[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - The best response you can have to a payoff in a thriller is someone goes, "Oh, right, I forgot, of course..." [multiple voices chattering] [Narrator] On Story offers a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.

All of our content is recorded live at Austin Film Festival and at our year-round events.

To view previous episodes, visit OnStory.tv.

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[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is On Story.

A look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.

This week's On Story, "Da 5 Bloods" writer Kevin Willmott.

- You get our age and you've met a lot of broken people, and you've seen people break, and you've been involved with people breaking sometimes.

Most of the time you don't get a moment like you get in a film where you get to address your brokenness at its kinda major source, get to reconcile with that brokenness.

And that's one of the cool things movies can do.

[paper crumples] [typing] [typewriter ding] [Narrator] In this episode, critically acclaimed writer Kevin Willmott talks about balancing messages of social justice with entertainment, working with famed director Spike Lee, and writing "BlacKkKlansman", "Destination: Planet Negro", and "Da 5 Bloods".

[typewriter ding] - You were born in Kansas.

You came back to Kansas after doing your academic training.

How do you make that work as a filmmaker?

What are the good parts about being based someplace other than Hollywood?

- That's something I kind of learned from Spike, actually.

This is before I was working with him.

Spike had done "She's Gotta Have It", and that launched a lot of folks in my generation, it launched a lot of us wanting to be filmmakers.

And one of the things I picked up from him was that you had to go where people knew you, where people knew what you were trying to do.

You had to kinda, you know, connect with your base of support, you know, and your base of support are typically going to be guys that know you, that you grew up with, that understand your story.

- It feels to me like there are a lot of through lines with your work and Spike's work where you're doing a lot of similar things, which I'm guessing is... We're going to talk about why you're so good together.

But in 2009, you directed "The Only Good Indian" with the great Native American actor Wes Studi.

It's a beautiful Western with a lot of cinematic antecedents.

There's that gorgeous doorframe shot right out of "The Searchers".

And there's a really powerful focus on the connection between racism and mythology, which is one of the things that Westerns do.

The myth of the American West, the myth of white superiority over everybody else they encounter.

Could you talk a little bit about what attracted you to that story?

- Yeah.

I love Westerns.

I've always loved Westerns.

Went to Westerns all the time as a kid.

The fact that it was centered in the Native American experience was important to me because, here in Lawrence-- Lawrence is one of the cities that had a boarding school, and the boarding school that's here is the really only last existing one that has then been transformed from a place that took your identity to a place that now celebrates your identity.

And so when you get into the story of the boarding schools and you see how they were designed to rob someone of their identity, we worked hard at trying to make it a modern story and not just a story about the past that oftentimes, Native Americans in films are kind of locked in the past.

And we wanted Wes's character, specifically, to kinda be this modern man, who's really from the past and has been defined by the past, but he's trying really hard in essence to kind of really assimilate, and the problem with that and the difficulties with that, and the good things with that.

And so all of that, I thought we were able to bring some interesting ideas to that and make a Native American character that you don't see every day.

And I guess the other thing is the thing that you mentioned about the mythology, that the West... you know, the West-- And this is why I use "The Searchers" imagery from it is that you know, we grew up, our generation, we grew up watching those movies, going to the movies to see those films, and the Western was just like you know, McDonald's, it was just what you ate every day.

It was just like, that's just what they fed us, right.

And you didn't realize, in them doing that to us, we were being fed a bunch of lies as well, and a bunch of myths that just were messing us up in the head, all of us.

And so I like the fact that we, we kind of, you know, that it's an anti- it's an anti-Western, that we kind of dismantle the myth.

The last image of "The Searchers" is John Wayne turning away from the door and being cast out into the world to kind of be lost, really, in a sense, I think.

And in our film, Wes Studi is invited inside the door and he's brought into the community.

And he's been lost before, but now he's found, and now he's been brought back to being a Cherokee and part of the tribe and part of the people.

And he's home, really.

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ [door creaking] [door slams closed] One of the things I learned from blaxploitation movies as a kid is that, when you haven't seen yourself in positive imagery very often, you don't want to be lied to, but you do want to feel like you get to win sometimes.

You want to win when it's, when it's been set up in honest and appropriate kind of story.

You don't want to win just for the sake of winning, but you do want to win after a hard-fought battle that you believe in, and it's the right ending.

And that's how I felt about "The Only Good Indian", that that was the right ending for that film.

[typewriter ding] - I was really intrigued by "Destination: Planet Negro".

That's your 2013 social comedy about how Black people in 1939 attempted to escape the racist society here in America by colonizing Mars.

And it's smart, and it's funny, and it's very political.

How do you balance the points you want to make and the story you want to tell?

- Yeah, I mean, that's the balancing act.

I mean, that's truly it.

And I think with "Destination", it was really a reflection on my parents in many ways, because I was raised by older people.

My father was born in 1898.

He was 60 when I was born.

And my parents were just older, and their friends were older, and so I grew up around older people.

And so I heard a lot about the old days.

My parents, in their wildest dreams, could have never imagined there would ever be a Black president in the United States.

And so, when Obama became president, I just really...

I always had this idea about, you know, about Black people going to Mars or someplace to get out of a problem.

But when Obama became president, it was like, you know, I wanted to kind of explore how far we've come and how far we still need to go.

- We must go even further.

- There is no further.

[dramatic music] What could be further?

[dramatic music] - Follow me.

[suspenseful music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - So it seemed like the perfect vehicle to kind of do that.

And so, to me it's always been...

The effort is always to try to make the joke...

The joke is also about the point.

The joke is always about what you're trying to unfold, what you're trying to expose, what you're trying to satire, what you're trying to reveal.

And for that film, there was a lot of sci-fi jokes and old 50s movies jokes.

You create a world and you have fun with it, but the jokes that matter are the ones where you get to kind of, use this genre to stick the audience and say, "You see that don't you?

You see this."

And you've got to make sure that when you're educating them, in a sense, that you're also making them laugh, and that you're also making them go "Damn," or something.

You got to get some kind of reaction out of them besides just the point.

So that's something that I've always admired.

That's one of the connections I think I have with Spike, is that we both love "Dr. Strangelove".

We both love those 60s and 70s satires that had a clear point.

"I'm going to take this on, I'm going to expose something here, but I'm going to do it in as funny of a way as I can find."

[typewriter ding] - It sort of feels like to me that, in "Chi-Raq" and in "BlacKkKlansman" and "Da 5 Bloods", that you were using every arrow in your quiver, so to speak, on whatever the problem might be that you're wrestling with in that film.

So let's move, if we could, to "BlacKkKlansman", which is one of my favorite films of the last 30 years.

I've got kind of an interesting angle in on this, because a couple of years ago, my Baylor students and I, here at the festival had a chance to talk with David Rabinowitz about his and Charlie's work, the initial work that they did in adapting this from Ron Stallworth's memoir.

- I think what Charlie and David did was they really did a great job of laying it out.

The key relationship was there, and I think that's Flip and Ron's character.

And also there was a love interest that kind of redeveloped in various ways.

In creating Flip, making Flip Jewish, it really kind of took what we saw as the controlling idea, which was really twoness.

Twoness is a thing that W.E.B.

Du Bois talked about.

About how twoness is the struggle between being a Black American and an American.

And there's a lot of different levels of twoness in the movie.

Flip is Jewish, and he's a policeman.

He's Jewish, but he's also an American.

And what we did with Flip was we made Flip kind of disconnected with his Jewish self.

- I'm not risking my life to prevent some rednecks from lighting a couple of sticks on fire.

- This is the job.

What's your problem?

- That's my problem.

For you it's a crusade.

For me it's a job.

It's not personal, nor should it be.

- Why haven't you bought into this?

- Why should I?

- Because you're Jewish, brother.

The so-called chosen people.

You've been passing for a WASP.

White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, cherry pie, hot dog white boy.

That's what some light-skinned Black folks do, they pass for white.

Doesn't that hatred you've been hearing the Klan say, doesn't that [bleep] you off?

- Of course it does.

- Then why you acting like you ain't got skin in the game, brother?

- Rookie, that's my [bleep] business.

- It's our business.

- And that's that thing about identity that I've talked about before.

That's a big part of, kind of, you know, some of the things that I think Spike and I are both interested in.

So I automatically started to bend it that way some.

And then there's the thing, the twoness, of being Black and being blue, being a Black and being a policeman.

And I think Spike was really interested in that as well, that, um... that with the love interest in the film, that making her the Black student union, almost like a Black Panther, almost, really, that she's against him being a cop.

And so he's got to hide... And he's hiding the fact that he's a cop for several different reasons, and he can't be honest with her.

And it's because of twoness, really, it's because she said several times early in their relationship... We see the cops jack her up and, you know, exploit her.

And Black people have a very difficult relationship with the police.

- Are you a pig?

- No.

- What are you then?

- Want to sit?

- No, I'll stand.

- I'm an undercover detective.

I'm investigating the Klan.

- [Bleep] KKK?

Ron Stallworth, you lied to me.

Is that even your real name?

- Ron Stallworth is my first and last name.

Look, today's not the day, Patrice.

- I take my duties as the president of the Black Student Union seriously.

- Well, how much good did it do?

You could sit in the middle of Nevada Avenue, light yourself on fire, the KKK will still be here.

- Well, at least I would be doing something, unlike you.

- Unlike me?

- Yeah!

- Don't think just because I don't wear a black beret or a black leather jacket, black Ray-Bans, screaming "Kill whitey," that I don't care about my people.

- So all those levels of twoness is what immediately came, I think, to Spike and I.

And so we tried to infuse that in as many ways as we could in the film.

- That's a brilliant parallel thing that I had not thought about until you mentioned it.

And I'm sure that you guys have talked about that, but just that idea that each of them has a secret that imperils relationships in the film.

- I mean, here's Flip, and he's around all these anti-Semitic guys.

And here's Ron, he's on the phone, literally, with David Duke, and he's pretending to be a Klansman.

And the reality of that is there's a... One of the scenes in the film is something that I experienced as a kid, and I think it's something that many people from my generation experienced as kids.

And I went over a buddy of mine's house after school, white buddy, and you're playing with him.

I think it was in fourth grade, you're playing with him.

His mother comes home.

She says, "Is that [bleep] here again?"

And my friend looks at me, I look at him.

I'm feeling sorry for him, because I see how bad he feels, really, about it.

- Right.

- And so, there's a scene where Ron is talking to David Duke, and he's telling him that story, but he's pretending to be the white guy and the Black friend, and his father comes home and says, "Get the N out of here."

And of course, David Duke says, "Your father sounds like a great guy," but you see on Ron's face that pain that even, all these many years later...

He's sharing something that happened with him that...

He never says it's true.

He's telling it like a story, but you can tell it actually probably did happen to him.

- I knew a [bleep] once.

- Did you?

- Yeah.

That [bleep] lived across the street from us.

I must have been six or seven.

And his nickname was Butter Biscuit.

[laughing] - How'd he get that nickname?

- He loved his momma's butter biscuits.

- Yum, yum.

- Me and Butter Biscuit played together every day.

One day my father came home early from work.

He told me I couldn't play with that little [bleep] any more because I was white, and Butter Biscuit was a [bleep].

- That's so rich.

Oh, your father sounds like a terrific man.

- That whole convention of things allowed us to kind of bend things in so many different ways toward the multilevels of how race works in our society.

[typewriter ding] - Critic Charlotte O'Sullivan wrote about "5 Bloods" that, while all the characters are damaged, Paul, that's Delroy Lindo's character, Paul's prejudice and self-loathing and greed are what drive the movie.

I wonder if you could talk with us a little bit about writing Paul and the other characters, and maybe even, in a more universal way, about the idea of brokenness as a way of creating really powerful and compelling characters.

- Yeah, well, with Paul, it really started with Danny and Paul De Meo, because they made Paul's character.

He was kind of a racist.

This is when the movie was really four white guys and one Black guy.

And Paul's character was a jerk, and he had a son, and it was all there, really.

And what Spike and I... We always joke about it.

We say we just Blackified him, we just came in and put the Black whammy on it.

But also what we did was take Paul...

When you thought of Paul as being Black, it kind of added another level of brokenness to his character.

And that's why we also made him a MAGA hat guy.

- When we got back from 'Nam, we didn't get nothing but a hard damn time.

- Folks called us baby killers.

- See, I bought into all that [bleep].

How'd your life change, huh?

Yeah, right.

Time we got these freeloading immigrants off our backs and build that wall.

Negroes better wake the [bleep] up with the quickness, man.

- No, no, no, no, no.

- I'm just saying.

- Don't tell me that you voted for President Fake Bone Spurs.

- Yeah, I voted for him.

- Get the [bleep] out of here!

- You didn't vote for him!

- I thought that was you.

That grinning-ass negro in the front row, right there behind Trump at them rallies.

"Hah, hah!

It's me!

It's me!"

- Blacks for Trump.

You watch, you watch.

Those signs are great.

Thank you.

- Fake news.

- See?

That's where they all go to.

Fake news.

- Many of them are like Paul.

They've gotten a raw deal, and they've got grievances that I think are fair.

They feel like they've been screwed around by society in various ways.

Unfortunately, they end up kind of blaming the wrong people for their problems, and they get mad at the wrong people.

And that's what Paul is.

I mean, Paul is mad at everybody and, and kind of shedding responsibility himself, blaming other folks.

He's had a raw deal, but he's not learned forgiveness.

He's not learned that everybody's road's probably pretty hard too.

He's selfish in that sense, and all of those things.

And so, you know, we also really connected to "Treasure of the Sierra Madre".

The Humphrey Bogart character is basically Paul.

- I was just thinking what a bonehead play that old jackass made when he put all his goods in our keeping.

- How do you mean?

- Think he'd let us do his sweating for him, did he?

We'll show him.

- What are you getting at?

- Man, can't you see?

It's all ours.

We don't go back to Durango at all.

Savvy?

Not at all.

- I don't follow you, Dobsy.

- Don't be such a sap.

Where did you ever grow up?

All right, to make it clear to a dumbhead like you: we take all his goods and go straight up north.

Leave the old jackass flat.

- You aren't serious, are you?

You don't really mean what you're saying?

- Fred C. Dobbs don't say nothing he don't mean.

- Bogart in that film, he turns into kind of a rotten guy.

The thing with Paul, though, that's different than Bogart is that Paul loses his mind, he goes crazy, he does a lot of bad things, but in the end, you still kind of like him.

You know.

And you kind of understand him.

And that was the thing that I think is interesting about brokenness, is that... you know, I think we've all... You get our age and you've met a lot of broken people, and you've seen people break, and you've been involved with people breaking sometimes.

And you understand how complex being broken is, and so much of being broken...

I don't think I'm giving anything away here, but most of the time, you don't get a moment like you get in a film where you get to address your brokenness at its kinda major source, what probably led to your most deepest part of your brokenness, and you get to reconcile with that brokenness.

Most of us don't get that.

And that's one of the cool things movies can do.

- There it is.

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ It was an accident.

Ain't no thing, brother.

Accident.

I forgive you.

You hear that?

I forgive you.

Ain't no thing, brother.

- For me, film taught me a lot about race and it taught me a lot about America, American history, good and bad.

And so, I just think that film can make the world a better place.

[typewriter ding] - You've been watching a conversation with Kevin Willmott on On Story.

On Story is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story project.

That also includes the On Story radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive, accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about On Story and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

♪ ♪ [projector clicking] [typing] [typewriter ding] [projector dies]