Movies Online recently caught up with writer/director Craig Brewer at the Los Angeles press day to promote his new film, "Black Snake Moan.” The film is the third feature by Brewer whose first feature was the Academy Award-winning "Hustle Flow.” It stars , , , , and John Cothran and is produced by John Singleton and Stephanie Allain.
"Black Snake Moan” is the story of Lazarus ( ), a God-fearing, middle-aged man who packed away his guitar playing, juke joint days, found religion and settled for the married life. "He put all his love into this woman and at the beginning of the story she’s leaving him,” says Brewer. She’s not just walking out the door; she’s leaving him for his younger brother Deke.
"Lazarus is an older guy, and it is breaking him apart. After falling into sorrow and darkness, he reaches for that guitar that’s been under the bed for the past 10 years. He used to be a blues man back in the day.
He used to play and be a real hard cat, but he put all of that behind him.” Now he has his own blues to sing.
Bitter and broken from a cheating wife and a shattered marriage, Lazarus’ soul is lost in spent dreams and betrayal’s contempt until he discovers a half naked woman, Rae ( ), beaten unconscious and left for dead on the side of the road.
He takes her home but quickly learns that the young white woman he’s nursing back to health is none other than the town tramp from the small Tennessee town where they live. Worse, she has a peculiar anxiety disorder. Refusing to know her in the biblical sense, Lazarus decides to cure Rae of her wicked ways – and vent some unresolved male vengeance of his own.
"Black Snake Moan” is really about two very different people coming together to heal each other,” says writer-director Brewer, "and it is a very strange set of circumstances that brings these two people together.” It is an audacious story and a phenomenal script that had producer John Singleton wondering, "how in the hell we were going to get this picture made.” Singleton calls "Black Snake Moan” "much more daring than Craig’s other picture ("Hustle Flow”).
It is certainly something people have never seen before.” But it bears Brewer’s indelible trademark of traversing the raw metamorphosis of deeply wounded people, hungry for a better life.
"We’re all wounded in some way.
We all have our weaknesses, our anxieties, our foibles, and the way we get through life is by that connection, to actually be connected to someone else,” says producer Stephanie Allain, who championed the making of both Singleton’s "Boyz in the Hood” and Brewer’s "Hustle Flow.” "Craig’s work allows us to put ourselves into somebody else’s shoes. In the beginning, you may not relate to it.
You may not want to relate to it. You may even feel a certain sense of judgment, hostility or negativity towards it, but by the end of the movie, you love these characters, and not only do you love them, you realize you are them. It really is all about the power of being connected to someone else,” she says, "and in this case it’s Rae’s connection to Lazarus.
”
Lazarus is "really an old man who wants to say a few things to a woman who’s been running around on people,” says Brewer. "He’s got some deeply rooted male vengeance that he wants to unleash on her. At the same time, they find this connection with each other – a connection that goes far beyond this chain he’s put around her waist.
”
Here’s what Craig Brewer had to tell us about writing and directing "Black Snake Moan” and what it was like working with Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci:
Q: Everyone has said that you had your own vision, you knew what you wanted, and no one was going to change it. Have you found that when you write something, it’s so passionate that it rings true for everybody?
We were not doing too well. My dad died of a heart attack at 49 so that was always on my mind. I had this really intense anxiety attack on a plane, and the stewardess came by and I told her, ‘You may want to get the defibrillator ready because I think I’m having a heart attack.
’ She asked me if I had any anxiety about flying or anything like that, and I said, ‘No ma’am, but my dad did die at 49. Get the defibrillator out.’ So she talked me down and it went away.
I didn’t know really what it was, but as soon as I got back on that plane heading home, it hit again.
We called it "Black Snake Moan.” So, if we would be somewhere and they would begin to hit, we would mouth that to each other and we would have certain ways that we could get rid of the anxiety attacks through each other. If we were apart, I would call her and all she would do is just talk as if nothing bad was happening, like "Here’s what we did with your son today.
” But when we’re together and they would really hit me, she would lay on my back and I would lay on the floor and she would put her arms underneath my chest and really push down and that pressure would take away some of that anxiety. For a confident person like myself, it really messed with me that something could drop me to my knees and have me think that I am about to die. I think there’s a very unique time where you begin to question your own mortality, and the first thing that she recommended I do is write about it; and there was a night where I needed to tune out a little bit and I went to my room and lit a bunch of candles and I started playing Skip James.
I am a big Blues fan and Skip James had this song called Hard Times Killing Floor Blues and Washington D.C Hospital Room Blues.
I had this vision in my head of me going to my granddad’s house in the country and going through that front door and this chain was just zipping past me as I was going in through the door and it was wrapped around this big old radiator. It was right there in front of the door on the wall, and I just remembered that I could feel an anxiety attack coming on because I just knew that that radiator was going to be ripped out of the wall. I just remembered feeling like I shouldn’t be writing about this.
I shouldn’t be thinking of any of this because here it comes, the black snake moan is about to hit me again, and then this chain went taut and that radiator held. And as I was looking at this radiator and it was yanking, and yanking, and yanking, and dust and rust is flying off this thing, it went away and I began to feel a little better. I think I was in need of my dad.
I just needed to be yanked back, a little bit.
But the problem with Rae, the character Rae, I felt like I’d know it when I saw it. I mean, you all saw the movie. I met her half way on that, that was like on the script but otherwise that’s Ricci.
A lot of people that I had met with thought that it was just about being sexual and that’s not what the whole story is. Ricci demanded to audition and I said absolutely. I mean, I’m a fan of her work.
I had this certain, you know, I’m trying to embrace all these Southern archetypes and the whole iconography of Southern culture and that includes drive-in movie, the horny farmer’s daughter, ‘don’t go over there she’ll get you,’ that type of Little Abner, Sadie Hawkins daydream, and I didn’t really see Ricci in that particular style necessarily even though I’m a huge fan of Christina’s.
Where everybody else had tried to be sexual or provocative, her character was like a 13-year-old immature daughter yelling at her mother, and then suddenly she’d be like very wise beyond her years and very seductive, and then she’d be vengeful, screaming and yelling at you, and then she would just drop to the floor weeping like a little toddler, and that’s when I realized like that’s what I’ve been missing. I couldn’t see anybody else but Christina and she transformed herself. We spent about 45 minutes a day putting freckles on her.
I was watching TV in a hotel and I saw Britney Spears doing a concert, and I called her up and I said, "Look at her hair.” She said, ‘I get it.’
She even went out to Dillard’s in the South -- and I don’t think they have Dillard’s out here, I don’t know -- but [she] insisted on getting the right white cotton panties. It had to be just right. She chose her own chain.
I had about five different chains laid out for her and, wouldn’t you know it, she picked up the biggest, heaviest, gnarliest chain, the biggest padlock – the kind of thing that you put on the back of a trailer -- and she just owned it like from that day on -- like I couldn’t see anybody else -- and now when I watch the movie on so many levels because I am embracing this kind of tone which is a lot like a Tennessee Williams play or a short story by Flannery O’Connor. These are authors and the particular type of performance that I don’t think is really seen in cinema these days, because I think people usually need categories and I like people to laugh at the outrageousness of it and also be moved.
Is that something you welcome?
It seems to me that the one thing that we are missing right now in films is a regionalism. I look at some of my favorite directors. I mean, let’s look at Spike Lee’s films.
Even from his small films to "Inside Man,” there is an intense inspiration from jazz. He is a jazz filmmaker I feel. There’s times that you’ll be watching something and it’s obviously part of the narrative strain and then it just gets almost like a little improvy.
Suddenly it’s like somebody just came in with a new instrument and they’re kind of riffing on the clarinet. I think that comes from Brooklyn. I think that comes from his dad.
I think the same thing about John Singleton and South Central. I really feel empowered and inspired by Memphis musicians. We have a history of not having much and trying to do a lot with it, and we’re not really professionals.
Jerry Lee Lewis is not a good piano player, he isn’t, but he plays it a certain way and he bangs on that piano a certain way that that’s Jerry Lee Lewis. If you gave him a Bach cantata, he would make it sound like a Jerry Lee Lewis Bach cantata. Howling Wolf is not the prettiest sounding voice in the world, but with the right microphone in front of him and the right guitar and the right song, he’s magic.
So I want to be considered a Memphis filmmaker even if I do something that takes place in Alabama. It’s why I continue to live there; it’s why I continue to be inspired there.
CB: Oh you’re talking about a long time ago -- that Devil music. That’s the rock ‘n roll movie.
Q: Is that still playing in your head?
. The next one’s Maggie Lynn. The next one’s the country music movie, and that’s all written and the studio loves it and we’re just going to be getting into that and then the soul movie.
I really want to tell the story of that time in Memphis between December of 1967 when Otis Redding went down in the plane crash with the bar case through the sanitation strike and when Dr. King is assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968.
It’s when you know Mavis Staples and Isaac Hayes and all these people – musicians who lived in a truly integrated successful studio in stacks in Memphis -- began to see that they didn’t want to be singing happy songs anymore and that’s the soul movie that I’m currently developing right now.
I just wanted it to be something where it’s like it’s not so much that I’m trying to beat a religion into people as much as he believes it. It’s something that means something to him, and that’s why it didn’t make it into the movie. But there’s a lot of great scenes that are going to be in the deleted scenes.
I went through them last night and really you could cut a whole new movie called "The Last Temptation of Lazarus.”
There is a subtlety that I feel in this movie. There’s one shot that I can watch over and over and over again. It’s when she first stands up to reveal the chain and he looks embarrassed.
He looks a little awkward, and it’s great to see someone as towering and powerful as Sam do something that restrained, and you see how much he suffers in his eyes like when his woman tells him "I don’t love you no more.” Sam’s known for being the big action guy. There’s certain things we love Sam to do.
That’s why we can do iconic impersonations of Samuel Jackson because he’s our American actor. We like seeing him do the Sam thing. But in this movie, he really worked to create a character from some of these blues men that we put him in touch with in Mississippi and northern Mississippi.
When you see it with a full house, they’re rooting for him and that’s a respect that someone like Jackson has basically earned over the years. I think that we never get to see him be romantic and it’s really great. An audience really responds to that, you know, they have to do that.
They want him to be happy. They want him to find love.
I guess a lot of people are seeing different things in this film.
CB: Well, it’s hardly worth giving ink to, but yeah, I’ve been on a few blogs. Of course there’s people that are not pleased with any notion of a black man needing to help a white woman.
It’s really funny because this movie plays in the South, and it plays like gangbusters, and that’s because we’re not particularly interested in the whole racial element to it or even the question of gender. Everybody there I think really kind of gets it. It’s a ride that needs to be treated as a tale.
It’s a fable. Hate groups like that – the best thing I can say to some of those hate groups is, you know, they’re kind of played, you know, they’re just played. I mean, they’re boring.
We’ve got a long way to go, but boy have we moved past that bullshit.
Q: Can you talk about casting ? I heard you really wanted him in that part.
Can you tell us why?
’ And I was like, you know, he’s up in Millington and I think I really want to try to rep my region. I mean that’s why is in my movie. How many LA movies are there with LA rappers.
There’s no Southern movies with Southern rappers until I came around. And so I believe in just pulling all the artists together from my region. And the more that I talked with Justin, the more I realized that he was the only person that I could really go to on this.
You know, we both have really thick Southern families, and we’ve always been kind of like dealing with the fact of how far do you run away from your own heritage and your own Southern background.
And they’re not equipped for it, they’re not like that, they’re not necessarily killers to go into war, and I’ve seen it destroy men. I’ve seen it just make them crumble and break inside, and Justin had observed that with people in his life. Justin’s a very confident young man, I mean, almost wise beyond his years in a spooky way.
I think it’s a testament to Justin that he’s taking this route with his career. You really could do kind of like a big tent pole production with him singing and dancing as the lead above the title, but he’s choosing these roles where he’s a supporting character and surrounding himself with really good actors. Also, he’s made three movies, I’ve made three movies.
We’re starting off, and I like that we’re young and fresh and trying something knew. I guarantee you there’s going to be a time, like five to ten years from now, Justin’s going to be a movie star.
CB: I was. This is not an easy supporting role to play, especially to be that vulnerable.
Q: Do you think the South is mischaracterized by Hollywood movies?
I’m curious what you think when see that "Cold Mountain” was directed by a Brit and starring an Australian and another Brit?
There’s nothing that Southerners love to do [more] than say that they have a better idea on how they are to be betrayed than other people, but there are some great Southern films and great Southern filmmakers that have come about. One of which I’m really excited about is Joey Lauren Adams. Not only do we need more female voices in cinema but man, how about a female voice from Arkansas?
Now that’s going to be interesting over her career and what she wants to explore.
I don’t think it’s as easy as you can take a black man from Mississippi and assume that he’s going to get along with a black man from Jersey over a white boy from the South. So, as much as some of those intersections and collisions between race and gender and class have led to some horrible things in the South’s past, it’s also led to Booker T. and the MGs, it’s also led to Johnny Cash, it’s also led to Rufus Thomas and BB King and Otis Redding having the best white engineer in the world record his voice.
It seems like when we get creative or we get spiritual or if we get hungry, we forget about everything.
The fear of Blind Lemon Jefferson born in Texas, died a horrible death in Chicago when, after a gig, he got lost in a snowstorm and froze to death, which really is sad considering like that’s how he always thought he was going to go out. He was always singing about scorpions or snakes or bugs being in his room and not being able to see it and could some pretty mama please come get this black snake. It’s also a very wicked old song.
There’s something even about the scratches and pops in the album and the simplistic guitar playing and that howl (demonstrates by singing Black Snake Moan) just sends chills down your spine. The most powerful thing about the blues that I’ve found is I think it’s like rap. I think it’s exorcism music.
Rap artists dance between reality and fantasy, and I think it’s a very important thing to articulate those things.
And if you just have a bad week and you go into the weekend and you’re hell bent on some personal destruction and you go to a juke and you drink and you’re listening to the music and everybody’s up and dancing, you feel better, you feel exhausted. You drop into your bed and you wake up the next morning and now it’s time for church, and it’s kind of the same thing but now it’s like switched. It’s no longer about screwing and fighting and drinking and now it’s more about Jesus and God, that everybody’s still sweating and dancing and singing.
CB: The thing is that Skip, God bless him, I just felt that this is more of a movie about Mississippi and Tennessee and I felt that somehow being a man who is a preacher and who used to hear that music coming up from the juke and go, ‘Well isn’t that scandalous,’ couldn’t stay away from women and couldn’t stay away from liquor and ended up going to jail for killing a man and you know, he is the blues.
He’s the man who can’t stay away from that kind of pain.
Q: John Singleton and Stephanie Allain both mentioned that others did not want "Black Snake Moan” to be your next film after "Hustle and Flow.” Can you talk about them and the support they have given you?
But really I think especially both of them, Stephanie who gave John a start at Columbia and they both worked in the studio situations, I think really feel that we have an opportunity to create something new. There really isn’t a category I could put "Hustle and Flow” in. Luckily because it’s rap and because there are African Americans in it, America can say, "Well it’s an urban film,” which I think is something… I know that I have a problem with that category.
People laugh at this movie and also are moved by the movie, and they wonder if I’m somehow being disrespectful because I have funny moments in it. I’ve been at funerals in the South where the most inappropriate shit would happen, and everybody busts up, and then it passes and we’re back into the wake. And this is just part of it and we’re attracted to the grotesque and the outrageous.
Sometimes they’re members of our family and they’re hard not to love.
CB: I always write my own scripts.
I’ve not read any scripts for me to consider directing, but I now have a company called Southern Cross the Dog at Paramount and we’re trying to produce things. I want to see more working class movies. Even "Purple Rain” was a working class movie, though that’s a big entertaining musical, raw, but those people didn’t have any money.
They were still struggling from gig to gig and movies like "Urban Cowboy” and "Officer and a Gentleman.” There used to be a time where the only goal was Richard Gere just needed to graduate. We got into the 80s and it was like you need to graduate and then shoot down some migs.
That’s the "Top Gun” version.
Q: Why weren’t there any deleted scenes in the "Hustle and Flow” DVD?
CB: I shot that movie in 24 days.
Whatever I chopped up went into that stew. I didn’t have much that I could really let fall by the wayside, but "Black Snake Moan” has a lot of really good deleted scenes.
Q: John [Singleton] said you actually have some Hustle scenes to put on an upcoming new DVD special edition.
CB: There’s two that are pretty good. Yeah, there’s a few.
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