Fox Searchlight invested a lot in "The Birth of a Nation," but now an old rape case against filmmaker Nate Parker has re-surfaced; Laika Studios CEO Travis Knight makes his directing debut with "Kubo"; pianist and composer Manuel Lima is spending 10 days inside a cube on the Sunset Strip.
Travis Knight moves from corner office to director's chair for 'Kubo and the Two Strings'
Travis Knight has been the President and CEO of the stop-motion animation studio Laika since 2009, but the studio's fourth and latest film marks the first time the boss has been in the director's chair.
"Kubo and the Two Strings" tells the story of a young boy from a small Japanese town who goes on a journey to discover his family's magical history. The film is Laika's most ambitious to date — more than 20,000 faces were made for the Kubo puppet alone.
The Frame's John Horn spoke with Knight about why he wanted to become a stop-motion animator, the challenges of running a company and directing his first feature film at the same time, and the lack of Asian voice actors in a film that's set in Japan.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
Growing up in an artistic household:
Art has always been a huge part of my family. I think the Knight boys have a long history of disappointing their fathers. My grandfather was a newspaper publisher, he was a lawyer, he was an upstanding member of his community. When his boy, my father [Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike] told him that he had a deep and abiding love to make shoes for a living, it devastated my grandfather.
Fast forward 30 years later and I tell my dad that I love playing with dolls, you could imagine the reaction. But he's always been incredibly supportive and my mother has as well. The love that we have, the respect that we have for art and artistry in our family is something that was a huge part of the fabric of my life growing up.
Why Knight took the director's chair for "Kubo and the Two Strings":
We shepherd these projects for a long periods of time and we take those things on that we love and we're very discriminating. As we sort of developed this project and started to see those parallels between my life and this film, it really became something that I felt like I could bring a perspective to that would be special and would do justice to the story.
When I was growing up, I was an obsessive fan of big fantasy epics, and that was a gift from my mother. In fact, when she was pregnant with me and when she was recovering in the hospital after I was born, she was reading Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings." So in a very real way, Tolkien and fantasy had been a part of my life since the moment I took my first breath. Because of all of those things and more, it was something that I decided that I was going to take on.
Being a CEO and director at the same time:
Being both an artist and an executive, being someone who's creating the work and someone who is overseeing it and guiding the company, I think that that can create a certain degree of tension, but it's something that I've been doing for a long while. So I have a foot in each world and I think that each job actually makes me better [at] the other.
With the way we make films, we have to be incredibly disciplined because we have to keep the budgets as lean as we possibly can. We're an independent animation house, we're not a part of some multinational media conglomerate. So we've got to be very smart about how we're using our resources.
This project is by far the most ambitious thing that we've ever taken on just in terms of the scale — effectively, we wanted to make a stop-motion David Lean film, a monumental Kurosawan myth in miniature. Because of that, we had to be very, very smart early on in how we were planning and organizing and scheduling it. You have to wear both hats when you're in the role that I'm in, but at the end it was by far the most creatively satisfying thing that I've ever done in my whole career.
The lack of Asian voices in "Kubo and the Two Strings":
Evaluating casting can be a very opaque process. Sometimes people don't know what leads to the decisions that you make. The key thing is that we want to make sure that we're casting actors who can bring things to life with their voice. But I fully recognize and appreciate that inclusion matters, that representation matters.
I think that someone's history and tradition and life experience can evoke a better, richer performance, which is why on all the films that we've done we have a diverse cast. I believe that's true for this movie as well. We have a real terrific cast of actors from all over the world, with all manner of life experiences including a number of terrific actors of Japanese ancestry, and I think that makes the film richer.
Laika and its history of diverse storytelling:
Diverse stories that are different and have a different point of view are typically not made in Hollywood. You could look at our own history: When we started making "Coraline" 10 years ago, I felt like we had all the key ingredients for what would be a spectacular film. We had a best-selling novel written by a master, we had a brilliant visionary director, and yet when we met with film studio after film studio, they were not interested in making our movie.
The refrain that we kept hearing over and over again [was], You can't have an animated film with a female protagonist. But there's a corollary: Unless she's a princess. When we made "ParaNorman," we had an openly gay lead character in the film. After that movie came out we were threatened with boycotts, people rallied the MPAA to give us a more restrictive rating or to get our film thrown out of the theaters.
The broad point of view is that when you look at everything we've done, we tell diverse stories with diverse characters, brought to life by a diverse artist.
"Kubo and the Two Strings" is in theaters on Aug. 19.
Please don't run over the piano player
Brazilian composer Manuel Lima pushes out a panel on one side of his temporary live-work space, revealing a secret door, and invites me inside. The Cube is a steel frame covered in translucent white fabric and it is Lima’s base for 10 days. It’s set on a triangle of lawn on a busy corner of Sunset Strip, just down the street from the old Tower Records building.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeuTrtpQtSI
The tour doesn’t take long – The Cube is only 100-square-feet. On one side is a tiny console piano, borrowed from Lima’s landlord. Next to that is a rotary fan and a subwoofer, which provides bass notes for one of his compositions. A California pepper tree extends through the center of The Cube, spreading a shady canopy overhead. Dozens of red light bulbs hang from its branches. A white wooden box serves as a storage unit and table and converts into a bed, where Lima will sleep.
I'm considering everything I do in this cube as a performance — eating, sleeping and playing the piano, they're all part of the same performance that is the life in The Cube.
Life in The Cube has a set routine – like any day job. After a morning run and breakfast at a nearby restaurant, Lima plays the piano from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a second shift in the evening. The structure is important to the piece, he says.
I really don't like the idea that the artist is doing something really special [that's] beyond regular people. I think it should be the opposite way. Everybody should realize in little things, the art in it. For me, an artist is just a worker, just like someone [who makes] tables, or builds cars or anything else. It's just a process that you do over and over.
Lima is 35, with a slightly goofy smile and a curly mess of brown hair; his uniform is a white t-shirt and faded jeans. He recently earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from CalArts. He began playing the piano as a child in his native São Paulo, Brazil. “I started taking flute lessons when I was six,” he says. But he was drawn to the piano in his flute teacher’s house. “He would never let me touch the piano … but I really just wanted to explore it. I bothered my parents to put me in a piano lesson just so I could see what it is, a piano. And then that was it.”
On top of the piano in The Cube sits a '70s-era radio, which Lima uses as a springboard for improvisation.
The day piece, I call it "Sunset Boulevard." I just tune in the radio, some random station, and I listen to that for three minutes, and I do a piano loop of what I'm hearing.
Lima twirls the dial, and a the sounds of AM radio flood by – Mexican music, car commercials, talk show rants. He settles on Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” His fingers move over the piano keys and he picks up on the bass riff, playing a few notes, then switches off the radio. He sits quietly for a moment, eyes closed, his hands on the keys, and lets out a deep sigh. Then he begins to play.
“Sunset Boulevard” is a repeating series of musical loops, which build as the day goes by. The music is informed not only by the radio, but by the world immediately outside The Cube – the sounds of traffic, the curiosity of passersby, the changing light as the day passes. Lima admits that living, working and playing in such an iconic and exposed setting is a challenge, but, as an artist, he believes it’s an essential one.
I know it's going to sound strange, but for me it's like getting outside of the box. Because as an artist, we create something that's very personal. And we have to remove ourselves from the mass media. Performing there, it's like connecting again with this world.
At five o’clock, an alarm rings, telling Lima it’s time to take a break. He sets up a table and a group of folding chairs, and a nearby coffee shop brings over a container of tea. The public is invited to visit with Lima. Friends from CalArts are there to offer support; one offers to do his laundry during his stay. People who live nearby walk their dogs over to visit.
After dinner, Lima re-enters The Cube to begin the evening shift and begins his second piece, a light-and-sound composition called “Red Light Piano.” As the light fades to dark blue over Sunset Boulevard, The Cube begins to pulse with blinking red lights. The Cube is transformed into an inviting lantern of warmth, with a changing pattern of shadows. The sound of the piano and the bass notes of the subwoofer mingle with the Friday night traffic.
People passing by on their way to drinks or dinner are drawn to the glowing structure with the slight man inside, silhouetted at the piano. They stop out of curiosity and stay to listen. Throughout the evening, small groups drift toward The Cube, then go off to continue their evening. At 10 p.m., Lima calls it a night.
I’m tired. Actually, the whole day, I was apprehensive – I don’t know why. But I feel somehow it’s working.
And with that, Lima prepares a night's sleep in The Cube. When his alarm goes off at 7 a.m., it will be the start of another working day.
You can visit “Sunset Cube” through Aug. 21. It’s located at 8775 Sunset Blvd.
How Nate Parker's legal past is clouding 'The Birth of a Nation'
“The Birth of a Nation” is filmmaker Nate Parker’s answer to the racist D.W. Griffith movie of the same name from more than a century ago.
The upcoming film, which Parker directed, produced, co-wrote and stars in, focuses on Nat Turner’s slave rebellion in 1831. Fox Searchlight bought the distribution rights to “The Birth of a Nation” at this year’s Sundance Film Festival for a record-setting $17.5 million dollars.
Now, the film’s Oct. 7 scheduled release has been eclipsed by media reports about Parker’s arrest and trial for rape while he was a student at Penn State University in 1999. Parker was acquitted, but the alleged victim of the rape — a fellow student who claimed Parker and another man had sex with her while she was unconscious — later took her own life. Her sister says she never recovered from the incident. The other defendant, who would become Parker’s screenwriting partner, was convicted, but later freed on appeal.
Parker has posted a statement on Facebook that says, in part: “I see now that I may not have shown enough empathy even as I fought to clear my name. Empathy for the young woman and empathy for the seriousness of the situation I put myself and others in.”
Rebecca Ford is a film reporter at The Hollywood Reporter, and she joined us to discuss how the rape charge and the news reports about the case are clouding the release of "The Birth of a Nation."
Interview Highlights:
What has Nate Parker said in the last couple of days?
He just released a long statement on Facebook, saying that he didn't know that the woman who accused him of rape had actually committed suicide and that he was very emotionally affected by that news. It was sort of an emotional explanation, but he maintains that he was innocent and that the sex was consensual.
We talked with Parker at Sundance, right after Fox Searchlight bought "The Birth of a Nation" for a record $17.5 million. Here's what he said then, when we asked him about why he ultimately went with Fox Searchlight when a lot of other people were bidding on the film:
I think what separated Fox Searchlight from the others, for me personally, was their desperation to get this film out to the global market, so there can be healing, and there can be real, sustainable change.
I think Nate Parker sees this movie, even if it's a period film, as having a lot of modern relevance. And part of the story about the marketing was that he was going to be touring the nation, talking to colleges, church groups, classes. How has any of that been affected by the news?
I think that's the biggest problem facing Fox Searchlight right now. They had planned to have Nate Parker be the face of this movie. He's very passionate about its message, and since February he's been attending a ton of events, picking up a few awards, and speaking at colleges. Now, the question is: Is it appropriate to bring him to colleges after all that's come out in the past few days?
It could result in a huge shift for what Fox Searchlight is actually going to do for this film. Like you said, they paid a massive amount of money for this movie and it's a wide release, which is not what they always do. They're known for these [acclaimed] films that they slowly release in theaters throughout the country, so they took a huge risk with this film and they were really depending on Nate to be the face of it. So we don't know for sure, but it sounds like there could be changes for their plans in the next couple months.
This makes me wonder about something which has happened in the past, for example with Jodie Foster, after John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate President Reagan. [Hinckley was obsessed with the actress.] If you were interviewing Jodie Foster, you were told that you couldn't ask about that issue. Is it a possibility that Fox Searchlight will say, You can't ask Nate Parker about this? He's talking about a movie about emancipation and liberty, so that would be incredibly odd, wouldn't it?
Yeah,he keeps saying that he's never shied away from questions about this subject, so I can't really imagine the reps trying to do that these days, especially, as you say, with this topic. And there's a lot of violence in this film and there's a rape in the film, and it just seems unlikely that they'd be able to tell outlets they couldn't ask about this topic.
Nate Parker has said that he's never hidden this part of this past. Do you have any belief that Fox Searchlight knew about this in January when they bought the film for a record Sundance sale price?
He's said that there's always been a footnote on his Wikipedia page that said he was acquitted of a rape accusation, but that's really all it said. From what I know about how Sundance deals work, they happen overnight, like they're up until 6 a.m. bidding against a lot of other distributors to win the film, and it's such a crazed and competitive environment.
Everyone I've talked to says that you don't spend time doing background checks or Googling the creators or the people involved in films — that's never been a part of the process. So I feel like they didn't know to what degree this was [known] before they were bidding for the film. But maybe that will change in the future for distributors before they put down a huge amount of money next Sundance. At the time, I don't think it was something that would've come up.