Killer Mike talks about performing in St. Louis on the night the Ferguson decision came down; and actor Benedict Cumberbatch shares the tragic story of the genius who broke the Enigma code;
the indie film version of the Oscars unveils its nominations; and musician Ben Watt talks about his solo career after “Everything But The Girl."
#FergusonDecision: Rapper Killer Mike on his emotional St. Louis speech in the wake of Ferguson
Rapper Killer Mike and his partner, El-P, of the hip-hop group Run the Jewels just happened to be performing in St. Louis Monday night, taking the stage not long after it was announced that charges would not be filed against Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown.
That prompted an impassioned speech by Killer Mike before starting the show (Warning: There is some profanity in the video):
This isn't the first time Killer Mike has spoken out in this matter. In August, the rapper — whose given name is Michael Render — wrote a thoughtful op-ed for Billboard magazine that he said he hoped would serve as a wake-up call to Americans.
Michael Render joined us from the airport in St. Louis to talk about the Ferguson decision, how they'd originally refused to play in St. Louis, and how he's explaining the outcome of the case to his kids.
Interview Highlights:
When did you realize that your show might coincide with the grand jury's decision and did that somehow seem like fate?
It did seem like fate. It was the last show booked on our tour; it was not originally on the tour. When it was first offered, we refused it, and a friend of mine called me personally and just asked me to come out. There's a rapper in St. Louis named TefPoe, who is just an incredible advocate, and I knew that he's a young rapper who needed the support, so based on my friendship with those two people, I agreed to do it. We didn't know the grad jury would be coming back at the same time we were there, but we did know that our music resonated with people, and we needed to be in the market. Fate kind of put everything else together.
Did you ever worry that the show would be called off? And once you realized it wasn't, did you decide then you were going to make your speech?
I was not worried that the show was going to be called off, because I knew that the people of St. Louis were decent enough to come out and rage with us in a respectable way. I was afraid that the city might shut the show down by closing streets, ... but none of that happened. I'd just like to appreciate everybody that came out.
What role do you think artists such as yourself can play in a situation like this?
I think artists have a responsibility to be reflective of their own thoughts and imagination, but also the pulse of where society is. I think that artists can visually express the pain of a civil war, like Picasso did. I think artists have the responsibility to protest drugs decimating the black community, like Basquiat did, and I think that rap is an art born out of social reform. Rap was started by a group of kids that were tired of being gang members. As a rapper, I feel a greater social responsibility than other artists.
In your Billboard article, you wrote from the perspective of being the son of a former police officer. How did that shape your perspective on what happened in Ferguson?
I can understand the fear that cops have for their own safety and with that said, I hyper understand that black men are being made into boogeymonsters in this country. Had that been an 18-year-old white male that argued with a cop, I'm more confident that he would have came out alive.
You're also the father of two sons, and you spoke about being a father last night as well ...
I spoke to both of my sons last night, and I talked to my daughters this morning, and I'm more confused and decimated, because my 7-year-old daughter left a voicemail that she wants to know why the world hates black people. I just can't take it. My father is 50-some-odd years old, and he called me to check on his son, and I'm 39 years old. I'm tired of black fathers having to walk around with this feeling. It's not fair, it's not right.
It feels as if this has been an incredibly emotional experience for you ...
It is. My grandparents raised me, so I grew up with them warning me about the police and telling me the story of Emmett Till, and I was a young man that experienced the Rodney King incident and participated in the riots on the AE campus as a teenager. With that said, I had to talk to my oldest son about police brutality and potentially what could happen, and I just didn't want to be having this conversation with my younger son. And I didn't want to be having this conversation with my younger daughters.
I sympathize greatly with my Jewish friends, who tell me of their grandparents who were involved as victims in the Holocaust. Those are stories of the past and stories that were told so that they could never forget the significance of how far their pain. ... I have friend from Eastern Europe that tell me of the atrocities that they suffered. I have friends from the Middle East that tell me of the atrocities that their forefathers suffered, and I cried, because I'm still having to tell the same Holocaust type stories to my children, the same way that my Jewish grandparents were stopped and made to show IDs and forced to live as though Germany wasn't their country, too.
That's the way we're being treated on the streets, and it's shameful and hurtful that on the same day that Ferguson — that the grand jury decides not to prosecute — we have a 12-year-old boy who's dead in the streets because he carried an Airsoft gun that you could buy at any Wal-Mart. So I don't understand: At what point do we get to say this was a thing of our past that we have defeated? I'm just hoping that in our lifetime I don't have to explain this to another one of my children or grandchildren.
'The Imitation Game': Benedict Cumberbatch couldn't 'bear the tragedy' of Alan Turing
"The Imitation Game" tells the story of the British mathematician, crypto-analyst and code breaker Alan Turing. He's best known as the man who cracked the German Enigma code during World War II and is considered the father of the modern computer.
One could say the man was an enigma himself.
Turing was also openly gay — though quietly so — at a time when homosexuality was a crime in England. Despite his accomplishments, which helped end the war two years early and saved millions of lives, he was tragically persecuted for his sexual orientation. Today, Turing still remains largely unknown throughout the world.
He's played in the film by Benedict Cumberbatch. When we recently caught up with the actor, we asked how much he knew about Turing before taking the role, how he embodied the role of Smaug in "The Hobbit," and whether or not motion capture is real acting.
Interview Highlights:
How did this role land on your desk?
I was over here in L.A. filming "Star Trek" and there was this Blacklist script that everyone was talking about called "The Imitation Game," and a few friends and businessfolk of mine said, "You really should read this, we think you'd be great in it." I started to read it and was completely drawn in. I just kept reading and reading, it was a page turner, it was a thriller, it was a love story and it was this extraordinary exploration of this man who is far more complex than a bluff, arrogant, distant academic.
He was somebody who was incredibly, intensely sensitive and alive to the world he was in — not somebody who worked in isolation or in some kind of ivory tower or a brain in a glass jar. He was physically part of his world — and also as a gay man in a time of intolerance when that was deemed illegal. I just couldn't bear the tragedy of his story that for me was compounded by the fact of how unknown he is in comparison to his achievements.
This is a man who almost singlehandedly broke the Enigma code, probably ended World War II a couple years early, saved millions of lives.
Fourteen million lives people estimate. And also the man who was — still, now, by the kings of Silicon Valley — rightfully held as a true icon of the computer age. A man who is seen as the father of the computing age. This man who was then punished for his sexuality and also because of quietly admitting to his nature, a gay icon. So why the hell haven't I known more about him? That really compounded the emotional impact of the end of his life, the end of his story and his tragic suicide.
It almost sounds as if you felt compelled to play this part. I'm curious, is that generally true, partially true, occasionally true when you decide to play something?
This one was utterly driven by a real need to tell this story and to travel his legacy further than it had traveled before. I feel it's really urgent and ... telling this story now is a needed thing — again, not just because of his legacy, not just his story and the injustice that he was served, but [because of] the injustice that minorities are still served around the world wherever prejudice exists. However it's borne through fear, through nationalism, through any kind of dark political maneuverings. We've seen it in Russia, we've seen it in Turkey, we've seen it in Greece, we've seen it in the Middle East — the treatment of gay men and women being scapegoated as people who are different. Those people are destroyed by that environment.
You've said about acting: "I'm determined to manufacture at least the appearance of mastering whatever it is the character has to master, because otherwise there is no point."
I think so, to be specific about it, there are activities you do as an actor when you are performing thought or intelligence, and it's always handy to be active, physically active. The art department had created this incredible replica of the machine [Turing] builds at Bletchley Park, the bomb, which he called "Christopher" in the movie. I was intrigued to know how they built that. What I could do to interact with it. How I could understand the way it worked from what I understood of the real machine, which was on a good day quite a lot. On a bad day it could lose me at the first sentence of explanation.
It was really important within the activity of how I moved around that machine — treated it, what I was fixing — that I understood what I was doing. The same with the schematics, the drawings, the designs of the machine that you see me making and pinning to a board. If somebody said, "What is that? Is that a transistor or is that another bit of circuitry?" I would have gone, "Well, I, err...," if put on the spot. But when in the act of doing it and in that specific moment, I could have told you — and that's important to me.
How do you replicate that kind of preparation or that intensity when you're doing a role like Smaug in "The Hobbit"?
He was a character that existed in my imagination, thanks to my father who was an actor and read that book to me as a bedtime treat. Then I expanded on that and I really insisted to [director] Peter [Jackson] that we do motion capture for the creature because I wanted to explore the physicality, to establish the vocal qualities. And I also wanted to perform it in a visual context and give the animators and incredible digital wizards at WETA in New Zealand a template to work off that was my face and they did — remarkable as that may seem for a scaly, 400-odd-foot, fire-breathing, bad-breathed, flying dragon. There are moments, especially when I'm facing off to Thoreon and Bilbo, you can see sort of certain eyebrow movements and kind of things that are of me.
There's a rift in the community in Hollywood about whether or not motion capture is acting or not...
It's acting. It's acting, pure and simple. It's a really pure form of acting, it's play. People I think are very wary of calling it acting. It was so freeing, wonderful and I felt completely uninhibited. It helps that you look like a complete tit at the beginning of your working day. But when you see someone like Andy Serkis, as I was fortunate enough to see when I went to New Zealand to first start working on this with Peter ... He was really excited to show me a cut of the riddle scene, and there he is, Gollum, and it's complete, and Martin [Freeman], both of them being utterly brilliant in that scene.
Then about half-way through the scene, suddenly all the animation and digital wizardry that goes on top of Andy just disappeared and he was there in his suit doing his thing. About three seconds later you forget that. Every physical movement, every detail of expression, but also every believable intention behind the line, examination of character — it's flawless acting, it's the most superb performance, and I think the more people see how it's put together, when you see it afterwards ... those are towering achievements. Really special moments in cinema history. So, yeah it's acting alright.
Ben Watt returns to his folk-rock roots with 'Hendra'
British musician Ben Watt is no newcomer to the music scene. He made it big with his duo Everything But The Girl back in the early '90s and then went on to become a house music DJ.
This year, Watt slowed things down and returned to his folk-rock roots with his new album “Hendra”– a follow up to his debut album over 30 years ago. Watt says he was a precocious 19-year-old when he released his first solo album, "North Marine Drive," and the songs were about adolescences and innocence. With his new album, written in his 50s, things "are very different and you might say they're songs of experience."
Watt was compelled to write music again after the death of his half-sister at the end of 2012. He says her death "happened very unexpectedly and was a huge blow for the whole family." There are a couple songs on Watt's new album about her, including the title track, which he says "is very much about my sister's dreams of escaping her life versus the reality of what it was really like."
Of course, when playing these songs live, Watt gets wrapped up in the songs. But he says he's also aware he's up there communicating with people: "My role is to stand at the front of the stage and find this common language with people."
It's been a couple decades since Watt has performed front-and-center in an intimate setting. During his shows with Everything But The Girl, his bandmate and now wife, Tracey Thorn, sang most of the songs. But Watt says he enjoys holding his own and "likes being the person at the front of the stage."
Watt has two teenage twin daughters and a son with Thorn and says his kids are somewhat embarrassed that he's still a rock star, but they still come out to support him. He says: "One of my daughters came to one my London shows last week and brought a couple of her friends along, and I think they were actually quite knocked out with it."
Watt says it was heartening to see, but he's used to them taking a rise out of him sometimes.
You can catch Ben Watt live at The Troubadour on December 1.
Top Independent Spirit Award nominees: 'Birdman,' 'Boyhood' and 'Selma'
The Independent Spirit Awards nominations were announced Tuesday, honoring what Film Independent's voting members believe are the best among smaller-budgeted films. The honors recognize movies made for $20 million or less and, unlike the Academy Awards, the Spirits have categories such as Best First Feature, First Screenplay, and Someone To Watch. The Spirit Awards also recall the legacy of independent filmmakers with honors in the names of John Cassavettes and Robert Altman.
This year, the ceremony — which is put on by the non-profit Film Independent — turns 30 years old. Ahead of the nominations, John Waters — a perennial attendee and former host of the ceremony — posted this birthday video.
of Vulture joined John Horn to discuss the nominations on The Frame.
Some highlights from the nominations:
Six nominations for "Birdman" — The film by Alejandro G. Iñárritu has been praised for its acting and cinematography. In his interview with The Frame, Iñárritu talks about convincing Michael Keaton that he wasn't mocking him with his script, which is about an actor past his prime plagued by the superhero he once played.
Five nods for "Boyhood" — The now-famous Richard Linklater movie that was shot over 12 years, and shows a boy and his family go through normal life changes, has become a front runner in the awards talk.
Five nominations for "Selma" — The MLK biopic is directed by Ava DuVernay, who was also nominated for a Spirit directing award. The film doesn't open until Christmas Day, but a surprise screening at the AFI Fest gave voters a chance to get glimpse and they liked what they saw.
Two nods for "Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter" — It premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, but hasn't yet come out. Still, it garnered nominations in the Best Director category and Best Female Lead.
No nominations for "Wild" — The film, directed by last year's Spirit Award success story, Jean-Marc Vallee ("Dallas Buyers Club"), stars Reese Witherspoon in an adaptation of Cheryl Strayed's best-selling book and was predicted to get a few nominations.
Actors with Spirit nominations and high Oscar chances include:
Julianne Moore got a nomination for Best Female lead as a woman suffering from early onset Alzheimer's in "Still Alice."
Patricia Arquette got a nomination for Best Supporting Female for playing the mom in "Boyhood."
JK Simmons got a nomination for Best Supporting Male for his turn as an abusive music teacher in "Whiplash."
The Spirit Awards recognize newcomers with the Someone to Watch category:
Among the nominees this year is Ana Lily Amirpour for her film, "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night." The Iranian vampire western was shot in California, but is in Farsi. In her interview with The Frame, Amirpour spoke about being an early fan of horror film and watching her surgeon father amputate a leg.
Find the complete list of nominations at the Spirit Awards website.