Craig Brewer
Interview By: Benjamin Lee
'I know I'm asking for it'
Writer/Director Craig Brewer is fully aware of what people must think. His first film Hustle & Flow told the story of a pimp turned rapper and the posters for his new film Black Snake Moan show Christina Ricci chained up to a sweaty Samuel L Jackson.
Admittedly the plot of his new movie does sound like a salacious piece of exploitation cinema. Ricci plays a nymphomaniac who is found bruised and battered by blues player Jackson who decides that in order to cure her he must chain her to his radiator and teach her to be a better woman. But Brewer is more than just a 21st Century Roger Corman. He knows what you must think.
'It's absurd' Brewer admits, 'It is an absurd notion and not one that does not go without fear. There is a tremendous amount of fear about black sexuality in the south to the point that they have to destroy it. I'm aware that that dynamic exists in the south and that it's part of the iconography of the south and the history of the south.' He also recognizes the symbolism many have already noted in the choice of a chain. 'People always ask why'd you have to use a chain'' he tells, 'It's visually perfect, I'm using it metaphorically. Rae belongs to an untethered society without any family or community around her and she's chained to something that will not move. It's my exploration of faith. If people want to see a radiator then they're welcome to see a radiator.'
The character that Ricci plays is unlike any female we've seen onscreen for a long while. Feral, untamed and completely sexual, she's just the kind of extreme character Brewer was keen to explore. 'My grandmother would call them goosed' Brewer recalls, 'They've just got a little bit more oomph to them than you would usually care to see in characters.' Many would automatically label her a whore but the 35-year-old Brewer wants people to look deeper than mere stereotypes.
'I have benefited from trying to remove hate from my heart' he confesses, 'I have benefited from trying to remove judgment from myself. I think it's important to take the character of a young girl that everyone in town is trying to take a piece of and bring her to a place where a man can't heal himself so he wants to help her. He just has a rather unorthodox way of starting it off.'
The relationship between the two leads is not what you'd expect. Despite having a young, sex-crazed girl chained up in his house, Jackson's character doesn't see her as anything other than someone who needs help. 'I kind of want people to come to the end of it feeling kind of silly about any sort of weirdness they may have had because these two ultimately are a father and daughter' he tells, 'They are the closest thing to family they will ever know.' Although Brewer admits that there is one scene which threatens to break the balance. 'There's this one moment when she's kind of unconscious in this fever dream and he's holding her and she lunges forward and she kisses him' he shares, 'And the audience flinches like they're watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They audibly gasp and I often find that really interesting that it's a kiss and I'm making people afraid.'
What the film does turn into is a sweet, almost My Fair Lady-esque story. It's something Brewer puts down to the music in the movie and the locale. 'I felt like if I was really gonna explore the blues then you're talking about Saturday night, Sunday morning culture' he informs, 'We work hard during the work and we go into Saturday with an odd sense of abandon and hellbent on personal destruction. We're all aware of it and we all look out for each other. We all make sure we get drunk and sometimes we fall in bed with the wrong people and you wake up and you genuinely feel bad and you go to church. I thought of Black Snake Moan as being like an old album that you just take out and on one side there's the sin side and you flip it over and you get into some salvation.'
It's rare for a director to hit it off making one kind of movie and then to return to his hometown and continue with the same fierce energy and style he broke out with. Brewer admits that he doesn't really fit into the Hollywood scene. 'There's times I feel like a bat' he jokes, 'I'm neither bird nor beast. In Hollywood standards I'm a bit of a Southern outsider who's doing these crazy themed movies. To people in the South they think I'm this Hollywood sellout because I actually have caterers these days instead of just shooting on a video camera and putting up my movies in bars.'
One of Brewer's masterstrokes though is to retain his same sense of authenticity no matter what he's doing. His films are infused with the atmosphere of where they're set and who inhabits them. 'The thing I find is interesting is even with Hustle and Flow it was very important for me to disorient the audience and immerse them in a world that was existing without their endorsement' he says, 'There were times where people were even struggling to understand what they were saying because the accents were so thick and I felt like that was my statement to bend everybody to my rhythm instead of us bending to theirs. But then what happens is you get snuck up on. You find that you are understanding them.'
The film, like Hustle & Flow is very much a product of it's location. A location that holds a special place in Brewer's heart. 'I'm committed to Memphis' he admits, 'I've been living there now consistently for 13 years. I also committed to the Memphis way of life. It took me a while to realize what that was. I'll try to describe it to you. You don't have much and you try to do a lot with it.' It was this way of life which helped to create his first breakout movie.
'It's the not having much and the not having much money and not having the best equipment that somehow makes it unique' he states, 'When I was making my first movie it was on pawn shop bought video cameras and I would have strippers and bouncers and drug dealers and car thieves and all these people helping me not because they wanted to make some goofy movie but they wanted to make art. I felt that spirit assisted me so I don't wanna mess with a good thing that's why I continue to write there. When I go to Hollywood it's like I'm putting my nametag back on my shirt and going out there to work a little bit.'
Next for Brewer' A sell-out action flick perhaps' No chance.
'It's called Maggie Lynn' he tells, 'I'm really trying to do this music series. I'm really inspired to the core of my being and my soul by the music of the South. It usually comes from a struggle and it usually comes from poverty and a whole lot of passion and crippling insecurity. It's time to put rap behind me and put blues behind me and get back to outlaw country.'
Staying true to where he came from and never changing for the powers that be turn Craig Brewer into one of the most exciting talents to have emerged in movies for the past few years. Determined not to turn into a studio minion, Brewer admits that he's 'a filmmaker who's making movies for people in the red states'. Because Bush of all people knows how hard it can be out there for a pimp.
