B o s t o n
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DECEMBER 25, 2016
Movies
August Wilson (in an undated photo) had one request regarding the film adaptation of his play “Fences”: a black director. Denzel Washington (below, on set) is its director and star.
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ugust Wilson’s searing play “Fences” opened on Broadway in 1987, selling out 526 performances and earning Wilson the Pulitzer Prize, the Tony Award, and the Drama Critics’ Circle Award. The production took in $11 million at the box office, a record for any non-musical production at the time. Paramount Pictures snapped up the film rights that year for $1 million at the request of a young actor named Eddie Murphy, who wanted to play a supporting role. Three decades later, the long-awaited film, directed by Denzel Washington, who stars alongside Viola Davis, opens nationwide on Christmas Day. Wilson died of liver cancer at the age of 60 in 2005, so he is not around to share the glory. But given the play’s enormous success, its soaring language, and universal appeal, why has it taken so long to hit the big screen? Therein lies a tale about one playwright’s dogged insistence on cultural authenticity — and his refusal to back down. Set in Wilson’s native Pittsburgh in 1957, “Fences” tells the story of patriarch Troy Maxson, a veteran of Negro League baseball who couldn’t get a shot at the Major Leagues because of the color of his skin. He is a garbage collector who has done time in jail and harbors deep rage. He battles with his son Cory and wrestles with the mythological Mr. Death, daring the Grim Reaper to try and get him. He is a tragic hero, a King Lear of his time. Wilson and his agent/attorney, John Breglio, met with Murphy at his New Jersey estate. “Eddie was incredibly respectful and deferential to August,” Breglio says. “He was in awe of
DAVID COOPER
How ‘Fences’ finally became a film Decades after August Wilson’s play conquered Broadway, it’s on the big screen, thanks to Denzel Washington BY PAT TI HARTIGAN GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
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the property.” Murphy was fresh off such box-office hits as “Trading Places” and “Beverly Hills Cop,” and Wilson had just one request: a black director. Wilson later recalled that Murphy told him, “I don’t want to hire nobody just ’cause they’re black,” to which Wilson replied, “Neither do I.” Wilson wrote about that conversation in the October 1990 issue of Spin magazine, which was guest-edited by director Spike Lee and featured an article headlined “The New Black Cinema.” Wilson reiterated his call for a black director — not based on race, but on cultural responsibility. He said that his request was met with “blank vacant stares and the pious shaking of heads” by Paramount executives. Breglio attended the meetings at Paramount and says Wilson was angry and frustrated. And he stood his ground, despite some claims that his demand was a form of reverse racism. Wilson’s widow, Constanza Romero, says the playwright was keen on Charles Burnett, director of the 1978
film “Killer of Sheep.” At one point, a Paramount executive sent the project to director Barry Levinson (“Rain Man”), who is white, and Levinson flew to New York to see the play. But that arrangement didn’t work out. While there was no contractual clause that allowed Wilson to choose a director, his words had power and ignoring them would invite a hornet’s nest of issues. “The people at Paramount were walking on fire,” Romero says. “August had a way of making people hear him and be scared of going against his wishes, and he was not going to be one of those writers who melt into the background.” The notion that no black director was “qualified” infuriated Wilson, who once quit a job at a toy store when the manager warned him not to steal from the stockroom. He wrote, “The skills of black lawyers, doctors, dentists, accountants, and mechanics are often greeted with skepticism, even from other blacks. ‘Man, you sure you know
Rambling Rose, by any other name
“Lynchian lounge music” in Taste Café by the Providence band Volcano Kings starting at 6:15 p.m. Fo r m o re i n f o r m a t i o n g o t o www.mfa.org.
MFA celebrates the films of Laura Dern By Loren King
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or more than 30 years, Laura Dern’s penchant for slightly off-kilter but basically decent characters has created a rich and textured body of work. “Woman Inherits the Earth: The Films of Laura Dern,” continuing this week at the Museum of Fine Arts, isn’t a complete offering of her prodigious output of films, but it’s an impressive sampling of Dern’s daring performances, starting with her earliest leading role at 18 in Joyce Chopra’s “Smooth Talk” (1985). Based on a short story by Joyce Carol Oates, “Smooth Talk” casts Dern as Connie, a self-absorbed teen infatuated with the discovery of her own sexual power. When Connie attracts the attention of a predatory older man (Treat Williams), she finds herself
caught up in a tense adult situation. “Smooth Talk” screens Dec. 30 at 4 p.m. Working with another woman director, Martha Coolidge, Dern earned her first Oscar nomination for “Rambling Rose” (1991), another incisive portrait of a young woman trying to navigate her own blossoming sexuality, this time in 1930s Georgia. Dern’s Rose has been sent to work as a servant for the Hillyer family ostensibly because of her “promiscuity.” Dern’s mother, Diane Ladd, plays the Hillyer family matriarch and also received an Oscar nod for supporting actress. It screens Dec. 29 at 5:30 p.m. Jumping ahead 25 years, the series presents Kelly Reichardt’s much-acclaimed 2016 feature “Certain Women” on Dec. 29 at 8 p.m. Dern plays a harried, well-meaning small-town lawyer trying to deal with an erratic client
Patti Hartigan can be reached at pattihartigan@gmail.com.
Treat Williams and Laura Dern star in “Smooth Talk,” screening at the MFA as part of its film series “Woman Inherits the Earth: The Films of Laura Dern.”
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what you doing?’ ” No doubt he would have had quite a few words about last winter’s controversy over the Academy Awards, when only white actors and actresses were nominated for Oscars for the second year in a row, prompting the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite. Wilson could wait. He was intent on finishing his American Century Cycle, a series of 10 plays about the African-American experience in the 20th century. Breglio says Wilson routinely turned down screenplay offers. He did write a few versions of the “Fences” screenplay, although the film that was made uses the original script. And Wilson didn’t go to the movies much, although his favorite film was Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather,” partly because he admired the veritas that shined through the lens of an ItalianAmerican directing a film about his own culture. Wilson did want to see his play reach a wider audience. And so it was fortuitous when Washington and Davis starred in a sold-out Broadway revival of “Fences” in 2010. Both actors won Tony Awards. A light bulb went off in Hollywood. Here was a huge star who understood Wilson’s characters deep in his soul. And in 2015, Washington inked a deal with HBO to produce adaptations of all of Wilson’s plays. Washington said in a recent telephone interview from London that he had just learned the full backstory of the big-screen “Fences,” though it is widely known in theater and film circles. Actor Russell Hornsby, who portrays Maxson’s older son, Lyons, in the film, addressed the controversy headon in a separate interview. “It is important to have a black director,” Hornsby says. “It is not just about telling the story, but about cultural specificity. Denzel says he knows what brown hair smells like in the morning. That is cultural specificity, putting on that Vaseline.” Both he and Washington note that Martin Scorsese could have directed “Schindler’s List,” and Steven Spielberg could have directed “GoodFellas,” but the films would have been less authentic. “There are cultural differences, not racial differences, that are specific to African-American culture,” Washington says. And there are touches in the film that ring true to Washington’s own childhood in Mount Vernon, N.Y. — religious icons on the walls, church calendars, advertisements for funeral homes. Plastic slipcovers guard the living room furniture. “We were never allowed to sit on the — quote, unquote — ‘good’ furniture,” Washington says. Wilson would surely appreciate those details. His cycle celebrated the people he knew growing up in Pittsburgh. He captured their values, their rhythms. “He exalted them,” Hornsby s ay s . “ He m a d e t h e m k i n g s a n d queens. Society hasn’t done that. He made us matter in a way that no one ever has.” And it took a star of Washington’s magnitude to get the film done. “I just wish August was around to see it,” says Breglio. “His day has come, finally.”
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in the first of Reichardt’s trio of vignettes (the others star Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, and Lily Gladstone) all set in the desolate open spaces of Montana. Reichardt adapted “Certain Women” from three short stories by Montana native Maile Meloy. The film, which has drawn critical praise, is the latest example of Dern’s career-long collaborations with adventurous directors, including Paul Thomas Anderson and David Lynch. In Anderson’s “The Master,” which will screen on 35mm Dec. 28 at 7:30 p.m., Dern has a small but crucial role as Helen Sullivan, a devout follower and benefactor of cult
leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who begins to question Dodd’s teachings and methods. Dern made four films with Lynch, including “Inland Empire” (2006), which closes the series on Dec. 30 at 7 p.m. Dern gives a powerhouse performance as Nikki Grace, a married actress working on a Hollywood film about a love affair in the American South. Nikki becomes involved with her costar (Justin Theroux) and the two rapidly lose track of the line between reality and cinematic fantasy. T h e M FA i s s c r e e n i n g D a v i d Lynch’s personal 35mm print of “Inland Empire.” It will be preceded by
Onscreen play Audiences can feast on more fearless acting with the “National Theater Live” production of Harold Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” starring Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. After a run on Broadway, the production returned to London’s West End stage where it was broadcast live to movie theaters. The Coolidge Corner Theatre hosts an encore presentation on Dec. 29 at 7 p.m. McKellen and Stewart starred in Samuel Becket’s “Waiting for Godot” in 2009, then reunited with director Sean Mathias for Pinter’s 1975 dark comedy. The actors play a pair of aging writers whose night of drinking and telling tales gradually turns into a power game. The broadcast of “No Man’s Land” will be followed by a question and answer session with the cast and the director. Fo r m o re i n f o r m a t i o n g o t o www.coolidge.org. Loren King can be reached at loren.king@comcast.net.