MARSHALL Screening for Directors Guild of America New York
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Here’s what I have to say.
I don’t presume all black folks have the same backgrounds, interests, or expertise. Your race should not determine the subject matter of your films. If you’re a black person and want to make a movie about the Irish potato famine or the life of Montezuma, you should not feel restricted in telling a story that speaks to your heart. You are under no obligation to make “black” movies because of someone else’s presumptions about you. In fact, telling non-black stories may make your career easier, because you won’t have to argue with financiers about the commercial viability of black subject matter. However, you should not avoid black subjects because of those commercial challenges—because the truth is, the most commercial movie you can make is the movie that you believe in the most.
Conversely, being black doesn’t make you an automatic expert on black people or black anything. There are a lot of factors that go into understanding the cultural nuances of a subject: age, gender, the range of cultural influences you experienced growing up. “Blackness” is a term that encompasses a vast range of topics, from the spiritual practices of the Ibo to the importance of sugar as an agricultural product in colonial America, to President Obama’s appreciation of the lyrics of Kendrick Lamar. Although filmmaking was my primary field of study in college, I took a lot of courses in African American history and literature. Even though I grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois, one of the demographically “black” towns in America, rigorous academic study sharpened my appreciation of my childhood experiences. Those lessons learned have paid tremendous dividends throughout my career.
Regardless of your political affiliation, level of acculturation with white society or choice of topic, you’re going to face racism in your career. Don’t get me wrong—I find this industry full of really good people who don’t harbor hate in their hearts. Very often it is institutional racism, which is too often accepted as “the way it is,” instead of questioning presumptions about what the market will bear.
Reginald Hudlin (center) is a veteran producer (Django Unchained) and director (Marshall, shown here)
There will always be experts who tell you that black films don’t travel overseas. You have to decide whether they are speaking generally, or if they’re accurately pointing out a weakness in your project. Film finance relies on historical models. The flaw in that approach is that when you’re making movies that haven’t been made before, there are no appropriate points of comparison. You can’t drive forward looking in a rearview mirror. That kind of innovation carries a certain amount of financial risk. But I would argue that today’s audiences are tired of rehashed formulas and are hungry for something that looks different. No one thinks the black project is the most commercial idea, the same way no one would have predicted that Eddie Murphy would be the most successful cast member out of Saturday Night Live’s long history, or that Barack Obama would be an extremely popular two-term president. Successful black films are always treated as an aberration. It’s important to understand the business enough to challenge these presumptions, which often don’t hold up to close analysis.
When defending their stance on the limited viability of black films, studios still qualify their statement by saying movies that star Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson, and every other black star don’t count. That’s one heck of a qualifier. But if you want to make movies, you don’t let anything stop you. It hasn’t stopped me since I began my career. As I measure the ups and downs of the business, I see opportunity for black filmmakers growing every day.
Sometimes your encounter with prejudice may be more personal. Your qualifications or your potential may be questioned by someone who would never characterize their “gut feelings” as having any type of racial bias. I don’t know if the challenges of a black filmmaker working in Hollywood are harder than being a black stockbroker on Wall Street, or a black neurosurgeon—elite professions are challenging regardless of race, though if you’re in the NBA, you don’t have to overcome a presumption of incompetence.
After a lifetime for fighting against the “soft bigotry of low expectations” or various kinds of hateration because of race, income, gender, or personal style, it’s easy to get into the habit of expecting people to misunderstand you, shortchange you, to not appreciate you. Early on, I would talk myself out of opportunities because I could see six chess moves away that it would turn out hard. It’s one thing to plan for the worst, but it’s another to get so in your own head that you don’t actually see what people might say. People can surprise you, circumstances sometimes change in your favor, and you don’t actually know everything.
Chadwick Boseman plays Thurgood Marshall in Hudlin’s biopic Marshall
The most important thing you can do to be a successful black moviemaker is to understand every aspect of moviemaking. Understand it from the technical side, understand it as an audience member, understand the studio system of production as well as idiosyncratic ways of different independent moviemakers.
A lot of people say it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. That’s not true. Connections are worthless without talent and drive. However, you’re not going to get a job in movies reading the want ads. One of the best things about film school is making friends with people who may succeed in the movie business and might be there for you later in your career. But even if you don’t go to film school, get out and meet people who share your common interests. Lots of times it’s very hard for black people who have few white friends to feel comfortable socializing in what is very often an all-white environment. A lot of people become stand-offish in those environments, or preemptively hostile; others are so desperate to be liked that they embarrass themselves. Tolerance—and help—is a two-way street. They may not share your sense of style or drink the same drinks as you, but still, seek out good knowledgeable people. You have to look out for your friends if you want them to look out for you.
It’s also important to have a working knowledge of global cinema. There are great filmmakers in Japan, China, India, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, so many more places. See which stories translate universally despite their cultural specificity, and which stories aren’t relatable to you. I grew up watching the films of Akira Kurosawa, who certainly wasn’t thinking about me as an audience member on the other side of the world 50 years later. The lesson is that great storytelling transcends barriers and stands the test of time. That should be your aspiration.
Like a lot of black folks, I grew up with my parents telling me I had to be twice as good as my white peers to get a fair chance. That advice still holds. While true equality means blacks can be as mediocre as their white counterparts, we are nowhere near there yet. So keep grinding.
Reginald Hudlin’s Marshall opens in theaters October 13, 2017, courtesy of Open Road Films. Photographs by Barry Wetcher.
This article appears in MovieMaker‘s 2018 Complete Guide to Making Movies.
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A mistake many biopics make is the need to show the audience everything: childhood, adversity, ascent into greatness, downfall (sometimes), and the inevitable coda where the lesson of the person’s life is hammered over our head.
Using this formula, a singular talent is reduced to a Hollywood stereotype. The set-up leaves no time for the film to explain historical context as to why the person is important in the first place.
Smarter real-life portraits — like Reginald Hudlin’s “Marshall” — find a crucial moment in the figure’s life and dig into the details that helps the audience understand the subject’s importance. Through this snippet of time, if done correctly, the film tells us what we need to know without submitting to hyperbole and melodrama.
In this film, future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman) is introduced as a crusading attorney for the NAACP. Seeking out innocent criminal defendants prosecuted because of their skin color, Marshall learns of a case involving Joseph Spell (Sterling K. Brown), accused of raping an affluent white woman (Kate Hudson) in upscale Maryland.
This is pre-Brown v. Board of Education, and Marshall is the organization’s only attorney. He teams up with reluctant local counsel Sam Friedman (Josh Gad), goaded into the case by his law partner and brother despite misgivings about his professional reputation. The unlikely duo tracks down evidence, faces intimidation and violence, and contends with a criminal justice system that stymies their client’s rights at every turn.
“Marshall” chooses not to focus on the titular character’s sweeping civil rights victories or his historical role as a jurist, but rather on his skill and intuition as a litigator. Perhaps Hudlin picks this court case because it reminds the audience of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The contours of the case won’t be much of a surprise. In fact, the case is regrettably routine for the time period and, in and of itself, isn’t all that substantial.
What is surprising is the film’s attention to Marshall’s efforts to prep witnesses, raise objections, and compose closing arguments. The film wisely shows the importance of picking your jury — knowing which questions to ask in voir dire and reading body language. A good lawyer understands a case can be won or lost at this stage.
Most films find these details boring, but “Marshall” understands such nuance is not only compelling to a courtroom drama but paints the portrait of Marshall’s great legal mind. By understanding why he was such a great lawyer, the film shows why he was great in other aspects of his life.
While he’s best known for early ’90s comedies like “House Party” and “Boomerang,” Hudlin proves he can take a seemingly irrelevant snippet of Marshall’s career and use that to extrapolate larger understanding.
Boseman also does a great job of embodying the character without presumption. There’s no swagger, no grandeur signaling “this is a future Supreme Court Justice.” This is a job, a larger calling to justice not yet fully formed.
The actor can add this to his stunning roster of historical performances. The film “42” didn’t aim for much, but Boseman’s Jackie Robinson depicted a man who could not act on his anger for threat of derailing his greatness. The James Brown biopic “Get On Up” had no business being as good as it was. Boseman embodied the Godfather of Soul as a savvy, if not somewhat unhinged, showman.
Gad’s Sam Friedman is revealing for the comic actor as a man conflicted about fitting into his community despite swirling anti-Semitism. This adds another interesting layer of conflict to the film. Finally there’s Missouri native Brown as the criminal defendant. After his turn as Christopher Darden in “The People vs. O.J. Simpson,” I’d watch him in just about anything.
“Marshall” might come off as slight to someone wanting a full-blown look at this man of great influence. But a discerning eye reveals a lot more interesting detail that makes the film worth catching.
In real life, James Owen is a lawyer and executive director of energy policy group Renew Missouri. He created/wrote for Filmsnobs.com from 2001-2007 before an extended stint as an on-air film critic for KY3, the NBC affiliate in Springfield. He was named a Top 20 Artist under the Age of 30 by The Kansas City Star when he was much younger than he is now.
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