BOP Interview: Dee Rees
By Ryan Mazie
January 19, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
“We are trying to use the film as an outreach and get it in an academic setting,” said Rees in a roundtable interview in Boston with star Oduye, making promotional rounds for the film, “The responses were really positive [with LGBT community] saying ‘this is me.’” Rees followed by pointing out that the themes of feeling like an outcast go beyond sexuality, “A straight white guy walked up to me at Sundance and said, ‘I’m not gay,’ and I’m like, alright, I’ll get security (laughs). But he said he loved it. It transcends race and sexuality. It’s about identity.”
Adepero, I read that you came dressed to the audition as the character. So once cast, how did you further prepare yourself for feeling your part?
AO: Yes, so when I read the script I immediately related it to that feeling of not feeling free. … Dee made herself available, saying, "Any questions you have, I’m here. Ask." So reading the script, I would email her and we would have these long conversations on email, which was very nice of her to do that (laughs). She recommended a few books … and would have these assignments for us. She told me and [co-star Pernell Walker] to go to a Black and Latino lesbian club in character to get fully immersed in this world. So stuff like that added to the specifics. We went into a straight environment in character, to Dave and Buster’s in Times Square, so it was a lot of cool things like that, which made the world and characters and their relationships more specific. It wasn’t just rehearsing only the lines.
DR: As a director, I’m more interested in having actors understand why they are saying what they are saying as opposed to what they are saying. So creating these shared experiences and making sure the characters have relationships are more important than the lines themselves, because once they have a feel for the character, the rest will come through in the delivery.
What was it like playing the character again some five years later? Did you have any revelations on how to change your performance with more experience or that you are now in a larger world of characters?
AO: From short to feature was a little over three years, so when I did the short, it was this new thing I had never experienced before and had no expectations, but it did pretty well going onto Sundance. So people had this frame of reference now; a performance they can go to. So I was very nervous of not wanting to mess it up. "What more can I bring?" I didn’t want to repeat or copy what I did with certain scenes. Doing a feature, I was like, "God, there is a lot of me in this character." I wrote this long email to Dee, putting it all out, and she was very good [at encouraging me]. So I immediately calmed down. As a person and actor, in three years, I felt more grounded in terms of my approach to the craft and characters.
Dee, same question, what did you bring to the feature length film to make it, as Adepero said, not feel like a repeat or copy of the short?
DR: It was written as a feature [then I made the short from that], so I guess I really tried to focus on the relationships and make all of the characters whole. I worked on [Alike’s parents] Audrey and Arthur the most so that they weren’t these one-dimensional people that come in who had their lines and left. I did monologues from their point of view… One of the things I was worried about was the family dynamic, so for the dinner scene, in the margins of the script I was writing what I could do to jazz it up without changing the script. So I thought of things that, you know, added depth.
Dee, you say this film is semi-autobiographical and you came out when you were 27. This character is 17. Is there something you had in common with Alike at that age?
DR: I had crushes, but I dismissed him. I thought that I just admired her. I didn’t know. I dated guys through most of college, I had feelings for some women, but I pushed them away again. It wasn’t until I lived alone when I feel in love with someone and that it was undeniable.
How was it coming out?
DR: It was funny. When I first told my mom on the phone she said, "Oh, you are going to art school, it’s a phase, whatever." (Both laugh). She was really cool, but when I started dating this woman and it was serious, my mom and Grandmother flew in and were like, “Oh my God, what are you doing?’ They had an expectation that I was traumatized in some way and that it was a symptom of something else. I had to convince them that it’s not something else, I’m the same person I’ve always been. My Dad flew in the next weekend and he thought it was because I got divorced and I told him it wasn’t because of that and that getting back together definitely wouldn’t help (both laugh).
Then there were some years of silence until they came around. My mom spent Christmas with me for the first time last year. The more comfortable I was, the more comfortable they were.
Do you think the coming out issue presented in the film has changed with people being more accepting since you first wrote the script and shot the short?
DR: I think it depends on who you are and where you are from. I’m from Nashville, Tennessee, where it is still not totally cool. I think there is more visibility for gays on TV, but I don’t know if it makes it any easier, necessarily.
AO: I feel like some place like New York City, where I’m from, it may look and seem more easy, because there are places in schools where you can go, but in terms of family dynamics, I don’t think it is any easier. Kids are still being put out of their houses, so it depends.
DR: Los Angeles maybe, but Iowa probably not. There is a fragmenting of identity where you are asked to leave a part of you behind whether it be your queerness or blackness.
Did you ever think of setting it in Nashville?
DR: The story wouldn’t work in Nashville. There wasn’t that space where Alike and Laura could even be themselves in that way. When I moved to Brooklyn that was the first time I saw “out” teenagers on the street. …Also because Nashville is a driving city and you need the public transit.
Have you brought the film back home?
DR: Not yet. I guess [I look forward to it]. Nashville is the buckle of the Bible Belt so we’ll see how it goes (laughs).
Can you talk a bit about the soundtrack? The opening number is … pretty powerful.
AO: (Both laugh) I like how you put that!
It sets a stage for what we’re seeing.
DR: For the opening song, it was important for it to be provocative. You are either gonna get up and leave or you’re locked in, so it weeds out the audience (laughs). But basically it is very important for the audience to feel as uncomfortable as Alike is. Alike is thrust into this hyper-sexual environment and she doesn’t feel at home there, but it is where Laura tells her where she needs to be. We pat you down and shove you in.
For the soundtrack, I wanted it to be female-centric so it is all female voices. There is no monolithic idea of music in women so each character has a different taste in music. Alike is soul, Bina is punk, Laura’s hip-hop, so they have different voices which heightens who they are and as Alike grows, she realizes that there isn’t one way to be and she likes these different types of music – she doesn’t have to be one way and check a box. The soundtrack is largely independent music artists who loved the project and contributed.
…Again, people see the poster and cast and assume it is a hip-hop hood movie and we want to subvert their expectations on every level. You don’t know who these characters are and you have never seen this movie before.
Speaking of the poster, did you have any creative decision in it? I noticed how on the poster and in the beginning of the movie, you define "pariah." What was the choice in that?
DR: Yeah, the definition came, because at every festival, I thought it was a common word, but people asked what it meant. It’s not about a carnivorous fish (laughs). We let the audience choose the poster at the festivals and out of all the options that is what was chosen.
After the intensity of this film, Adepero, as an actress, do you feel like you need to do something completely different now like a Bond girl?
AO: (laughs) I’d love to be a Bond girl… But I just want to continue to tell really awesome stories. I love character driven pieces. Whatever comes and grabs me is where I’ll be. But I’d love to do an action film (laughs).
Would you want to direct that action film, Dee?
DR: (laughs) I’m interested in sci-fi. Phillip K. Dick and all that stuff.
I just finished another script for Focus Features called Bolo [set in the South] and I am working on a [TV series] project with HBO with Viola Davis. Then I have a large print, my next baby, about a woman who is recently divorced and has to redefine happiness.
AO: I’ve just been reading a bunch of scripts with my great team of people so I guess we’ll see.