Local News
Lee Daniels Speaks on ‘The Butler,’ Trayvon and Race
Kam Williams
Special To The Skanner News
L
ee Daniels is best known for directing and producing
the Academy Award-winning film Precious which
was nominated for a half-dozen Oscars in 2010,
including histwo for Best Picture and Best Director.
Mo’Nique won for Best Supporting Actress while
scriptwriter Geoffrey Fletcher landed another for Best
Adapted Screenplay.
Lee’s production company, Lee Daniels Entertainment,
made its feature film debut in 2001 with Monster’s Ball, the
dysfunctional family drama for which Halle Berry would
earn her historic, Best Actress Oscar. Last year, he wrote,
produced and directed The Paperboy, an adaptation of the
Pete Dexter novel starring Matthew McConaughey, Zac
Efron, John Cusack, and Nicole Kidman.
Here, he talks about his new picture, The Butler, a civil
rights epic recounting the real-life story of an African-
American who served in the White House at the pleasure of
eight presidents, from 1952 to 1986.
Kam Williams: Hey Lee, what a phenomenal film!
Lee Daniels: Did you like it?
KW: I loved it!
LD: Thanks, Kam.
KW: I was born in the Fifties so all of the ground you
cover in terms of the father-son relationship and the Civil
Rights Movement resonated with me and touched me very
deeply.
LD: That makes me feel good. Thank you very much.
KW: So, what inspired you to make the movie?
LD: What attracted me to the project was the father-son
story which I looked at as a love story with the Civil Rights
Movement as a backdrop. That was intriguing to me both
because I’d had issues with my own dad, and because I
have issues with my teenage son. I think the father-son love
story is a universal one which transcends color. That’s what
was sort of there on the page, but it wasn’t until I started
shooting that we began getting into the Woolworth’s sit-ins
and the Freedom Riders with the Molotov cocktails that I
asked myself, “What have I stumbled upon?” It was then
that I realized the film was much bigger than just the father-
son story.
KW: Did you decide to tackle the civil rights material
because of the Trayvon Martin shooting?
LD: No, it hadn’t happened when Danny Strong wrote the
script, including the line “Any white man can kill any of us
at any time and get away with it.”
KW: You got Oscar-winners in Forest Whitaker, Cuba
Gooding, Jr., Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, Robin
Williams and Melissa Leo, and Oscar-nominees in Terrence
Howard and Oprah Winfrey to come aboard. How were you
able to assemble such an outstanding cast?
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Lee Daniels
LD: My usual way… throwing out a net, and fishing.
[LOL] This one was easy because the material was so good.
The actors I approached took the bait because they wanted
to serve the material. We really didn’t have any money to
pay them, so most of them lost money in relation to what
their normal acting fee would be.
KW: Harriet Pakula-Teweles asks: How has the tempest
over re-using the title The Butler affected you?
LD: Well, I just finished editing the movie five days ago.
When did you see it, Kam?
KW: Earlier today.
‘I hope that this film rips a
scab off the sore that is racism
in America today’
LD: Well, I’m not sure which version you saw. Anyway,
when I’m working on a movie, it’s like being in a cocoon. I
considerate it like giving birth, and I don’t leave the bubble,
because if I do, then it’s bad and affects the child. But I was
pulled out for a minute when my kids told me about some-
thing they saw online. I didn’t even hear about it from the
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studio. It disturbed me, but I didn’t have time to think about
it.
KW: Well, it’s now called “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.”
LD: The MPAA [Motion Pictures Association of Ameri-
ca] gave me that title and I still don’t know how to feel
about it. I just finished giving birth to the movie. “Lee
Daniels’ The Butler!” It sounds like “The Greatest Show on
Earth!”
KW: Well Tyler Perry, Dino De Laurentis and others are
famous for placing their names before the title?
LD: I’m not Tyler Perry. I’m not Dino De Laurentis. I
think it’s a bit much to put one’s name in front of the film.
It makes me uncomfortable. Here’s the thing. Insiders like
you know the whole story and about the legal issues, but not
the average person. I worry that young kids in Oklahoma or
Alabama might end up asking, “Who is this filmmaker to be
so full of himself?” That bothers me. The MPAA handed
down this edict. So, I don’t know how I feel about it right
now. Ask me tomorrow. [Chuckles]
KW: My eyes must have welled up at least a half-dozen
times while watching the film. As the director, you must be
too close to the film for it to have that sort of emotional
effect on you.
LD: No, when I actually sat down all alone to watch the
final cut just for pleasure, I broke down in tears.
KW: You did a masterful job of portraying the tensions
and differences between the Civil Rights and Black Power
Generations.
LD: There was no right and wrong. Cecil [played by For-
est Whitaker] was right and so was his son [played by
David Oyelowo]. You’ve got a problem when neither is
wrong, yet you have a conflict.
KW: I also appreciated the evenhanded way in which you
approached each of the presidents Cecil served under, like
how Reagan could give his African-American help a raise
to make their pay equal to that of whites, while hypocriti-
cally still supporting Apartheid in South Africa.
LD: Ain’t that interesting? We don’t make Kennedy out to
be a Goody Two-Shoes either.
KW: Editor/Legist Patricia Turnier was wondering
whether you’ve seen the TV miniseries “Backstairs at the
White House?”
LD: I did. I think it was a great movie for its time, but I
wanted to avoid the episodic feeling of that film.
KW: Patricia also asks: What message do you want the
public to take away from “The Butler?”
LD: I hate that question, Patricia, because it forces me to
be philosophical… I think the message is that we have got
a long way to go. I hope that this film rips a scab off the sore
that is racism in America today.
KW: Thanks again for the time, Lee, and best of luck with
the film.
LD: Thanks, Kam.
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