E-mail a friendForest Whitaker
airdate September 21, 2009
Forest Whitaker began his career on stage and has established himself as a respected actor—with an Oscar for his turn in The Last King of Scotland—and a skilled director and producer. His credits also include a recurring role on the award-winning TV series, The Shield. The Texas native started college on a football scholarship, studying classical tenor before shifting to acting. His new project, Brick City, which he co-executive produced, is a multi-part documentary on the challenges facing Newark, NJ.
Brick City exec producer explains the connection between crime and poverty. (1:58)
Full interview (13:05)
Forest Whitaker
Tavis: Always pleased to have Forest Whitaker on this program. The Oscar-winning actor serves as executive producer of an acclaimed new documentary series called "Brick City." The five-night series is on the Sundance Channel and focuses on the blight and rebirth of Newark, New Jersey. Here now, some scenes from "Brick City."
[Clip]
Tavis: Always good to see you, Forest.
Forest Whitaker: Hey, good to see you too.
Tavis: Congrats on some great work here.
Whitaker: Oh, thanks.
Tavis: Of all the places that you could have profiled in a documentary series, why Newark, New Jersey?
Whitaker: Well, I was approached about the piece. They were shooting some footage and they were thinking about making this documentary - Marc Levin, who's the executive producer and the filmmaker. And I looked at it and I realized that the story there was about cities all across this country, including my own in Los Angeles, and that it was highlighting someone, like Cory Booker, who are sort of these avatars that are rising up across the country who have this real moral center who are trying to change things. And I decided, okay, I'm going to be involved with this. I'm going to see if we can look at a story that could be a model for the country to renew the cities inside it.
Tavis: I saw some comments by Cory - Mayor Booker. Cory's a friend of mine, so - Mayor Booker. He said he liked - I'm paraphrasing - he liked the piece, he liked the series, but he thought it focused a bit too much on crime. Now, that's Cory's point of view. On the other hand, it's kind of hard to talk about Newark without talking about the crime in Newark. As a filmmaker, tell me how you tried to balance that particular issue so that it didn't overtake the whole project.
Whitaker: I think that we're talking about how to get rid of some of the challenges that the city faces. One of the main challenges was crime. And what happens, though, when you go inside the crime you start to see the people and meet the grassroots people who are working on the streets, who are trying to change the problem, you start to get inside of them. To me, this is a lot about hope and it shows the heroic within the individuals that are living inside the city.
So for me it's in some ways a celebration while trying to rid ourselves of a problem and have a good life.
Tavis: So you get inside crime and you discover some stories. There are a number of stories, of course, throughout the film. Which one of the storylines, with regard to individuals, impacted you?
Whitaker: Oh, there's so many. I think it's really interested to watch Jayda and Creep's relationship.
Tavis: Yeah, I knew you were going to say that - I figured you might say that, yeah.
Whitaker: Yeah, because she's a Blood, he's a Crip, and they become a couple. They have a child. It talks about reconciliation. Then she's coming from this environment where she's still kind of entangled with the court system and the prison system for an assault, but she continues to rise. She ultimately starts this organization for nine women to start to try to help and heal their community. To me, that's a very powerful statement.
Tavis: How much of what holds young people back has to do with being trapped, you think, by crime in major cities all across the country?
Whitaker: I think a great deal of it. I think when Cory tries to address - we were talking about this crime element - it eliminates a fear, which allows you to have a little bit of freedom to start to think about your own life and what you can do with it. When disenfranchise people or when kids are feeling like they have no option and the only option to actually make money is through crime, then we have to show that there's other ways.
So this crime-based thing is insidious inside some of the communities in the country, because it offers, in some ways, opportunity, and in the other ways death and the destruction of a life.
Tavis: There's some folk, no doubt some watching this now, who have never bought this argument and never will. There are a lot of politicians who have been elected to office and stayed in office because they come down on one side of this question, which is the crime side.
What did you take away, having done this documentary, about the connection, the intersection, between crime and poverty? Because it's so easy for politicians to say, "Tough on crime," but nobody wants to acknowledge the connection between crime and poverty. Having done this now, what do you see about that?
Whitaker: Well, you recognize that when they implement these programs and they free up the neighborhoods from some of the crime, the businesses, like Verizon, Blue Cross, Continental Airway, all these people start to come into the community because the community's starting to be safer, which in turn creates more jobs, which in turn creates more opportunities, which at the same time raises the values of the people's homes that are in those communities. So it's just a blossoming effect after you start to address that issue.
Tavis: You got a chance to see Cory Booker - did you want to say something else?
Whitaker: You know that (unintelligible) I was thinking about your book (unintelligible).
Tavis: Oh, yeah, yeah. There is a connection, yeah. That was a bit of a commentary as well as much as it was a question, but I digress on that point. You got a chance to see Cory Booker up close. He's been profiled in a lot of places as an up-and-comer - a young guy, Yale law, Rhodes Scholar, brilliant guy.
I'm not sure that I still understand all the reasons why Cory wanted to be mayor of Newark, but getting a chance to watch this guy up close, what do you take away - what was your take-away from watching him specifically, a young, African American, male mayor trying to deal with this crime problem in an overwhelmingly Black city?
Whitaker: Well, what's so powerful about him is his sort of center, his moral center about what he's trying to accomplish. He's got a vision for the city. But he has a vision, and then he's able to inspire people to believe in the vision, and empower people - people on the streets, everyone that he comes in contact with, to believe that their voice means something.
So I was really - I was so impressed with him because I think he is a model of what a lot of us have (unintelligible) that a lot of us have to try to take up, and he's willing to spend his life and his time. You'll see in the documentary where he's getting out of cars and he's talking to China, trying to bring business into the port, and the next minute he's getting out of the car, saying, "What are you doing out, it's 1:00 in the morning." The next time, he's playing basketball in the projects, to talking to some people about bringing business in.
He's willing to roll up his sleeves and say, "I can change my environment, I can make things happen. I can make this universe happen the way I want it to." And so I couldn't be more impressed with him as an individual.
Tavis: Cory's a person of faith, I'm a person of faith, I know you as well, and I'm thinking now as you were talking about the bible verse that says that where there is no vision, that people perish. So somebody's got to have a vision or people end up perishing without somebody's vision. I guess the question is, to your point about vision, Forest, whether or not in Newark vision is enough.
Put another way, what are the resources that have to be available to really fight crime in inner cities these days?
Whitaker: Well, in the case of this, the motto that they started to use was to look at the neighborhoods over the last three years or so that had the largest spaces for crime, to take individuals from the academy and put them there, put people that knew them there, in those environments, to try to - because in the past a lot of our neighborhoods that are policed are to keep people out.
In this case, we were, like, putting people into the neighborhoods to try to make sure the citizens can live their lives. They put cameras around so that we can capture those things. I think that his collaborative relationship with Gary McCarthy, the head of the police there, it's a great model, really.
Tavis: There's a lot that's been written about this notion of community-based policing, to your point now, that police have to have relationships with the communities they protect and serve. Here in L.A., where you and I live, we've had this debate for years. You'll recall many years ago, when Tom Bradley was mayor of this city, we had this debate about whether or not cops who work in L.A. ought to, in fact, live in L.A.
And there are cities across the country that have experimented with this, and of course the argument, the logic is that if policemen police communities that they live and work in there's a different connection because this is their community as well, as opposed to policing here and driving an hour and a half away to another community where you live. You have no stake - you're not a stakeholder in this particular community.
I say all that to ask what your sense was of the relationship between those who do the work of policing in Newark with these communities that you were filming in, the people.
Whitaker: Yeah, I saw the kind of coalescing of the communities. Cory lives there in the neighborhood, Gary moved into Newark. He's bought a home there and he lives (unintelligible).
Tavis: The police chief.
Whitaker: The police chief. And I think one of the elements we have to look at too is the grass root element, which is the street warriors and the fathers who've lost their sons and children. Those people are interfacing with those police officers because they are inside of the community and they're trying to offer the help that they can help.
They're always on the scene, because it's an effort that needs to come from each individual as well. That's the only way that communities can really move forward, is for the individuals inside of it to be and feel empowered that their voice can be heard and that they can change what's going on there.
And that's what's occurring by the police officers being in the community, but everyone living in the community, by the grassroots groups who are trying to change things. It all continues, like I say, to blossom out.
Tavis: We, of course, in our community and across the country, for that matter, we love Forest Whitaker, but even when Forest Whitaker shows up with his crew, even if he is Forest Whitaker, who's beloved by us, when you show up with a camera crew, what happens to the people that you're filming?
I guess I'm getting at whether or not you can get what is authentic on film. Can you get the truth? Cameras have a way of changing people when they show up. Talk to me about what you think you got in this series when your cameras showed up.
Whitaker: Well, Marc Levin and Mark Benjamin - Marc Levin, who's the director of the piece, he spent a long period of time getting to know the people in the community.
Tavis: Before he started filming?
Whitaker: Yeah, and coming in and shooting, shooting, and shooting to gain trust, to let them know that this is just about their voices being heard. I came in just to meet people and to say hi and talk to people; to let them know also that I was truly involved in this and behind what was going on.
And there was a comfort level that started to happen, because I think as the filmmakers kept continuing to shoot the people realized that this was their opportunity to say what they need to say. What we were trying to do and what I was always talking to Marc about and hoping to do was to show that sort of - the heroic, again, in the everyday individual, to recognize that the heroism that goes on, on a daily basis, just by sometimes getting up and going outside your door and walking down the street to a job that you possibly don't love, to take care of kids in a school system that you don't like. You know what I mean? (Laughter) There's a heroism in that.
Tavis: Here's the exit question. I'm glad that Sundance is showing this for five consecutive nights, and it's good of them to do that, but I have some sense what the Sundance demographic is. I'm raising this only because Sundance clearly ain't no BET, it ain't TV1, it ain't - we know what we're talking about here.
I'm wondering whether or not - I think the answer is probably yes, but I want your take on this - is this the right audience? Is this the right audience to see this, because ultimately we want to get traction on this issue, and we need to get traction with the right people? So tell me about what people are going to get when they get a chance to see this.
Whitaker: I think that it's going to definitely cause people to think and realize that there are solutions to the problems that are facing the country, recognize that we can apply it in other cities. Hopefully other mayors, other police chiefs, other people will see it.
I do believe that the community itself has to see the project too, because that's a large element inside of the correction, you know what I mean? But if the city hall and the major are the first touch that the citizens have after their neighborhood - their house, their family, their neighborhood, city hall, the mayor - if the mayors across the country start to take notice and it started to be used as a model, then inside that model they'll start to contact the people as well from the grassroots, and hopefully something can happen from there.
I think it's an extremely positive thing. I'd like it to branch out for people to see it, maybe on the net that'll happen. Well, that still might not get all the demographics that we want.
Tavis: You'll get them. Forest Whitaker does a lot of great work, and he's done it again on this project, with a wonderful team. The piece is called "Brick City," five nights, now showing on the Sundance Channel. Forest, always good to have you on the program.
Whitaker: Thanks, man. It's a pleasure.
Tavis: Good to see you. Thanks for your work on this project.
Back to September 21, 2009