind
Speaker 3: of found their voice through creating visual storytelling, you know,
Speaker 3: through through images, you know, it was something to roll
Speaker 3: on to always discussed this project as sort of being
Speaker 3: like a like a fever dream. You know, I said
Speaker 3: to him, you've taken memories of my memories and and
Speaker 3: and sort of like presented them as his fever dream.
Speaker 3: And I feel like in the film, you know, I
Speaker 3: wanted the audience to experience, you know, what Shyrona is experiencing.
Speaker 3: And he is almost like he's a participant in his
Speaker 3: own life. But at some point this consciousness sort of
Speaker 3: like you know, it sort of gets away from him,
Speaker 3: you know, and it takes on this heightened quality, you know,
Speaker 3: And I wanted to find a way to translate that,
Speaker 3: you know, in a way that the audience can experience
Speaker 3: what the character is experiencing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that notion of it being a fever dream,
Speaker 2: it reminds me of what Terrell said about having written
Speaker 2: this this script or written this play and then realized
Speaker 2: that he couldn't really stage it. You obviously saw something
Speaker 2: cinematic in the material, was say.
Speaker 4: Yeah right away.
Speaker 3: You know. It was partly because you know, as a filmmaker,
Speaker 3: I've never made anything that was like personal in this way,
Speaker 3: but which I mean that was like at the foundation
Speaker 3: of how I grew up, where I grew up, when
Speaker 3: I grew up and Terrell's Peace gave me the opportunity
Speaker 3: to do that, and because of that, it's like a
Speaker 3: one to one sort of like translation. It's like, Oh,
Speaker 3: I know exactly what that looks like and what that
Speaker 3: feels like. I don't need to travel, you know, two
Speaker 3: thousand miles to Miami to know what that corner feels like.
Speaker 3: I've been there, you know, and in a beautiful way,
Speaker 3: and then took this filmmaking voice I've developed, which is
Speaker 3: absent from my home environment where I grew up, and now.
Speaker 4: I can I think.
Speaker 3: I think film has given me a chance to speak about,
Speaker 3: you know, the way I grew up in a voice
Speaker 3: that I didn't think myself capable of, you know, And
Speaker 3: then the converse happened, where now my filmmaking voice has
Speaker 3: been elevated because I know this world so viscerally.
Speaker 2: The films that you mentioned as influences are those films
Speaker 2: that you came to through film school and kind of
Speaker 2: later as you got into cinema, or were they some
Speaker 2: of the films that really turned you on to cinema
Speaker 2: in the first place.
Speaker 3: You know, The two things happened at once. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: didn't I wasn't in love with cinema at all. Growing up,
Speaker 3: I didn't really care that much about movies. I kind
Speaker 3: of stumbled into it after I was already at Florida
Speaker 3: State doing my undergrad and creative writing, and I'm a
Speaker 3: big football fan, and there just happened to be a
Speaker 3: film school in the football stadium. That's where the film
Speaker 3: school was at Florida State. Yeah, so I was going
Speaker 3: to a football game because they rebuilt the stadium, and
Speaker 3: I think out of guilt, they had to put something
Speaker 3: there that wasn't football related, and that was the film school.
Speaker 3: So I thought, oh, I kind of like movies.
Speaker 4: I'll check this out.
Speaker 3: And I saw right away that everybody was the movies
Speaker 3: they were watching were sort of informing their aesthetic, and
Speaker 3: I thought, I want my aesthetic to be unique, and
Speaker 3: so I'm gonna watch nothing but Horn films. And some
Speaker 3: of those films are the movies I watched as I
Speaker 3: was first falling in love with filmmaking. And I think
Speaker 3: it's not a surprise that my voice has been heavily
Speaker 3: influenced by those things. And I think the work of
Speaker 3: the last fifteen years as a filmmaker has been Okay, Now,
Speaker 3: this is where the influence stops, and this is where
Speaker 3: Barry Jenkins begins. And this project gave me just the
Speaker 3: greatest palette to express that.
Speaker 2: NI. At that same Chicago film fest, Q and A. A.
Speaker 2: Trell mentioned one of the central questions in the movie
Speaker 2: being am I a man? What kind of man?
Speaker 4: Am I?
Speaker 2: What defines me? Is it my sexuality? How tough I am,
Speaker 2: how I look? But I recognize I think that that
Speaker 2: identity struggle doesn't just apply to the boys.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 2: There's a certain expectation placed on women like Paula as
Speaker 2: women to be a certain type of mother, and there's
Speaker 2: a lot of baggage associated with that that I don't
Speaker 2: know that most of us think about every day, but
Speaker 2: probably should.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I think you know, that's a really interesting question.
Speaker 1: We haven't actually, we have never gotten that question.
Speaker 4: I apologize.
Speaker 5: I minded spinning like that's a good question.
Speaker 3: What do you think? I think the question is getting
Speaker 3: at something that that's really interesting, which is all these
Speaker 3: characters have a full, full life. It's like the Iceberg
Speaker 3: theory from Himingway. Uh. Because of the pace we tell
Speaker 3: the story yet Chyne's Iceberg, we do reveal all these
Speaker 3: things beneath the surface. It's a part of the character.
Speaker 3: He's pushing everything down and we're like, Okay, we're going
Speaker 3: to take you down there, and we want to see
Speaker 3: the rest of the iceberg. I think with a character
Speaker 3: like Paula, you know, we're not privy to those things,
Speaker 3: but I feel like it's in the performance. And I
Speaker 3: think when we meet her on that very first scene,
Speaker 3: on that porch, you can see all these pressures, all
Speaker 3: these things, you know that that that she has to
Speaker 3: be both for herself and for chirone, and it's a
Speaker 3: lot to deal with, and I think it's part of
Speaker 3: the reason why, you know, the sort of addiction overcomes her,
Speaker 3: you know, I think there's just so much weight.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think that weight is there because actually
Speaker 5: that's a good point about mothering, because it takes a
Speaker 5: community to raise a child, and ultimately, what Paula is
Speaker 5: trying to do is do it on her own because
Speaker 5: she's surrounded by so many negative influences, and on top
Speaker 5: of that, she doesn't have the personal resources to be
Speaker 5: able to do that. She hasn't had the good parenting
Speaker 5: model that she needed to be able to parent her
Speaker 5: son on top of all of that.
Speaker 3: So I think it's very and I just love that
Speaker 3: we're in a world where and she has a boy,
Speaker 3: you know, who is not going to be embraced by
Speaker 3: everyone in the community for certain stigmas.
Speaker 2: And that moment that you have really one of the
Speaker 2: most powerful scenes in the film, where you have a
Speaker 2: confrontation with jan That's kind of the undercurrent of that
Speaker 2: whole scene is that it's very easy for him to
Speaker 2: judge and suggests that you should be a certain type
Speaker 2: of mother, but he doesn't actually have the responsibility.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's partly that, and I think it's
Speaker 5: also partly because that's an example for me of how
Speaker 5: Paula has been let down by men so often in
Speaker 5: her life in the past that she can't accept any
Speaker 5: form of help because she's not used to having any
Speaker 5: and if anybody does offer help, it's always because they've
Speaker 5: got an angle they want to take something ultimately, so
Speaker 5: she's very suspicious to that point. Yeah, she's like, what's
Speaker 5: going to come next? Like, what do you want from
Speaker 5: my son?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: I want to ask Barry about the casting and the
Speaker 2: directing of the three actors who play the three incarnations
Speaker 2: of Sharon, Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, Travante Rhodes. But I
Speaker 2: first want to ask you, I think you're the only
Speaker 2: direct link between those three characters in terms of seeing
Speaker 2: you in all three stories. What was it like for
Speaker 2: you having to maintain some continuity emotionally and psychologically opposite
Speaker 2: those three different actors.
Speaker 5: I mean, I didn't really find that difficult, because you know,
Speaker 5: I had to have done that research beforehand, in known
Speaker 5: Paula's arc and journey and her history and so on,
Speaker 5: and I just brought that to bear in each of
Speaker 5: the chapters. But I think it really did help having
Speaker 5: charone played by a different acts is because my relationship
Speaker 5: with my three sons those in those three stages is
Speaker 5: fundamentally extraordinarily different, because paul is in such a completely
Speaker 5: different emotional state. It's not just that they've changed just
Speaker 5: because she's almost you know, she's changed dramatically in each
Speaker 5: of those chapters. So I think it helped.
Speaker 2: I was shocked to hear you say, Arry at that
Speaker 2: Q and A that you didn't have those actors interact
Speaker 2: with each other, didn't watch footage of each other. It
Speaker 2: really was shocking to me, just because they're they're not
Speaker 2: only similar in appearance, but they're similar in their physicality
Speaker 2: and their demeanors, how they hold their heads when they're silent,
Speaker 2: which is a key part of these performances. I would
Speaker 2: have assumed exactly the opposite, that you were really meticulous
Speaker 2: about having them study each other.
Speaker 4: So how did you pull that off?
Speaker 2: Because I think it's so crucial that at the end,
Speaker 2: when we see the character Black, we have to see
Speaker 2: little and Chirne in him, and we do.
Speaker 3: There's two words bruh, hocus pocus no. No. You know,
Speaker 3: it's almost like Naomi was just saying, you know, so
Speaker 3: much time passes between each chapter that you know, I
Speaker 3: think there's this commentary in the film of how the
Speaker 3: world shapes us, you know, or how we can allow
Speaker 3: the world to shape us, both for good and for bad.
Speaker 3: And so I wanted to show, or to illustrate in
Speaker 3: the physical embodiment of this character that the world has
Speaker 3: made him a different person. So I wanted to cast
Speaker 3: different actors, you know, to play the same person, and
Speaker 3: I didn't want them to physically mimic one another, you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't want them to try to carry the performance
Speaker 3: that came before and to their performance, because again, I
Speaker 3: wanted to show just how different the world can make us,
Speaker 3: how the world can shape us if we allow it,
Speaker 3: and if we don't have this nurturing you know that
Speaker 3: we see in the first story that isn't present in
Speaker 3: the second and the third stories. But and yet at
Speaker 3: the same time, there is a continuity, you know, amongst
Speaker 3: those three young men. And I'm sure when we were
Speaker 3: casting them, we were trying to find this feeling, you know,
Speaker 3: the soulfulness, because I think there's this idea of spiritual
Speaker 3: transference in the film. It's why the swimming scene, you know,
Speaker 3: is the way it is. You know, there's this transference
Speaker 3: between one in little in that scene. And it felt
Speaker 3: like if you could look into Travante Rose's eyes and
Speaker 3: you could still see Ashton Sanders, still see Alex Hibbert,
Speaker 3: that you would feel like this character has changed. Yes,
Speaker 3: he's a different person, but he's still He's still in there,
Speaker 3: you know. And I think it's interesting because you know,
Speaker 3: we're trying to create this journey for Travante and the
Speaker 3: third story where he is the characters crawled so deep
Speaker 3: inside and buried himself so deep inside that the work
Speaker 3: Travante is doing aided by you know, Andre Holland and
Speaker 3: Kevin is to slowly dig his way back out to
Speaker 3: the surface, and I want to do that. I thought
Speaker 3: it was it would be best, you know, to literally
Speaker 3: have the character embodied by a different person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how confident were you in your decision to did
Speaker 2: not have them mirror each other at all?
Speaker 4: Did you ever have doubts about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? You know. So, you know, we shot them with
Speaker 3: me mostly in sequence. You know, we did a story one,
Speaker 3: story two, story three. The only overlap was when Naomi
Speaker 3: showed up because she had visa issues. We did all
Speaker 3: her work in three days. But other than that, that
Speaker 3: was the only time those three days when the main
Speaker 3: characters jumped, you know, I had to work with all
Speaker 3: of them. So Travante shows up and does his first
Speaker 3: two days and because of the way the shoot was scheduled,
Speaker 3: his first two days, I mean and Travante.
Speaker 4: Roads this is radio all say.
Speaker 3: He is just just hulking, you know, like you know,
Speaker 3: five to eleven, two hundred twenty pound guy, like two
Speaker 3: percent body fact, just like ripped. And his first two
Speaker 3: days he's walking around in his boxes like working out,
Speaker 3: and he's like, you know, on the phone and count money.
Speaker 3: And it was like it was like really jarring departure
Speaker 3: from this real thin teenager you know that we worked
Speaker 3: with before, which was Ashton Sanders, whose shoulders are always
Speaker 3: trooped and he was always like kind of sad and brooding.
Speaker 3: And I thought, man, did we go too far? Because
Speaker 3: it was so jarring going from working with Ashton to
Speaker 3: working with Travante. And then we did the phone call
Speaker 3: where Travante call or Kevin calls, and Black picks up
Speaker 3: the phone and it's just Travante in the room and
Speaker 3: Andre Holland's voice is actually on the phone, and I
Speaker 3: can see Travante just breaking and just so this huge,
Speaker 3: hulking guy, just so sensitive, vulnerable. And after the first
Speaker 3: take I looked at him, I said, that's why you
Speaker 3: got the part, and I was like, okay, we're on
Speaker 3: the right track certainly, but but for those that day
Speaker 3: and a half, I was like, oh, man, but but
Speaker 3: but but then I said in the audience, and I
Speaker 3: see the audience have the same reaction he comes from screening,
Speaker 3: and sometimes the audience will go yeah, like literally it
Speaker 3: takes the breath because they just the gasp, this is
Speaker 3: what this is what the world is done to this guy,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But then when we when we see him at
Speaker 2: the diner sitting across from Kevin, and we see we
Speaker 2: see chirone in him in those moments, then I think
Speaker 2: we gasp.
Speaker 3: Well, And the beauty of this process is, you know,
Speaker 3: I can only write this thing and get the actions
Speaker 3: in place and push the button, and then an intellectual idea,
Speaker 3: you know, a scripted idea, you know, it's given this
Speaker 3: flesh and blood emotion when somebody like Dramonte can actually
Speaker 3: express that vulnerability and sensibility that we don't associate or
Speaker 3: we don't think someone who's that masculine this case, Sure.
Speaker 2: Enough, just two more quick questions and I'll get you
Speaker 2: guys on your way, nail we the mention there of
Speaker 2: doing this whole role in just three days. Is there
Speaker 2: any advantage at all to having to work that quickly?
Speaker 2: There is as an actress, Yeah, there are many?
Speaker 5: Actually, well yeah, because you don't spend hours in your
Speaker 5: trailer agonizing about what you're going to do, plodding it
Speaker 5: out in your head. You know, you just have to
Speaker 5: get on and deliver. And the best place to be
Speaker 5: always is out of your head. But the place you
Speaker 5: always want to go to is your head. Sure, sure,
Speaker 5: but yeah, I think it actually really helped me doing
Speaker 5: it in those three days.
Speaker 2: Very last question for you then, a film school film
Speaker 2: geek question, because we have a lot of them who
Speaker 2: listen to the show, people who are just really getting
Speaker 2: into film or who are aspiring filmmakers. At that Q
Speaker 2: and A, you mentioned Walter Merchant in The Blink of
Speaker 2: an Eye, And that's a book that whenever people write
Speaker 2: into the show and ask me to recommend books, I
Speaker 2: read that in film school. It's one of my top five,
Speaker 2: I always say, but can you just talk about the
Speaker 2: influence of that book on your visual approach with this
Speaker 2: film or any other work that you've done. And what
Speaker 2: a their books do you throw out when you get
Speaker 2: asked that question?
Speaker 3: Yeah. The only other book I throw out is a
Speaker 3: book called Masters of Light, you know, and I would
Speaker 3: say find the original version. It was this book where
Speaker 3: they really thick book, thin paper, thick book. They interviewed
Speaker 3: cinematographers about their process and it's really really dense, but
Speaker 3: it will teach you, if you pay attention, some really
Speaker 3: solid things about the visual approach I mean craft, yeah,
Speaker 3: to the process, how craft can be elevated or sublimated
Speaker 3: into art. So that book is the only the only
Speaker 3: other one I recommend as far as Merch, you know,
Speaker 3: Walter Merch was an editor and sound designer. He worked
Speaker 3: with Coppola on some of his just greatest, some of
Speaker 3: the greatest films in the history of American cinema. And
Speaker 3: he wrote this book as a thesis statement on what
Speaker 3: he thought, you know, was the true essence of craft
Speaker 3: and cinema, which was the eyes of the actors and
Speaker 3: the eyes being the window into the soul. And literally
Speaker 3: he wanted to break down why editorially when you make
Speaker 3: a cut, you know what that does thematically emotionally to
Speaker 3: the audience, because you're breaking the link between you know,
Speaker 3: the actor and the audience. So for me, I use
Speaker 3: it for casting because if I'm close on two actors
Speaker 3: and they're pretty much neck and neck, you know, the
Speaker 3: same ability, whoever blinks the less they're getting the part,
Speaker 3: you know. And it came in to play a little
Speaker 3: bit on the casting of this the old Michael Kaine
Speaker 3: acting school trick as well. Yeah, exactly, and well, because
Speaker 3: you want to have that continuum that continue on, that
Speaker 3: continuous sort of feeling with the audience. And then like
Speaker 3: I said, you know, I knew I wanted to cast
Speaker 3: three different actors to play Chirne in this film, and
Speaker 3: what we found ourselves honing in on was it's got
Speaker 3: to be in the eyes, you know. It was why
Speaker 3: casting someone like Travonte Rhodes. I was okay with it,
Speaker 3: or I was comfortable with it because I thought he
Speaker 3: looks so different than Ashton, you know, just because he's
Speaker 3: so bulked up. But I thought, you know what, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna have faith in this principle now of my filmmaking process,
Speaker 3: which is the eyes of the window into the soul.
Speaker 3: Find the eyes and you'll see the soul, and if
Speaker 3: the soul is the same, the audience will follow the character.
Speaker 2: Thank you both so much for the movie. Thank you
Speaker 2: for your time, best of luck with it.
Speaker 3: Thank you, man, I ain't seeing you in like a decade.
Speaker 4: That's not what I expected.
Speaker 2: What did you respect My thanks again to Barry Jenkins
Speaker 2: and Naomi Harris. I knew they would be a delight
Speaker 2: to talk to you after hearing them talk for a
Speaker 2: little bit at that film fest Q and A the
Speaker 2: night before, But they exceeded my expectations and I was
Speaker 2: the last stop on their way out of town. I
Speaker 2: knew they had been locked up in a hotel room
Speaker 2: all day answering questions from idiots like me, and then
Speaker 2: they were stopping to see me at the studio and
Speaker 2: head out. And usually that can mean sometimes they're a
Speaker 2: little tired and maybe not quite as engaged as even
Speaker 2: they'd like to be, and I'd like them to be.
Speaker 2: That certainly wasn't the case with them.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that Jenkins brought up cinematography there at
Speaker 1: the end and mentioned the book Masters of Light, where
Speaker 1: Dennis Schaeffer and Larry Salvado they have conversations with some
Speaker 1: of the most noted cinematographers, and Jenkins comment too about
Speaker 1: how the book explains how cinematography can be a craft
Speaker 1: that can be elevated to art, because that is exactly
Speaker 1: what my takeaway was from Moonlight is watching that actually
Speaker 1: happen on the screen. This is just a master work
Speaker 1: in cinematography. And Jenkins was working here with James Laxton
Speaker 1: as his cinematographer, and really it becomes it's not only
Speaker 1: that the movie is beautifully lit, but it's that the
Speaker 1: skin tones, particularly the African American skin tones, are just
Speaker 1: exquisitely lit in this movie and I single that out
Speaker 1: because it's not always the case. Even when you're talking
Speaker 1: about you big Hollywood films with massive budgets, sometimes they
Speaker 1: don't know how to light all of the actors correctly.
Speaker 1: And this connects very much with what I think Moonlight
Speaker 1: is doing on a thematic level as well. There is
Speaker 1: just this aura of compassion that seeps down from the movie.
Speaker 1: And obviously they're getting this a little bit by the
Speaker 1: reference that the title pulls from, you know, the illumination
Speaker 1: of the moon. That's a guiding light in a couple
Speaker 1: of ways for this film, but it really carries through
Speaker 1: no matter whether they're in a dark night scene or
Speaker 1: whether they're in one of the high school classrooms where
Speaker 1: there's fluorescent lights, or wherever they may be. There is
Speaker 1: such care to make these varied skin tones illuminate and
Speaker 1: you can see the texture and the detail. And I
Speaker 1: think that carries over again to how the movie sees Schyron,
Speaker 1: how it sees really all of its characters, but particularly him,
Speaker 1: in just giving this sort of beneficent hue that makes
Speaker 1: us just fall in love with this kid, an ache
Speaker 1: for him, really ache for him in a way that
Speaker 1: few movies manage to make audiences do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you mention the reference there in the title Moonlight,
Speaker 2: and it does come up within the text there of
Speaker 2: the screenplay. But the story that McCraney originally wrote, the
Speaker 2: piece he originally wrote that he couldn't stage, is called
Speaker 2: in Moonlight, black Boys Look Blue, And that is such
Speaker 2: a brilliantly striking central metaphor. Like I said, that does
Speaker 2: come up in this movie because it sets up exactly
Speaker 2: what this whole film is about, but in a pretty
Speaker 2: subtle way, which is that other people are always going
Speaker 2: to try to define you. They are going to see
Speaker 2: you how they see you within a certain moment, and
Speaker 2: you may not be able to escape the way they
Speaker 2: see you. It is ultimately on you to define yourself.
Speaker 2: And as simplistic as that might be, there's nothing simple
Speaker 2: about this film or about the performances. And one of
Speaker 2: the things that I was really glad Barry Jenkins said
Speaker 2: in my conversation there in praise of Harris, he mentioned
Speaker 2: how we're not privy to a lot of information about her,
Speaker 2: but it comes through in her performance, and that's so true,
Speaker 2: and that must be so hard for any actor or
Speaker 2: actress to pull off. But I felt like I knew
Speaker 2: her entire backstory. I understood her relationship with men, I
Speaker 2: understood her problems as a mother raising this boy just
Speaker 2: from the performance, no flashbacks, no other dialogue to spell
Speaker 2: it out. It really does all come through in the
Speaker 2: experience of watching the performance.
Speaker 1: And she does have the benefit, as you mentioned in
Speaker 1: the interview, of appearing in each of the three sections.
Speaker 1: So not she doesn't have huge part in each of those,
Speaker 1: but she does appear and makes a large impact in
Speaker 1: those scenes that she has. But really, every actor we
Speaker 1: see manages to make the most of their time on screen,
Speaker 1: and there's a continuity as you guys talked about among
Speaker 1: the three actors playing Chyron and how they manage to
Speaker 1: capture things that are similar in each section but also
Speaker 1: make him distinct in each section. I think the through
Speaker 1: line again is the cinematography. When we see him in
Speaker 1: the same literal light, we connect him as being the
Speaker 1: same person. But I also want to take time to
Speaker 1: praise Mahashala Ali because that was the performance that I
Speaker 1: don't know why just and it's devastating when he disappears
Speaker 1: from the narratives, feel that absence in the other segments
Speaker 1: that he's not in because he makes such an impact
Speaker 1: in that first segment, and not because he gets any
Speaker 1: grand standing scene. He's almost in the background, so quiet
Speaker 1: as this drug dealer who takes young little under his wings,
Speaker 1: and at first he's almost you wonder, is this a
Speaker 1: wolf in sheep's clothing? You just were trained by other movies, right,
Speaker 1: more than anything else.
Speaker 4: To that, and this is a bad situation. He does
Speaker 4: hand either way.
Speaker 1: No, he does not. I mean, you still get a
Speaker 1: sense that maybe this could go wrong near the end,
Speaker 1: even after you've seen him and really feel that his
Speaker 1: protection is genuine. There's that gorgeous scene where he takes
Speaker 1: little swimming and teaches him how to swim, and I
Speaker 1: think that's where we finally begin to understand that his
Speaker 1: interest is genuine in the boy. But just the way
Speaker 1: Ali makes these quiet moments hit so hard again without
Speaker 1: pushing any sort of demonstrative personality, you would think, as
Speaker 1: this drug dealer who runs the block, the temptation would
Speaker 1: be to go big, right right, No, it's just his
Speaker 1: quiet presence and it's really one of my favorite performances
Speaker 1: of the year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm with you, And I think that gets back
Speaker 2: to what I was saying about Harris as well, where
Speaker 2: she's playing the crack addicted, negligent mother. We've seen a
Speaker 2: character like her in plenty of films. We've seen a
Speaker 2: character like Ali's playing one in a lot of films,
Speaker 2: that drug dealer, even the drug dealer with a heart
Speaker 2: of gold, which sure he is more or less as
Speaker 2: we get to know him. But there isn't anything cliche
Speaker 2: at all about these characters as it comes through in
Speaker 2: these performances. And Ali's one of those faces where as
Speaker 2: soon as I saw him on screen, I felt comfortable.
Speaker 2: I knew I had seen him before. Recently, I looked
Speaker 2: up IMDb later and he's been in a bunch of things,
Speaker 2: but recently in the Hunger Games movies, and that's where
Speaker 2: I did have his face in my mind. But what
Speaker 2: about Andre Holland. Andre Holland, he plays Kevin. He's talking
Speaker 2: about your scenes, yeah, that third act of this film,
Speaker 2: and he's someone again I'm watching him going. Not only
Speaker 2: is he remarkable, I could watch him and Ali in
Speaker 2: their scenes. Just give me a movie that's just in
Speaker 2: those their stories. I would so watch those films. I'd
Speaker 2: watch multiple films with those guys. But he was another
Speaker 2: face that seemed really familiar to me, and I couldn't
Speaker 2: place it, and then I looked up later he was
Speaker 2: in the Nick the Steven Soderberg series, and he's another
Speaker 2: wonderful actor. And I wanted to remention the three titles
Speaker 2: that came up in the interview that Jenkins listed as
Speaker 2: the biggest influences on this film, because some people may
Speaker 2: not be familiar with them, or maybe they just went
Speaker 2: by too fast and they didn't catch the titles. But
Speaker 2: you talk about cinematography and the craft of that and
Speaker 2: how that's art. Not as surprise that those elements would
Speaker 2: come through in this film when those influences were Clardoni's
Speaker 2: film Bo Trava Ho, Shau Shen's Three Times, and then
Speaker 2: wankar wi Is Happy Together?
Speaker 4: Now Have you seen Happy Together?
Speaker 1: Having Days of Being Wild was the last one I
Speaker 1: caught up.
Speaker 2: So that's a Wankar Wai film. I regretfully haven't seen either.
Speaker 2: But a friend of mine who loves that film and
Speaker 2: who was at the same Moonlight screening I was, and
Speaker 2: who loved Moonlight, said that there's definitely some one car
Speaker 2: why happy to get our touches there, especially in that
Speaker 2: third sequence with Trevante Rhodes and Andre Holland. We meet
Speaker 2: Andre Holland's character first through a phone conversation he's having.
Speaker 2: We hear his voice, and we only see parts of
Speaker 2: him as he's a cook, he's in a kitchen. We
Speaker 2: don't actually see his face for a while. And my
Speaker 2: friend said that that is really something that is mirrored
Speaker 2: actually in the Wan car Why film. So I did
Speaker 2: want to mention that for people who love that film
Speaker 2: as well. A couple other things that came out of
Speaker 2: the Q and A after the screening that I thought
Speaker 2: were really fascinating.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to throw out there. Trell.
Speaker 2: Alvin McCraney, the playwright and writer of the original piece,
Speaker 2: was part of the Q and A, and he said
Speaker 2: something that I don't know that I would have been
Speaker 2: able to articulate at all, but absolutely felt in every
Speaker 2: moment of that third act with those actors, those grown
Speaker 2: up versions of these characters we've met earlier in the film.
Speaker 2: He talks about how there's heightened tension and a sense
Speaker 2: of urgency in there because of the fact that they
Speaker 2: are what he termed real minutes, and what he was
Speaker 2: articulating or what I took away from it is that
Speaker 2: he was saying, when you're watching this film that starts
Speaker 2: with one version of this character in the past, and
Speaker 2: then we go to another version and we realize that
Speaker 2: he's older. We know we're watching this construct where we're
Speaker 2: very aware that this happened in another place and time,
Speaker 2: and it's almost like it's not really happening now. And
Speaker 2: when we get to that version of him right now
Speaker 2: in the present day, these two characters meet again. Now
Speaker 2: we know that we're watching them starting a whole new trajectory,
Speaker 2: and we have no idea where it's going to go.
Speaker 2: It's where their lives in some way begin for us
Speaker 2: as viewers, and we have to fill in the blanks.
Speaker 2: And there is something inherently fascinating about that that does
Speaker 2: raise the stakes of two people mostly.
Speaker 1: Just talking real minutes? Was that the phrase real minutes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my impression, and while I was watching it is
Speaker 1: what incredible patience on the part of Jenkins to allow
Speaker 1: this reunion to spread out in what almost feels like
Speaker 1: real time. There's the phone call to set it up,
Speaker 1: and then when Sharon, who's now goes by the name Black,
Speaker 1: shows up at the restaurant to meet with Kevin. He
Speaker 1: first says hello, and then Kevin goes to serve some
Speaker 1: other people, just minute boring things that I won't go
Speaker 1: on to describe except to say that it extends the
Speaker 1: scene so that it's not that all we get are
Speaker 1: there conversation together, and even their conversation is interrupted by
Speaker 1: Kevin having to go do some more work, and that
Speaker 1: does exactly what you're talking about. It breaks up the
Speaker 1: pattern of what we've seen before, where they're not vignettes,
Speaker 1: they're not episodes. We're here with these two in the
Speaker 1: right now, and that lends it so much more drama.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the other part, and this is something I certainly
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been aware of had Jenkins not expressed it
Speaker 2: and described it in answer to a question someone the
Speaker 2: audience who was aware of this style of music. But
Speaker 2: what he did with the score here in the music
Speaker 2: as well, it really comes through in that third sequence.
Speaker 4: But you reflect back on.
Speaker 2: How some of the more traditional movie score sounds are
Speaker 2: rendered in this film, where they seem distorted in some way,
Speaker 2: they seem like they are perfectly in keeping with this
Speaker 2: notion of a kind of heightened fever dream.
Speaker 4: But I couldn't put my finger on it.
Speaker 2: I didn't understand exactly what was being done to the
Speaker 2: sounds to manipulate them, to make them have that distorted,
Speaker 2: heightened effect. And what he described is this style of
Speaker 2: music that came out of Houston in the early nineties,
Speaker 2: mainly called chopped and screwed, and it's where you take
Speaker 2: hip hop and you remix it so that everything is
Speaker 2: slowed way down and it does have that distorting kind
Speaker 2: of effect. So we hear that in the songs that
Speaker 2: are playing in Black's car really the whole time that
Speaker 2: we are with him. But then you realize that even
Speaker 2: the obos and the other strings and things that you're
Speaker 2: hearing in earlier portions of the film, they have that
Speaker 2: same technique applied to them to give it that effect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's just the use of those classical music
Speaker 1: instruments all together where you might not expect it. In
Speaker 1: the early segment where the boys are just out on
Speaker 1: the field, you know, rough housing and wrestling and messing around,
Speaker 1: we get this lyrical music to it that makes it
Speaker 1: suddenly seem as if it's something from a Malick film.
Speaker 1: And I believe the same sort of music accompanies that
Speaker 1: swimming scene, which is some sort of you know, baptism
Speaker 1: moment taking place, and so these are other uses of
Speaker 1: the usual cinematic techniques in ways that maybe we've seen
Speaker 1: here or there, but not always applied to a story
Speaker 1: like this.
Speaker 4: There are, of.
Speaker 1: Course, any other reviews and interviews in the Film Spotting Archive.
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Speaker 3: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore but burn