Q: Bryan, choosing
a musical to direct as your first film could be considered
either a very brave choice or total insanity. Which is it?
BARBER: Actually, it is a bit of both.
I’ve always
loved musicals, from West Side Story to Sound of Music. I
wanted to have fun, and as my background is as a music video
director, I thought it would be an easy transition.
Q: Not only did you direct, you wrote it as well. What was
the incentive?
BARBER: The seed of the story started
with two music video treatments, one for Andre and one
for Big Boi for the “Speakerbox/Love
Below” album. Fortunately, the songs changed so we
never shot the videos, but I wanted to shoot this short film.
Andre and Big Boi wanted to do it and when HBO was looking
to work with first time filmmakers, they read my treatment
and they loved what they read and were blown away. It then
made its way to a feature film, which is crazy because I
didn’t expect that.
Q: As you just said, the film started out as an HBO concept
for a television movie and moved to a full theatrical feature.
What changes occurred in that transformation?
BARBER: I was told to write for the
story not for the money. When I showed HBO my idea, they
asked if I could expand it into a full script. I didn’t worry about whether it
was for a TV or movie budget. I told them if we do the film,
we do the film. I can’t imagine the film having anything
less than what we had. We needed Hinton Battle and the amazing
dance sequences. What would this film be without those sequences?
I also brought in my DP from France, because I needed someone
who understood how to light black flesh tones and understood
1930’s lighting, where it was more about flat light
and shadows. I needed someone who got the wardrobe. I purposely
put flaws in the film, because I think films that are set
in the past can’t look too polished. The clothes should
be a little frayed and people should stumble over each others’ words.
I wanted to transport audiences into the moment. I am an
unconventional person and I come from music videos, which
is an unconventional medium. I was just doing what I knew
how to do. If not for HBO, I couldn’t have done this.
They kept their hands off of it and pushed for me to add
all of the elements that were necessary.
Q: What references did you have in mind for the style of
the film?
BARBER: I came up in the age of hip-hop,
which samples everything music-wise. It is musical gumbo
and everyone can enjoy it. There have been a lot of movies
that have influenced me, such as Amelie, Delicatessen,
and also a few musicals. I was influenced by George Lucas’ American
Graffiti, and even though it was an all white cast, I could
relate to the coming of age aspect to it. Gershwin and
Minnelli were influences to me as well. I also referenced
Cotton Club for the music and fashion, as well as films
like Singing in the Rain.
Q: Can you talk about the fusion of culture and music you
had in this film? What challenges did that create?
BARBER: The fusion was important for
me, especially because this was a musical. I wanted the
music to transcend color lines, even though there were
only African-American characters. The fusion was important
to transport the audience into the 1930’s. With this new MTV reality television generation,
I think to transport them into the 1930’s and sit comfortably
with Cab Calloway or Bessie Smith would have been too difficult
for them, because they are not used to them. I had to give
them something they were used to, so I gave them contemporary
artists performing contemporary songs. This helped ground
the film in that reality. If you were living in the 1930’s,
Cab Calloway would have been the Outkast of that time. I
knew our fan base would be used to Outkast, so I felt the
music would translate. If any act could pull it off, I knew
that Outkast could do it. It was important that I paid homage
to Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith and Jelly Roll Morton because
of their influence on American music. Their music set the
pace for be-bop, swing, jazz and eventually rock, hip-hop
and rhythm and blues. My 17 year-old daughter doesn’t
know who Cab Calloway is, but after this movie, she might
be a little more interested.
Q: There is also an homage to Moulin
Rouge. But going back to those 1930’s films, and
that includes the musicals and the gangster films, what
did you need to infuse the film with to give it that era
of authenticity?
BARBER: I just loved the era from
fashion to art deco architecture to dance. It was something
that was so refreshing to American culture at the time.
Those musicians were creating a new musical style that
led to so much of what we have today. A lot of today’s
generation has forgotten those roots and I felt Andre and
Big Boi were a great way to bridge that gap.
Q: The film deals with class, social structure, infidelity
but never mentions race.
BARBER: Most films of the 1930’s that portray African-Americans
were about overcoming some racial barrier. That is a part
of our history, but there is another part about pursuing
dreams, owning businesses and love. That is what I wanted
to convey in this film. I didn’t want to show racism
in a musical. Musicals transcend color lines and I wanted
to do that, especially with Outkast.
Q: Let’s go back to the writing
of the script. How much of the personalities of Andre,
Big Boi and yourself did you write into the script?
BARBER: My personality is embedded
in both of the characters and their plights through life.
What those characters are trying to accomplish is what
I have been through. Like Percival, I wanted to pursue
my dreams and like Rooster, it’s
about loving being a star, but also having a family. Both
Andre and Big have their personalities rooted in the characters.
I applied aspects of their personalities into the characters
as well. Andre can be shy and introverted and artsy. Big
Boi is outgoing and loves to be the life of the party. They
both had some meat they could sink their teeth into.
Q: You are considered the third member of Outkast because
you have worked with the guys on all of their videos. While
you knew them quite well as musicians, how confident were
you that they could pull off the acting and hit all the right
emotional beats?
BARBER: Andre and I have been friends
since 1993. They both gave me my first video, and we’ve spent so much time
together that I just know all these details about them. For
me, it was just about them committing to the project, and
me being comfortable enough to tell them when I didn’t
like something they were doing
Q: Did you tell them that while shooting?
BARBER: Yeah. During rehearsals I would try to hone in and
let them find what their characters were all about and how
they would play them. We went through a period of honesty.
It is important for actors to be honest with their characters.
In the early stages, it is not honest, because you are playing
with surface. Once they really got honest with their characters,
they were believable and I stopped seeing Outkast. They were
not Big Boi and Andre; they were Percival and Rooster. They
found out what their characters plights were, and they absorbed
them.
Q: Why did you have Percival work in a mortuary?
BARBER: Mortuaries were important because of the message.
The opening scene of the film takes place at a funeral. The
message is that once you are in a funeral, the people in
that room sum up your life. They are your legacy, good or
bad, whether they are telling the truth or not. You cannot
defend yourself. The whole idea of the film is to pursue
your dreams, so once you are dead, whatever you leave behind
is all there is. The funny thing about funeral homes is that,
eventually, we all end up visiting them.
Doing research about how morticians
deal with the bodies was interesting because the funeral
parlor is like a stage. You have the mortician that is
the director, and makes you look nice. Then you have someone
who does the eulogy, and tells this tale about your life.
People dress up, and come hear the stories. Some cry in
the audience, even when they don’t really love you.
So it was all just another metaphor that life is a stage.
Q: You utilized some very unusual
camera techniques. Can you talk about what they meant for
you specifically in the film’s dance numbers and
why you used them?
BARBER: News videos were my training ground. I only had
38 days to shoot this, because we had hurricanes that threw
off our schedule. Each dance performance was shot in one
day. I just shot the way I knew how. There were so many amazing
dancers that did the lindy hop and the swing, and I just
wanted to capture it in a way that I have never seen dance
captured before. Looking at the old stock footage of the
way they danced back then was amazing - you know, how they
flipped each other around and got thrown to the ground. I
thought it was so dynamic. I used young dancers that knew
hip-hop, but I made them learn swing and that added a whole
new spin on it. My part was easy. I only had to shoot it.
They had to dance it over and over again and got their feet
all swollen. I thought what they did was phenomenal.
Q: In reference to the dance, it seems unusual that you
would choose a veteran like Hinton Battle when there are
so many younger hip-hop choreographers that you could have
used?
BARBER: I thought about going with someone younger, but
I knew I needed someone authentic who had experience with
the lindy Hop and swing. When I met Hinton, he was so on
fire to do it and had so many ideas. He got it, and I wanted
to surround myself with people who are passionate. He had
some great ideas and knew some dancers that were phenomenal.
We had a short amount of prep time and he was able to put
it all together.
Q: How did you come up with the idea of the talking flask?
BARBER: The flask came from me wanting
to convey a part of Rooster’s character that was
his conscious. The flask acted as his conscious. He got
it as a kid and throughout the story and his evolution,
he pours his emotion into that flask.
Q: And what about with Andre and the dancing musical notes?
BARBER: Andre’s way of escaping was through his music,
and when he was a kid, his imagination took over and the
notes came to life. In the 1930’s, you could go to
the nickel arcade and see cartoons, so I thought I should
include that aspect in this.
Q: Why did you name the club Church? Is there a religious
overtone to that?
BARBER: I named it that because they
invested their time, emotion and faith in the music. It
is funny, I wanted a song that reflected where we were,
and Big Boi wrote a song called “Get
Up and Go to Church,” which influenced me to write
a scene. I didn’t want it to be a literal church. I
did some research and there were these juke joints that used
to take over abandoned warehouses that made church soap and
they called themselves Church. It just made sense to go in
that direction.
Q: There does seem to be another religious overtone and
that was in the scene with Cicely Tyson, and the importance
of the Bible. Can you talk about why that sequence was so
essential to you?
BARBER: The scene was important because
it passed along the message of being conscious of other
people around you, helping people that you don’t know. Cicely Tyson’s
character is a grandmother who becomes a surrogate parent
to the kids. That happens often in the African-American community,
and I needed to express that to the audience. I think it
is strange that we are losing our respect for our elders.
We see some movies where somebody pushes the grandparent
out of a car. I don’t think that is funny or where
we need to be as a culture.
Q: Do you think you were trying to instill that respect?
BARBER: Yes, I was, especially for
the young men in the audience. I wanted them to invest
in the Rooster character. He was the bad boy of the two.
I wanted these kids to invest their emotion in him and
want to be him, but then see him redeem himself. He didn’t
have to give her the money. No one was there to judge him.
It helped me redeem him to the audience. We saw him cheat
on his wife, and this was a good decision for him to make
to set himself back on the right path. He had this inner
goodness. People are complex.
Q: Would you say Trumpy is named for Donald Trump?
BARBER: You know, let’s say
that. [Laughs.]
Q: Who is the real Sally B. Shelly? I heard that she is
someone close to you.
BARBER: She was my great-grandmother. She gave me my first
film camera, a super 8 mm when I was 11 and this was a dedication
to her. The story was loosely based on part of her life.
She ran away from rural Louisiana and went to San Francisco.
She lied about her age and she was one of the first black
female cable car drivers in San Francisco.
|
