Fascinating NYMag interview with director Steve McQueen:
… [T]he critics are unanimous: Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave is the greatest movie about slavery ever made. And Steve McQueen may well become the first black filmmaker to win an Oscar for Best Director. For his part, McQueen is happy for the praise but does not see his movie as being “just about slavery.” Nor does he see himself, necessarily, as black.
“It’s a narrative about today,” he says of his film. “It’s not a black movie. It’s an American movie. It’s a narrative about human respect, more than anything.”
The germ of the idea came long ago, around the time he was making his first film, 2008’s Hunger, for which the actor Michael Fassbender literally starved himself to portray the excruciating hunger strike of IRA inmate Bobby Sands. McQueen knew then that he wanted to make a film about a free black American kidnapped into slavery. The story continued incubating as he made his next film three years later, the lushly bleak Shame, also starring Fassbender, this time as a tortured New Yorker addicted to sex. McQueen and his wife, the cultural critic Bianca Stigter, both work from home; when he needs a desk, he uses the kitchen table, though he does most of his work walking around the city or riding his bike or Hoovering their narrow home. He discussed his idea with Stigter, who suggested he base the film on a true story and who discovered Twelve Years a Slave, a nineteenth-century best seller long out of print. One of only 192 books written by former slaves, it carries the extraordinary subtitle Narrative of Solomon Northup, citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington city in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River, in Louisiana. The story is so astonishing that McQueen likens it to science fiction. “People think they know slavery,” he says. “Often it’s the case they don’t.”
“As soon as I had it in my hands,” he says, “I was trembling. Every page was a revelation.” The idea he had drummed up “was in my hands virtually in script form.” He asked the writer John Ridley to adapt it; McQueen says that 80 percent of the dialogue is lifted from the book. Brad Pitt had seen Hunger and long wanted to work with McQueen. His production company, Plan B Entertainment, agreed to help finance 12 Years a Slave, with Pitt cast in a small role near the end of the film. (Pitt’s reverence for the project is religious: “If I never get to participate in a film again,” he’s said, “this is it for me.”) With his longtime cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, McQueen shot the film with one camera and in 35 days, drawing inspiration from the Louisiana setting, where “everything was new: the heat, the crickets, the mosquitoes—it was like going to a prehistoric land.” McQueen took seriously his role as patriarch, in order to allow the cast to “make mistakes and then make bigger mistakes,” resulting in a shoot he describes as “joyous.” “We were a family,” he says. “We ate together. We drank together after the shoots. It moves me, gives me goose pimples thinking about it.” Fassbender told me that the level of focus on set was so high “you could almost hear it humming.”…
Schlemizel
I guess I am cursed with a useful imagination, I really don’t need a movie to tell me how bad slavery was or how dehumanizing it was to both slave and owner. Or, maybe it is simply that I have read more than I care to on the subject. “Tombee” is a portrait of the banality of evil and simply the diary of a slave owner.
One simple bit of history was enough insight to view the vast dank whole; a simple argument between slave owners as to which was better, paddling or whipping. This was carried on with all the gravitas and examination you would expect from two businessmen attempting to get the most out of their resources. Paddling enthusiasts felt there was less damage done to the resource and got it back into production sooner while whipping affectionados felt the impact of whipping encouraged better results from the rest of the resources and was necessary as anything less might not produce the desired results.
I hope he wins the Oscar but that in itself will serve as a rage point for the sone of the owners who will paint it as an insult to the fine gentlemen who committed treason and fought a war to preserve ther genteel lifestyle and further proof that the Jews and pinkos in Hollywood hate real America
Villago Delenda Est
@Schlemizel:
I would not bet against any of the predictions in this paragraph. This is a slam dunk for an Oscar, because it’s the sort of “message” movie (like Gandhi and Dances With Wolves) that makes Hollywood feel good about itself…that it’s not just about filthy lucre, it’s about art and social sensitivity and all that wornderful rot.
And yes, the neo-Confederates will throw fuckin’ conniption fits. It’s what they do, the poor babies, such victims as they are, poor pathetic white supremacists who are on the wrong side of history. Boo hoo hoo. They’re fortunate that Andrew Johnson set the tone for reconstruction, not the Radical Republicans, who wanted to punish the South for its crimes..
raven
You could say the same about Platoon, The Pacific and the opening of Private Ryan. There were howls, especially about the first two films, from the same camp. Americans didn’t do THAT. These films have a place whether you want to see it or not.
Betty Cracker
I haven’t seen this movie yet. I’m thinking it’s something I’d rather see at home than in a theater.
Debbie(aussie)
I can’t watch movies like this. They make my blood boil and I get so angry. Maybe at home, as Betty says. But I wish the cast and director well.
debbie
@Schlemizel:
You may not need to see this movie, but there are countless others who do. It’s too easy to rewrite history when you don’t actually have to look at it.
debbie
@raven:
Yes, the whole sanitizing of war thing. Growing up, I assumed it was neat and tidy, like the TV show Combat.
In addition to the movies you’ve cited, I would add Ken Burn’s documentary on WWII. That it wasn’t the history I learned in grade school (war being neat and tidy and painless for the victors) shamed me.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker:
@Debbie(aussie):
I’d recommend seeing this one in a theatre too. Several reasons: everything looks better on a big screen.
Plus, while revered in the press, I don’t think this film is selling out theatres. (There were two — all two of us!– at my viewing.) Show the theatre owner some love for booking this movie into his/her space, vs. another Hollywood tent pole flick, or something else inane and more profitable.
I’m reading the book and then going back to see it again.
Cervantes
I know next to nothing about the Oscars, but how can this be true in 2013?
(Don’t answer that.)
Belafon
@Cervantes: Because the pool of black directors not named Tyler Perry is smaller than the pool of black presidents.
OK, I’m only partially joking, but it is a very small group. And Tyler Perry movies are never going to be Oscar contenders.
Cervantes
@Belafon: It won’t surprise you that I have no idea who Tyler Perry is — but the (pretty much rhetorical) question is: Why, in 2013, are there still so few African-American directors?
And did Spike Lee never win anything? Or are his movies never going to be Oscar contenders, either?
(I told you I know next to nothing about the Oscars.)
schrodinger's cat
@Belafon: Spike Lee?
cmorenc
As a person about as ethnically WASP as it’s possible to be without certified ancestry aboard the Mayflower, it added resonance to the experience of seeing this film that around 70% of the audience I saw it with was black – particularly the couple to my immediate left, my immediate right, and immediately in front of me. The theater was in a normal suburban shopping center twenty-screen multiplex and the audience filing in for movies other than this seemed to more or less reflect the ethnic composition of the area, but it was obvious from the selection of previews shown before the feature that the distributors considered this a “black audience” film, because ALL the movies previewed were obviously aimed at heavily black demographics – and if the small one-showing sample of audience for 12years a Slave reflects the audience at other locations, they would be right about that. The implication is that other than sensitive hipsters such as ourselves at BJ, this film unfortunately isn’t drawing anywhere remotely near the non-black audience it deserves on artistic, historical, and politico-cultural merits.
If you’re wondering about wingnut reaction to this film – so few of them are likely going to see it (other than perhaps the sort of Republican libertarians who smoke marijuana and a handful of self-appointed intellectuals) that it will have negligible impact with that crowd. Which is a shame, because folks like that are precisely the ones who would benefit most from the radical social-historical enlightenment of the experience.
John PM
@Cervantes: Spike Lee should have won for Malcolm X, but I do not know if he was even nominated. Also, I believe that Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to win an Oscar for directing for The Hurt Locker, so it is not surprising that a black person has not won yet.
cmorenc
It unfortunately says something that this BJ thread about “12 Years a Slave” has (so far) inspired such a low comment count, compared to most other threads, including ones posted more recently than this one. That reflects either that a relatively low % of BJrs have actually gone to see this movie so far, or else among the ones who have, it failed to inspire them enough to be worth adding any comment, let alone a thoughtful one, to this thread. Yeah, I’m guilt tripping you all a bit here, but nevertheless this is an undeniably true observation – immensely more mundane subject-threads have frequently inspired 10x the commentary over this one, easily.
Jamey
It’s good to see Steve McQueen back in the game. It’s been so long since his breakup with Ali MacGraw!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@cmorenc:
Dude, not everyone is on the East Coast. It’s 7:49 ack emma here on the West Coast. I just got out of the shower and am still contemplating breakfast.
That said, I haven’t seen the film yet, but will probably see it over the holidays. I’m in Los Angeles, so the movie’s not going away until after the Academy screenings are done.
debg
I will HAVE to wait for netflix or DVD, because the movie is playing nowhere in Kansas (according to Moviefone, the closest location is Corvallis, OR).
handsmile
I’ve now seen “12 Years a Slave” twice, though like Schlemizel above (and I’d expect every other person who reads this blog) I’m reasonably well-informed about the degradations of slavery.
It’s taken 148 years, but finally there’s a commercial American film that treats the subject with the moral and political gravity it deserves – and one that could make the smallest dent in the perennial popularity of that execrable “Lost Cause” fable, “Gone with the Wind.”
For that reason as well as the social and pragmatic factors well-articulated by Elizabelle (#8) and cmorenc (#13), I’d hope more Juicers would see this film in theaters. Also, when viewing any film in public, there is a collective response that one both experiences and contributes to as an audience members that, for me at least, enhances the occasion.
@Cervantes:
Ang Lee is the only American racial minority to have ever won the Oscar for Best Director (in his case twice, for “Brokeback Mountain” and “Life of Pi.”) As JohnPM noted (#14), Kathryn Bigelow is the only woman to have won it.
Spike Lee has been nominated for only two Oscars: best original screenplay (“Do the Right Thing) and best documentary (“4 Little Girls). That, and the fact that Lee is the only serious commercial AA filmmaker familiar to those somewhat interested in contemporary America cinema (cinephiles would know Charles Burnett and John Singleton as well) should offer indirect answers to your questions. Also too, Steve McQueen is British.
Finally, my money for Best Director Oscar this year is on David O. Russell for “American Hustle.”
@ Anne Laurie:
The Guardian has a whole lotta material on McQueen that might interest you:
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/steve-mcqueen
ETA: cmorenc #15: that thought had occurred to me when I began writing my (usual long-winded) reply when there were only 9.
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon:
Furthermore, Spike Lee isn’t very “Hollywood”. He has this nasty habit of having a point of view that makes the Hollywood establishment very uneasy. This means no Oscar for you!
Cervantes
@cmorenc:
If true, I can’t say I’d be surprised.
Could the film-makers (or someone) do a better job of marketing the film to the broadest possible audience?
Cervantes
@John PM:
He was not. (I looked it up.)
I see what you mean but I think about these awards so little that I guess I was surprised.
Anyway, thanks.
Cervantes
@cmorenc:
Well, you’re trying — but at least in my case it isn’t working. I have not seen the movie and have no idea whether or when I will. If I do see it — by the time that happens, no one will care what I think of it!
If it’s any consolation, your (and other, but especially your) remarks about the movie have raised the probability that I will see it to some positive number. Thanks.
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yes, that’s more or less what I had assumed.
On the other hand I saw that “Malcolm X” was nominated, albeit not for Lee’s directing.
(And If I recall correctly, Nelson Mandela appeared briefly in the film.)
Elizabelle
@cmorenc:
Yeah, I have been watching the comment count with some trepidation.
Also don’t want to discuss the film so much, so as not to be a spoiler.
Maybe we could have a BJ virtual weekend out watching 12 Years, and then do a thread.
Like a book club, but we didn’t have to [pretend to] read the thing.
Cervantes
@handsmile:
What, if any, were the best failing attempts?
My ignorance suggests that anyone still alive who takes Gone with the Wind seriously is extremely unlikely to watch 12 Years A Slave.
I can only wonder if this fact says anything about the Oscars.
(I have watched neither movie although I did read Life of Pi and did not like it particularly much.)
Thanks. (I’ve watched a few movies by Spike Lee and John Singleton.)
Elizabelle
re movie directors:
handsmile beat me, of course, to Charles Burnett and John Singleton.
Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep” haunts you, and has a killer soundtrack. Actually, obtaining rights to the music used cost more than making the film itself. Treat yourself to a DVD this Christmas.
Lee Daniels just directed “The Butler”; Forest Whitaker’s directed a few. Denzel’s been on the other side of the camera.
Fruitvale Station was a marvelous first major film by Ryan Coogler. Recent USC graduate.
Women: props to Debra Granick for Winter’s Bone. Angelina Jolie is shooting “Unbroken” right now. Didn’t see it, but her previous “Land of Milk and Honey” was well reviewed. Earlier, there’s Alison Anders and — way earlier — Ida Lupino.
Kasi Lemons’ Black Nativity just opened.
It’s getting better out there for diversity in film directing.
Here’s a blogpost on the ten top-grossing black directors. How Bad is it out there for Black Directors?
And maybe shooting in digital will help a lot there. Lots of room with indies, ‘specially with Hollywood committed to tentpole epics, franchise series and cable TV.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle:
An incredible movie that received way too little attention. Jennifer Lawrence was amazing.
handsmile
@Cervantes:
1) Best failed attempt: “Beloved.” But Morrison’s novel was bowdlerized to become an Oprah Winfrey vehicle. “Amistad,” “Glory,” and last year’s “Lincoln” all deal in part with American slavery, but it is not a principal focus.
Slavery in the American film imagination, in my cynical reckoning, remains best (i.e, worst) represented by “The Birth of a Nation,” “Mandingo, or “GWTW.” And yes, the latter’s devotees would ignore “12 Years..” but perhaps TCM, for example, would consider screening it less frequently.
I should add that the television series “Roots” was a worthy, in fact even ground-breaking, attempt to grapple seriously, however melodramatically, with the manifold dimensions of slavery.
2) It speaks rather definitively about the voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
@Elizabelle:
Thanks for the indirect compliment, but especially on this particular thread, please don’t say I beat you! :)
Another really superb contemporary woman director is Kelly Reichardt. Her most recent work, “Meek’s Cutoff,” is among the most memorable films I’ve seen in the past two years. If available through Netflix or your public library, most enthusiastically recommended (and not at all avant-garde like “Russian Ark”).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meek's_Cutoff
And Ida Lupino f*cking rocks! To this day, insufficiently appreciated for her accomplishments, creative and ceiling-breaking, as a director.
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
Ooh, I didn’t realize that Kasi Lemmons directed Black Nativity. I’ll have to make a point of trying to see it — she’s one of my favorite directors. Eve’s Bayou blew me away, and Talk to Me was flawed in very interesting ways.
ETA: One of the ways Talk to Me was “flawed” was that Chiwitel Ejiofor (sp? can’t check) blew Don Cheadle off the screen. The movie really needed one more rewrite to account for that.
Mnemosyne
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s also that he’s very New York. The Academy has a very strong anti-New York director bias — it’s one of the reasons it took them so goddamned long to give Martin Scorsese an Oscar.
Add in the fact that Lee is a confrontational artist who makes the oldsters of the Academy uncomfortable, and he ain’t getting an award until he’s almost too old to totter onstage and they give him a Lifetime Achievement statuette.
Mnemosyne
@handsmile:
I’m not 100 percent sure Ang Lee is an American citizen. I assume he probably is since he’s lived here since 1978, but he immigrated from Taiwan.
Fun fact from his IMDb bio:
mr
@debg:
I saw it in Wichita a couple of weeks ago and it is still playing (albeit, it’s in one theater and its “smaller” screens, i.e., not one reserved for the latest about street racing superheroes.)
Mnemosyne
@handsmile:
Also, too, I really do think that Django Unchained, goofy and gory as it was, helped prop the door open to let movies like 12 Years A Slave be made. Most of the previous movies about slavery and/or the Civil War were financial flops, but the success of Django Unchained gave producers a talking point when it came to getting new films about slavery financed. So half a thumbs up to Tarantino for opening that door.
handsmile
@Mnemosyne:
Well, I suspect one of your colleagues at the Giant Mouse Conglomerate would know about Lee’s citizenship. Or complicate it, if that were to be deemed profitable. :)
Cool fun fact, that!
I will concede a fingernail-paring up to Mr. Tarantino for whatever “Django’s” success might have afforded “12 Years…” I’m trying to imagine the pitch in meetings with potential producers and distributors: “Yeah man, it’s like QT’s slave movie, but bloodier!”
I believe we have previously exchanged dissenting opinions on the talents and virtues of Mr. Tarantino.
Omnes Omnibus
@John PM: Lee has never been nominated as a director. He has one nomination as a screen writer and one for a documentary.
Cervantes
@Elizabelle: Thanks much.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne:
Concur. Django Unchained was way more accomplished and culturally relevant and just plain fun than “Lincoln.” (Steven Spielberg showing up in a coat and tie to film that one — give me a break — although props for Daniel Day Lewis.) Django showed slavery, and white non-slave owners’ concurrence, if not active support, in propping up slavery.
Not just jawboning about it.
[All this and the Grand Tetons too.]
I think 12 Years owes more to Django Unchained than higher brow fare.
A wiggle of the toes to Mr. Tarantino.
PS: I wouldn’t say that 12 Years was bloodier (save for one whipping), but no leavening with humor. So a harder movie to watch. Which may be why it’s not finding as big an audience.
Cervantes
@handsmile:
Thanks. And as for this:
I dare not ask how frequently they screen it now.
sparrow
@cmorenc: That’s fair. I haven’t seen it yet. I have a very strong aversion to watching suffering, and I know that this movie is full of it so I’ve been coming up with excuses. Still, I should see it.
Omnes Omnibus
@sparrow: I am sure it is going to one of those movies I make myself see (like “Boys Don’t Cry” or “American History X”) that I will be better for having seen but one that I will not want to watch a second time.
Narwhal
Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave is the greatest movie ever made.
Fixed it.
Monala
Knowing that anecdote does not equal data, when my husband and I saw the film (at a suburban theater, in a pretty diverse community), I was disappointed to see that we were the only two black people in the room (the theater was about 2/3 full). So it may not be true that across the country, primarily black audiences are watching 12 Years.
revrick
The thing I came away from watching 12 Years a Slave is that in the face of all the violence, cruelty and systematic degradation that was American slavery there exists this incredible well of grace and forgiveness that wells from the souls of African- Americans. I mean, why the hell haven’t they slitted our throats yet?
See also, Mandela, Nelson and apartheid.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
I agree.
Haven’t been to a theater in almost a decade, I watch on line. May have to break that chain and see this one. But I agree with @Schlemizel: as well. Is this film going to tell me anything I don’t already know? Is it going to enlighten me? Or only piss me off worse at racist assholes? On the other hand from what I hear the film is well done and the people involved should be supported because every time crap is exposed some people might realize that their racist attitudes are just wrong.
Ruckus
@revrick:
A great point.
PJ
@Schlemizel: 12 Years a Slave isn’t just about saying “Slavery is Bad!” It’s about how any system that relies on violence and lawlessness warps every person who lives under it. Slavery, thankfully, is no longer prevalent in most of the world, but systems which rely on violence, including, say, our penal system, are still thriving, and there are some in America (e.g., the architects of the Iraq war), who feel that law is just a bother better dispensed with. McQueen’s other movies aren’t just about their nominal subjects – Hunger is not just about hunger strikers, but the passage from life to death, and how much control we have over our lives; Shame is not just about sex addiction, but how lack of self-control and boundaries undermines anyone’s life.
PJ
@Elizabelle: 12 Years a Slave was filmed before Django Unchained was released.
PJ
@revrick: Perhaps because, having experienced (or having their ancestors experience) terrible injustice visited upon them for the color of their skin, they had no overwhelming desire to do that to others?
handsmile
A thread long unspooled, but…
Perhaps all these nominations for “12 Years a Slave” – some which will likely result in awards – will help with the film’s box office. It deserves nothing less. So, do your part and go see it!
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/dec/12/golden-globes-2014-nominations
@PJ:
I must say I don’t recall seeing your nym before on this blog. My apologies for that neglect if so. Your single-sentence summaries of McQueen’s several films were truly eloquent and insightful. I look forward to reading more of your commentary here.
revrick
@PJ: Oh, I heartily concur. The once oppressed are seldom as eager to oppress others. Still, it’s something of a miracle, isn’t it?
Elizabelle
@PJ:
Thank you.
And do comment more!