Moonlight Review + Barry Jenkins & Naomie Harris Interview [Archive]

14:38Barry Jenkins:And I think that weight is there because actually that's a good point about mothering because it takes a community to raise a child. And ultimately what Paula is trying to do is do it on her own because she's surrounded by so many negative influences. And on top of that, she doesn't have the personal resources to be able to do that. She hasn't had the good parenting model that she needed to be able to parent her son on top of all of that.

15:04Naomie Harris:And I just love that we're in a world where and she has a boy, you know, who is not going to be embraced by everyone in the community for certain stigmas.

15:13Adam Kempenaar:And that that moment that you have really one of the most powerful scenes in the film where you have a confrontation with Juan, that that's kind of the undercurrent of that. That whole scene is that it's very easy for him to judge and suggest that you should be a certain type of mother. But he doesn't actually have the responsibility.

15:28Barry Jenkins:Yeah, I think it's partly that. And I think it's also partly because that's an example for me of how Paula has been let down by men so often in her life in the past that she can't accept any form of help because she's not used to having any. And if anybody does offer help, it's always because they've got an angle. They want to take something ultimately. So she's very suspicious at that point. She's like, what's going to come next? Like, what do you want from my son?

15:55Adam Kempenaar:Right. I want to ask Barry about the casting and the directing of the three actors who play the three incarnations of Chiron, Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, Trevante Rhodes. But I first want to ask you, I think you're the only direct link between those three characters in terms of seeing you in all three stories. What was it like for you having to maintain some continuity emotionally and psychologically opposite those three different actors?

16:21Barry Jenkins:I mean I didn't really find that difficult because you know I had to have done that research beforehand and known Paula's arc and journey and her history and so on and I just brought that to bear in each of the chapters. But I think it really did help having Chiron played by different actors because my relationship with my three sons in those three stages is fundamentally extraordinarily different because Paula's in such a completely different emotional state. It's not just that they've changed. It's because she's almost, you know, she's changed dramatically in each of those chapters. So I think it helped.

16:59Adam Kempenaar:I was shocked to hear you say, Barry, at that Q &A that you didn't have those actors interact with each other. didn't watch footage of each other. It really was shocking to me just because they're not only similar in appearance, but they're similar in their physicality and their demeanors, how they hold their heads when they're silent, which is a key part of these performances. I would have assumed exactly the opposite, that you were really meticulous about having them study each other. So how did you pull that off? Because I think it's so crucial that at the end when we see the character Black, we have to see Little and Chiron in him, and we do.

17:33Adam Kempenaar:It's two words, bro.

17:35Naomie Harris:Hocus Pocus. No, no. It's almost like Naomi was just saying, so much time passes between each chapter that I think there's this commentary in the film of how the world shapes us or how we can allow the world to shape us both for good and for bad. And so I wanted to show or to illustrate in the physical embodiment of this character that the world has made him a different person. So I wanted to cast different actors to play the same person. And I didn't want them to physically mimic one another. You know, I didn't want them to try to carry the performance that came before into their performance.

18:09Naomie Harris:Because, again, I wanted to show just how different the world can make us, how the world can shape us if we allow it. And if we don't have this nurturing, you know, that we see in the first story that isn't present in the second and the third stories. And yet at the same time, there is a continuity, you know, amongst those three young men. And I think when we were casting them, we were trying to find this feeling, you know, this soulfulness. because I think there's this idea of spiritual transference in the film. It's why the swimming scene is the way it is. There's this transference between Juan and Little in that scene.

18:41Naomie Harris:And I felt like if you could look into Trevante Rose's eyes and you could still see Ashton Sanders, still see Alex Hibbert, that you would feel like this character has changed. Yes, he's a different person, but he's still in there. And I think it's interesting because we're trying to create this journey for Trevante in the third story where the characters crawled so deep inside and buried himself so deep inside that the work Trevante is doing, aided by, you know, Andre Holland as Kevin, is to slowly dig his way back out to the surface. And in order to do that, I thought it would be best, you know, to literally have the character embodied by a different person.

19:16Adam Kempenaar:Yeah. How confident were you in your decision to not have them mirror each other at all? Did you ever have doubts about that?

19:23Naomie Harris:Yeah, you know, so we shot the movie mostly in sequence. You know, we did story one, story two, story three. the only overlap was when Naomi showed up because she had visa issues. We did all her work in three days. But other than that, that was the only time, those three days, when the main characters jumped. You know, I had to work with all of them. So Trevante shows up and does his first two days. And because of the way the shoot was scheduled, his first two days, I mean, and Trevante Rhodes, this is radio, I'll say, he is just just hulking, you know, like, you know, five foot 11, 220 pound guy, like 2%, 1 % body fat, just like ripped.

19:57Adam Kempenaar:Yeah.

19:57Naomie Harris:And his first two days, he's walking around in his boxes, like, working out. And he's, like, you know, on the phone and counting money. And it was, like, really jarring departure from this real thin teenager, you know, that we worked with before, which was Ashton Sanders, whose shoulders are always drooped. Right. He's always, like, kind of sad and brooding. And I thought, man, did we go too far? Because it was so jarring going from working with Ashton to working with Trevante. and then we did the phone call where Trevante calls or Kevin calls and Black picks up the phone. And it's just Trevante in the room and Andre Holland's voice is actually on the phone.

20:34Naomie Harris:And I can see Trevante just breaking and just so this huge talking guy, just so sensitive and vulnerable. And after the first take, I looked at him. I said, that's why you got the part. And I was like, OK, we're on the right track. Certainly. But for that day and a half, I was like, oh, man. But then I sit in the audience and I see the audience have the same reaction. He comes on screen and sometimes the audience will go. Yeah. Like literally it takes the breath. Sure. Because they just they gasp.

21:02Adam Kempenaar:Yeah. This is what this is what the world has done to this guy. Yeah. But then when we when we see him at the diner sitting across from Kevin and we see we see Chiron in him in those moments, then I think we gasp again.

21:15Naomie Harris:And the beauty of this process is, you know, I can only write this thing and get the actors in place and push the button. And then an intellectual idea, you know, a scripted idea, you know, it's given this flesh and blood emotion when somebody like Dramonte can actually express that vulnerability and sensibility that we don't associate or we don't think someone who's that masculine is capable of.

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24:36Naomie Harris:Are we human?

24:38Adam Kempenaar:Just two more quick questions and I'll get you guys on your way. Naomi, the mention there of doing this whole role in just three days. Is there any advantage at all to having to work that quickly as an actress?

24:50Barry Jenkins:There are many, actually. Really? Yeah, because you don't spend hours in your trailer agonizing about what you're going to do, plotting it out in your head. You know, you just have to get on and deliver. And the best place to be always is out of your head. but the place you always want to go to is your head.

25:10Adam Kempenaar:Sure, sure.

25:11Barry Jenkins:But yeah, I think it actually really helped me doing it in those three days.

25:16Adam Kempenaar:Barry, last question for you then. A film school, film geek question because we have a lot of them who listen to the show, people who are just really getting into film or who are aspiring filmmakers. At that Q &A, you mentioned Walter Murchin in the blink of an eye and that's a book that whenever people write into the show and ask me to recommend books, I read that in film school. It's one of my top five, I always say. But can you just talk about the influence of that book on your visual approach with this film or any other work that you've done? And what other books do you throw out when you get asked that question?

25:44Naomie Harris:Yeah, the only other book I throw out is a book called Masters of Light. And I would say find the original version. It was this book with a really thick book, thin paper, thick book. They interviewed cinematographers about their process. And it's really, really dense. But it will teach you if you pay attention some really solid things about the visual approach. I mean craft to the process. craft can be elevated or sublimated into art. So that book is the only other one I recommend. As far as Murch, you know, Walter Murch was an editor and sound designer. He worked with Coppola on some of his just greatest, some of the greatest films in the history of American cinema.

26:20Naomie Harris:And he wrote this book as a thesis statement on what he thought, you know, was the true essence of craft and cinema, which was the eyes of the actors and the eyes being the window into the soul and literally uh he wanted to break down why editorially when you make a cut you know what that does thematically emotionally to the audience because you're breaking the link between you know the actor and the audience so for me i use it for casting um because if i'm close on two actors and they're pretty much neck and neck you know the same ability whoever blinks the less they're getting the part you know and and it came into play a little bit on the casting of this the old

26:54Adam Kempenaar:Michael Caine acting school trick as well. Yeah, exactly.

26:58Naomie Harris:Well, because you want to have that continuum. Sure. That continuous sort of feeling with the audience. And then, like I said, you know, I knew I wanted to cast three different actors to play Chiron in this film. And what we found ourselves honing in on was it's got to be in the eyes. You know, it was why casting someone like Trevante Rhodes, I was OK with it or I was comfortable with it because I thought he looks so different than Ashton, you know, just because he's so bulked up. But I thought, you know what? I'm going to have faith in this principle now of my filmmaking process, which is the eyes of the window into the soul.

27:33Naomie Harris:Find the eyes and you'll see the soul. And if the soul is the same, the audience will follow the character.

27:38Adam Kempenaar:Thank you both so much for the movie. Thank you for your time and best of luck with it.

27:42Naomie Harris:Thank you, man.

27:43Adam Kempenaar:I ain't seen you in like a decade.

27:47Naomie Harris:It's not what I expected.

27:51Naomie Harris:But what did you expect?

27:57Adam Kempenaar:My thanks again to Barry Jenkins and Naomi Harris. I knew they would be a delight to talk to after hearing them talk for a little bit at that Film Fest Q &A the night before. But they exceeded my expectations, and I was the last stop on their way out of town. I knew they had been locked up in a hotel room all day answering questions from idiots like me, and then they were stopping to see me at the studio and head out. and usually that can mean sometimes they're a little tired and maybe not quite as engaged as even they'd like to be and I'd like them to be that certainly wasn't the case with them.

28:28Josh Larsen:I'm really glad that Jenkins brought up cinematography there at the end and mentioned the book Masters of Light where Dennis Schaefer and Larry Salvato they have conversations with some of the most noted cinematographers and Jenkins comment too about how the book explains how cinematography can be a craft that can be elevated to art, because that is exactly what my takeaway was from Moonlight, is watching that actually happen on the screen. This is just a masterwork in cinematography. And Jenkins was working here with James Laxton as his cinematographer. And really, it's not only that the movie is beautifully lit, but it's that the skin tones, particularly the African-American skin tones, are just exquisitely lit in this movie.

29:14Josh Larsen:And I single that out because it's not always the case. Even when you're talking about, you know, big Hollywood films with massive budgets, sometimes they don't know how to light all of the actors correctly. And this connects very much with what I think Moonlight is doing on a thematic level as well, there is just this aura of compassion that seeps down from the movie. And obviously they're getting this a little bit by the reference that the title pulls from, you know, the illumination of the moon. That's a guiding light in a couple of ways for this film, but it really carries through no matter whether they're in, you know, a dark night scene or whether they're in one of the high school classrooms where there's fluorescent lights or wherever they may be, there is such care to make these varied skin tones illuminate.

30:03Josh Larsen:And you can see the texture and the detail. And I think that carries over again to how the movie sees Chiron, how it sees really all of its characters, but particularly him in just giving this sort of beneficent hue that makes us just fall in love with this kid and ache for him, really ache for him in a way that few movies manage to make audiences do.

30:25Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, you mentioned the reference there in the title Moonlight, and it does come up within the text there of the screenplay. But the story that McCraney originally wrote, the piece he originally wrote that he couldn't stage is called In Moonlight, Black Boys Look Blue. and that is such a brilliantly striking central metaphor like i said that does come up in this movie because it sets up exactly what this whole film is about but in a pretty subtle way which is that other people are always going to try to define you they are going to see you how they see you within a certain moment and you may not be able to escape the way they see you it is ultimately on you to define yourself and as simplistic as that might be there's nothing simple about this film or about the performances.

31:13Adam Kempenaar:And one of the things that I was really glad Barry Jenkins said in my conversation there in praise of Harris, he mentioned how we're not privy to a lot of information about her, but it comes through in her performance. And that's so true. And that must be so hard for any actor or actress to pull off. But I felt like I knew her entire backstory. I I understood her relationship with men. I understood her problems as a mother raising this boy just from the performance. No flashbacks, no other dialogue to spell it out. It really does all come through in the experience of watching the performance.

31:49Josh Larsen:And she does have the benefit, as you mentioned in the interview, of appearing in each of the three sections. So she doesn't have a huge part in each of those, but she does appear and makes a large impact in those scenes that she has. But really, every actor we see manages to make the most of their time on screen. And there's a continuity, as you guys talked about, among the three actors playing Chiron and how they manage to capture things that are similar in each section, but also make him distinct in each section. I think the through line, again, is the cinematography. When we see him in the same literal light, we connect him as being the same person.

32:26Josh Larsen:But I also want to take time to praise Mahershala Ali. because that was the performance that I don't know why just, and it's devastating when he disappears from the narrative. And you feel that absence in the other segments that he's not in because he makes such an impact in that first segment and not because he gets any grandstanding scene. He's almost in the background so quiet as this drug dealer who takes young little under his wings. And at first he's almost, you wonder, is this a wolf in sheep's clothing? You have to. We're trained by other movies, right? More than anything else to think this is a bad situation.

33:08Josh Larsen:He doesn't tip his hand either way. No, he does not. I mean, you still get a sense that maybe this could go wrong near the end, even after you've seen him and really feel that his protection is genuine. There's that gorgeous scene where he takes little swimming and teaches him how to swim. And I think that's where we finally begin to understand that his interest is genuine in the boy. But just the way Ali makes these quiet moments hit so hard, again, without pushing any sort of demonstrative personality, you would think as this drug dealer who runs the block, the temptation would be to go big, right?

33:44Josh Larsen:But no, it's just his quiet presence. And it's really one of my favorite performances of the year.

33:49Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, I'm with you. And I think that gets back to what I was saying about Harris as well, where she's playing the crack addicted, negligent mother. We've seen a character like her in plenty of films. We've seen a character like Ali's playing Juan in a lot of films, that drug dealer, even the drug dealer with a heart of gold, which he is more or less as we get to know him. But there isn't anything cliche at all about these characters as it comes through in these performances. And Ali's one of those faces where as soon as I saw him on screen, I felt comfortable. I knew I had seen him before. Recently, I looked up IMDb later and he's been in a bunch of things, but recently in the Hunger Games movies.

34:29Adam Kempenaar:And that's where I did have his face in my mind. But what about Andre Holland? Andre Holland, who plays Kevin, he's featured in that third piece. Talk about making the most of your scenes. Yeah, that third act of this film. And he's someone, again, I'm watching him going, not only is he remarkable, I could watch him and Ali in their scenes. Just give me a movie that's just those stories. I would so watch those films. I'd watch multiple films with those guys. But he was another face that seemed really familiar to me. And I couldn't place it. And then I looked up later, he was in The Nick, the Steven Soderbergh series.

35:01Adam Kempenaar:And he's another wonderful actor. and I wanted to re-mention the three titles that came up in the interview that Jenkins listed as the biggest influences on this film because some people may not be familiar with them or maybe they just went by too fast and they didn't catch the titles but you talk about cinematography and the craft of that and how that's art not a surprise that those elements would come through in this film when those influences were Claire Denis film Bo Trevai, Ho Shao Shen's three times and then Wong Kar-Wai's Happy Together. Now, have you seen Happy Together? Haven't. Days of Being Wild was the last one I caught up with.

35:36Adam Kempenaar:So that's a Wong Kar-Wai film I regretfully haven't seen either. But a friend of mine who loves that film and who was at the same Moonlight screening I was and who loved Moonlight said that there's definitely some Wong Kar-Wai Happy Together touches there, especially in that third sequence with Trevante Rhodes and Andre Holland. We meet Andre Holland's character first through a phone conversation he's having, we hear his voice and we only see parts of him as he's a cook. He's in a kitchen. We don't actually see his face for a while. And my friend said that that is really something that is mirrored actually in the Wong Kar Wai film.

36:12Adam Kempenaar:So I did want to mention that for people who love that film as well. A couple other things that came out of the Q &A after the screening that I thought were really fascinating. I just wanted to throw out there. Terrell Alvin McCraney, the playwright and writer of the original piece was part of the Q &A. And he said something that I don't know that I would have been able to articulate it all, but absolutely felt in every moment of that third act with those actors, those grown up versions of these characters we've met earlier in the film. He talks about how there's heightened tension and a sense of urgency in there because of the fact that they are what he termed real minutes.

36:51Adam Kempenaar:And what he was articulating or what I took away from it is that he was saying, when you're watching this film that starts with one version of this character in the past, and then we go to another version and we realize that he's older, we know we're watching this construct where we're very aware that this happened in another place in time. And it's almost like it's not really happening now. And when we get to that version of him right now, in the present day, these two characters meet again. Now we know that we're watching them starting a whole new trajectory. And we have no idea where it's going to go.

37:27Adam Kempenaar:It's where their lives in some way begin for us as viewers. And we have to fill in the blanks. And there is something inherently fascinating about that that does raise the stakes of two people mostly just talking. Real minutes. Was that the phrase?

37:39Josh Larsen:Real minutes. Yeah. That's my impression while I was watching it is what incredible patience on the part of Jenkins to allow this reunion to spread out in what almost feels like real time. There's the phone call to set it up. And then when Sharon, who now goes by the name Black, shows up at the restaurant to meet with Kevin, he first says hello. And then Kevin goes to serve some other people. Just minute, boring things that I won't go on to describe, except to say that it extends the scene so that it's not that all we get are their conversation together. And even their conversation is interrupted by Kevin having to go do some more work.

38:19Josh Larsen:And that does exactly what you're talking about. It breaks up the pattern of what we've seen before, where they're not vignettes. They're not episodes. We're here with these two in the right now. And that lends it so much more drama.

38:32Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, the other part, and this is something I certainly wouldn't have been aware of had Jenkins not expressed it and described it in answer to a question, someone in the audience who was aware of this style of music. But what he did with the score here and the music as well, it really comes through in that third sequence. But you reflect back on how some of the more traditional movie score sounds are rendered in this film where they seem distorted in some way. They seem like they are perfectly in keeping with this notion of a kind of heightened fever dream, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I didn't understand exactly what was being done to the sounds to manipulate them, to make them have that distorted heightened effect.

39:11Adam Kempenaar:And what he described is the style of music that came out of Houston in the early 90s mainly called Chopped and Screwed. And it's where you take hip hop and you remix it so that everything is slowed way down. and it does have that distorting kind of effect. So we hear that in the songs that are playing in Black's car, really the whole time that we are with him. But then you realize that even the oboes and the other strings and things that you're hearing in earlier portions of the film, they have that same technique applied to them to give it that effect.

39:59Josh Larsen:Yeah, and it's just the use of those classical music instruments altogether where you might not expect it. In the early segment where the boys are just out on the field, roughhousing and wrestling and messing around, we get this lyrical music to it that makes it suddenly seem as if it's something from a Malick film. And I believe the same sort of music accompanies that swimming scene, which is some sort of baptism moment taking place. And so these These are other uses of the usual cinematic techniques in ways that maybe we've seen here or there, but not always applied to a story like this.

40:40Josh Larsen:There are, of course, many other reviews and interviews in the Film Spotting archive. Access to that archive is just one of the benefits of joining the Film Spotting family. You'll also get bonus shows. You'll get a weekly newsletter, early access to events and more. So if you'd like to join, head on over to filmspottingfamily.com.

41:00Barry Jenkins:This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

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41:43Barry Jenkins:This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. After the big game, like most people, I kept thinking about the commercials and there was one that stayed with me. It was from the Blue Square alliance against hate, and it wasn't loud or flashy. It showed a Jewish kid being targeted at school and another student who chose not to ignore it. As someone who is Jewish, that moment felt very real to me. Not dramatic, just familiar. And what struck me was how clearly it showed that hate doesn't always announce itself, but the impact is still huge. If you saw the blue square spot during the big game, it's worth thinking about.

42:16Barry Jenkins:And if you want to show support, sharing the blue square is one small way to do that. Janice Torres here.

42:24Naomie Harris:And I'm Austin Hankwitz. We host the podcast Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Intuit QuickBooks.

42:32Barry Jenkins:We're back for season four to talk to some incredible small business owners.

42:36Naomie Harris:The big thing about working at tech is that it's ever evolving, ever changing. Everyone's a rookie. That's how fast the industry is changing.

42:42Adam Kempenaar:So what I'm really excited about is to be part of that change. So listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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