Moving from magic to realism
Kasi Lemmons's new film tells the story of talk show host Petey Greene
If you're looking at a photo of Kasi Lemmons and thinking, "Boy, she looks familiar," one of two things is true : You have an excellent memory of Oscar-winning horror movies (Lemmons was Jodie Foster's FBI roommate in "The Silence of the Lambs" ). Or you have an excellent memory of horror movies that had no prayer of winning an Oscar (Lemmons starred opposite Virginia Madsen in 1992's "Candyman" ).
Lemmons 's acting days are long behind her. She's been directing features since 1997, the year her magic-realist drama "Eve's Bayou" was released. Four years later came "The Caveman's Valentine," which delivered both more magic realism and a superbly dreadlocked Samuel L. Jackson as a homeless schizophrenic pianist-amateur detective.
Her third movie is heavier on the realism. "Talk to Me" is about the actual life of Ralph Waldo " Petey " Greene, the outspoken D.C. personality who hosted a popular radio program and, later, a local talk show called "Petey Greene's Washington." An ex-con and political activist, Greene was a regional icon who, with the encouragement of his producer, verged on national stardom. (A disastrous stand - up appearance on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" derailed that.)
Lemmons's film stars Don Cheadle as Greene. The English actor Chiwetel Ejiofor plays his producer turned manager and friend, Dewey Hughes. The cast also includes Martin Sheen, Cedric the Entertainer, Lemmons 's husband, Vondie Curtis-Hall , and Taraji P. Henson .
Born in Missouri and raised partly in the Boston area, Lemmons didn't know a lot about Greene until she read the script. But he fascinated her. Over lunch in Park Square on a humid day last month, Lemmons excitedly explained that, while the movie is not like her previous two (it's comparatively straightforward), it's not unlike them either. She says her films are ultimately about how characters communicate, how they learn to use their voices to connect to other people. To Lemmons, Greene was the ultimate connector, and the more she learned about him the more his uncensored honesty stirred her.
"I remember we were at the Independent Spirit Awards and they were dropping bombs on Baghdad and I wrote an antiwar statement that Cheadle was going to give," she said. "And there was so much back and forth about whether that was appropriate. How are we comfortable with not saying something? We live in a dangerous time where no one wants to say anything."
Lemmons felt a political paralysis in the culture and within the movie industry that angered her. "That's why I need Petey," she said: "To remind people that it's necessary to speak. He raised his voice and reached a lot of people. Everybody in D.C. of a certain age has a Petey Greene story."
Lemmons got involved after the project had been languishing for years. But her directing the movie was never a foregone conclusion. "I found out who was on their list," she says. "And every time a name dropped off, I would get happy. I knew I wasn't an obvious choice." Lemmons said once the producers agreed to meet with her, she was completely prepared. Her obstacles weren't simply that she's a woman and this is a movie about two men. It's that her previous two films were ambitiously unconventional, and "Talk to Me," which was written by Rick Famuyiwa and Michael Genet, required a more straightforward approach.
At the heart of "Talk to Me" is the bond between Greene and Hughes. "I thought , when have I seen this between men," Lemmons said of the characters' friendship, "and then when have I seen this between black men, this deep?" The friendship grows out of antagonism. Petey thinks Dewey is an uptight sellout. Dewey sees Petey as an ignorant fool. But the two men gradually disarm each other. Lemmons says that they were more similar than either of them realized. Their similarities became clearer in her conversations with Hughes, who went on to co-found the
"The way he described their relationship was the way I thought about it. He'd say, 'We met. We were really different. Then we fell in love.' And he's talking about total straight platonic friendship. He said they could work together all day and then go home and talk on the phone. They really, really loved each other."
Hughes could see the star in Greene, but Greene, as cocky and ostentatious as he could be, wasn't comfortable with the responsibilities of fame. Lemmons thinks Greene saw stardom as another prison. In "Talk to Me," Greene is funniest when there's no pressure to be funny.
This is a logical moment to recommend picking up a DVD of Greene's greatest moments. But not much of "Petey Greene's Washington" is around -- definitely not the 1980 segment in which a young Howard Stern dropped by in blackface. "We would hear rumors that Sugar Ray Leonard has a Petey Greene collection, but we never got our hands on it," Lemmons said. Someone has uploaded a couple of segments from the show to YouTube, the best of which is a comically inflammatory instructional on how to eat a watermelon. "He was a performance artist," Lemmons said.
As for her own art, she hopes "Talk to Me" improves the odds of her getting more movies made quickly. She spent four years trying to get a version of Jeanette Winterson's novel "The Passion " with Gwyneth Paltrow, off the ground. "It died in that wonderful Hollywood way," she says. She explains how this sort thing happens all the time.
The same thing almost happened with "Talk to Me." An actor dropped out of the project and shooting had to wait for about a year, after Lemmons had moved from Los Angeles to Canada, where the film was eventually shot. Her friends insisted round two would be more charmed. "I couldn't see that at the time. I was so disappointed" she said. "But I can see it now. They were right."
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/ movies/blog. 