We debate the issues surrounding the film, "The Birth of a Nation," and its writer-director-star, Nate Parker; remembering two L.A. cultural icons: Gordon Davidson of the Center Theatre Group and conductor Sir Neville Marriner, the first music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.
'The Birth of a Nation': To see or not to see?
"The Birth of a Nation" opens Oct. 7 after months of countless essays, tweets and discussions about whether or not to see the film. The debate has been about reconciling the importance of a movie about the little-known Nat Turner slave rebellion with a troubling episode from filmmaker Nate Parker's past.
In recent weeks both Parker and Fox Searchlight have been trying to shift the public conversation from Parker to his film. The message was even taken to the sky over Los Angeles this week.
skywriting over Hollywood touts "Nat Turner Lives"
— Hollywood Reporter (@THR)
#BirthOfANation skywriting over Hollywood touts "Nat Turner Lives" https://t.co/eRhZUmT8iv pic.twitter.com/tcNMdTCzws
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) October 5, 2016
The issue in a nutshell:
When "The Birth of a Nation" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, #OscarsSoWhite was trending because of a second consecutive year of all the Academy Award actor and actress nominees being white. In that context, Parker's film was seen as a sort of savior as Oscar buzz quickly began to swirl around "Birth." There was a bidding war, ending when Fox Searchlight paid $17.5 million for the rights to distribute the movie. At the time, Parker — who wrote, directed, produced and stars in the film — told The Frame that his ambitions went beyond any award accolades.
The most important thing for me is healing. I think this film can promote and facilitate healing in a country that has wounds that were afflicted during the legacy of slavery and that still affect us today.
But in August, an old legal issue surfaced. While a student at Penn State in 1999, Parker and his roommate, Jean McGianni Celestin (who has a writing credit on "The Birth of a Nation"), were accused of raping a fellow student. Celestin was found guilty, but the conviction was later overturned on appeal. Parker, who was acquitted, recently told "60 Minutes" that he was "falsely accused."
But news of the case completely shifted the conversation around the movie – especially when it was reported that the woman who claimed to have been raped by Parker and Celestin had committed suicide years later.
Now, with the movie headed for theaters, the debates continue over whether to see the film. Variety reports that a group of rape activists have planned a vigil at Arclight in Hollywood when the movie opens.
To discuss the essential questions at hand, we turned to two people who've been doing a lot of thinking about "The Birth of a Nation":
is a staff writer for The New Yorker who wrote a piece entitled: “The Birth of a Nation isn’t worth defending"; and
, editor-at-large at the Daily Beast. They spoke with KPCC reporter and The Frame guest host,
.
To hear the full conversation click the play button at the top of the page.
Interview highlights
Why Nat Turner's story is important to tell:
TAYLOR: My initial response was just excitement, really. That a story like Nat Turner's was going to finally come to the silver screen was something I thought was important. I still believe that. And for me, the story of Nat Turner had been all but buried. The peace-loving person of color, the Dr. King story, the story of other people who did not fight, but fought in different ways — those stories were in the forefront. But people who actually took up arms, those stories were pressed down. And I was excited to see that a more complicated picture of us was going to come to the silver screen.
Balancing what's "good" with what's "important":
CUNNINGHAM: I didn't think it was a good film. I think that a lot of the defense of the film in light of Mr. Parker's troubles ... has come on the grounds of the importance of the story. I totally [get] that point. I think it is an important story for Americans to know as well. But I think that sometimes when we think of things as so important as to be indispensable, we in some ways lower our standards artistically. I think that it is important for these stories to be told, but not at the expense of the mode and the quality of the telling.
We live in a time when there are so many wonderful filmmakers, especially black filmmakers. I believe that we're in the middle of, if not a renaissance, [then] certainly a wonderful amount of talent. So I think that we can afford to be pickier about the stories and the artworks that we choose to champion. I just think that we might think a little about [promoting] things that aren't worth our efforts and our defense.
Resolving the dilemma of whether to see the movie:
TAYLOR: The dilemma for me really is a personal one in that I'm a rape survivor. Those incidences over time — whether I like it or not — shape, define, contort how I saw myself in the world and how I allowed myself to engage this world of mine. Today, nearly two decades later, I still see vestiges of it, its fingerprints on my life — which media I consume, what scenes are just too tough for me to watch. I was concerned that because of that cultural lens ... the movie would just simply be unbearable for me. One, that Nate Parker was its producer; and two, that there were vicious rape scenes, as I've heard them described, in the film. So I was leaning against seeing it. I think what really prompted me to want to see it was to take a look back on my own education and the schools that I went to, black and white, [that] had suppressed stories just like [Nat Turner's]...And I just simply did not want to miss this.
Do you separate the art from the artist...like Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Bill Cosby:
CUNNINGHAM: There's no way to hide the good, bad and ugly about the people who make our art. It strikes me, listening to Goldie's story, [that] I don't think we're going to arrive at a perfect calculus for when the sins of the artist should disqualify a piece of art. But in this case, I do think there are some instances where, once you know a thing about a person, it's hard to [distinguish from] their output. Whatever did or didn't happen with Nate Parker, it is interesting to see these issues with women in the film. Sometimes that stuff gets uncomfortably close. So I think that, in the end, it's got to be a personal choice as to, because you love "Annie Hall," how you should think about Woody Allen. But it is something that's ever more with us and I don't know if we're ever going to come to a great answer on it.
How important is the success of "The Birth of a Nation" for other African-Americans in Hollywood?:
TAYLOR: I don't know that its box office draw will have any impact on whether or not other African-American men and women are afforded the same opportunity to produce, direct, act in or star in films. I think given what's happened around this particular controversy, I don't see that it will dry up any new opportunity. I don't know that its success or lack thereof will do any more or less. By the way, [the Jackie Robinson story] "42" didn't do very well at the box office. If this film does not do well, I don't think it does a darn thing to [diminish] Nat Turner's legacy. It remains intact.
CUNNINGHAM: I think the exact same thing. In some ways it's good for us. It's another sign of progress when we talk about inclusion in the movies [and] also sustain and move past moments of mediocrity. Our fortunes don't hang on every single big movie that involves a black creator or actor. The truer mark of progress is when we can call something bad ... and move on. Part of the good of this sort of new and encouraging landscape is that we can be just as critical as we can be laudatory.
"The Birth of a Nation" opens Oct. 7. For more content like this, get The Frame podcast on iTunes.
Remembering Gordon Davidson, the godfather of LA theater
When Gordon Davidson was hired as the first artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum in 1967, Los Angeles wasn't exactly a cultural backwater, but the center of the theater world was clearly in New York City.
Davidson, however, quickly established the Taper's reputation as one of the leading regional theaters in the country. As both a producer and director, he had a hand in countless landmark productions, including the world premiere of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.”
By the time Davidson retired in 2005, he had built the Center Theatre Group into a powerhouse that included the Taper, the Ahmanson Theatre and the Kirk Douglas Theater in Culver City. Davidson died on Oct. 2 at the age of 83.
Davidson was succeeded at Center Theatre Group by Michael Ritchie. KPCC's Priska Neely spoke with Ritchie about what he learned from Davidson and the influence he had on the theater community.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
On Ritchie's first time meeting Gordon Davidson:
In 1981, I was a young stage manager on Broadway. One day I was walking through the halls and I heard this voice going, Michael! Is that you? And I turned around and it was a man walking down the hall towards me who I had never met before.
He said, "I'm Gordon Davidson. I run the Center Theatre Group out in Los Angeles and I heard about you and I just wanted to just introduce myself to you." Here was one of the leading artistic directors in the country. He had no idea who I was except that he had heard of me, and he reached out to say hello to me and chatted with me for a couple minutes in the hallway.
I walked away and I thought, Now that's a guy who both loves what he's doing, but also loves the people he's doing it with. That impression was always my impression of Gordon through the years.
On some of the important plays Davidson was involved in:
"Zoot Suit" by Luis Valdez, a really important Latino play. The first major Chicano play to appear in a large regional theater, and certainly the first one to appear on Broadway.
"Children of a Lesser God," an incredible play that brought the deaf community into the theater in a very vibrant way. Both [Davidson] and Center Theatre Group won Tony awards that year when it appeared on Broadway.
"Angels in America," in the middle of the AIDS crisis when that disease was being ignored in many quarters. It was that play that Tony Kushner wrote that Gordon [Davidson] developed and produced at the Mark Taper Forum. It really brought the depth and the pain of the AIDS crisis to the forefront of the conversation in the country, and went beyond a theatrical event and became a rallying point for a social issue that needed to be addressed.
I just think that Gordon always had an eye and an ear for the voices that were being unheard that deserved to be broadcast to the greater community.
On the best advice Davidson gave him:
He said to me, "Follow your instincts," and he said, "Listen to the audience." That was one thing that I learned from him in watching previews. We would sit in the back row and he would close his eyes and lean his head back.
At first I thought, What's he doing? And at intermission he'd turn to me and he'd say, "This is what I heard." He'd be listening to the actors and he'd be listening to the audience as to how they reacted. It was a real lesson into how to create a new perspective on what you think is going on in the play.
Just close your eyes and listen to everybody.
For young violinist, performing with 90-year-old Sir Neville Marriner is like 'standing next to Beyonce'
UPDATE: Sir Neville Marriner died Oct. 2 at the age of 92. Below is our story from 2015, when he came to L.A. to work with students at the Colburn School.
This Sunday, the student orchestra at the Colburn School — the downtown L.A. conservatory known as the "Juilliard of the West" — will have the opportunity to perform with a classical music legend.
90-year-old Sir Neville Marriner has been rehearsing with musicians who are seven decades his junior. Twenty-year-old violinist Blake Pouliot is one of them. On Jan. 18 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Pouliot will be the soloist for Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto under Marriner’s baton.
The Colburn Orchestra will also be performing Holst's "The Planets."
Sir Neville Marriner was the first music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra back in the late 1960s. That orchestra was backed by a philanthropist named Richard Colburn.
We caught up with Marriner after a recent rehearsal to talk about the upcoming show, working with such budding young musicians and the state of classical music.