Welcome to "Saturday Night of the Movies," I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

Tonight's film's the 2016 period drama, "Fences."

It was directed by Denzel Washington, from a screenplay by August Wilson, adapted from his Pulitzer Prize winning 1985 play.

Washington also stars with Viola Davis, with Stephen McKinley Henderson, Jovan Adepo, Russell Hornsby, Mykelti Williamson, and Saniyya Sidney.

In Pittsburgh in the mid 1950s, Troy Maxon works as a garbage collector alongside his longtime best friend, Jim Bono.

As they walk home after work, Troy complains that only white workers are allowed to drive the trucks while the Black workers do all the heavy lifting in the back.

In fact, he's complained to his boss about that.

Bono asked him about a young woman he has seen Troy talking to at Taylor's, the local bar.

But Troy insists he stopped chasing women after marrying his wife, Rose, 18 years before.

At Troy's house in the Hill District, he and Rose banter affectionately with each other while Troy and Bono shared drinks from a bottle of gin.

Rose tells Troy their son, Cory, a high school senior, has been recruited by a football scout for a college team.

Troy is skeptical that white men would allow any colored boy to play football.

Then he tells Bono and Rose a story about how death visited him when he had pneumonia as a young man.

He claims to have wrestled death for three days until death gave up and left him, vowing to return someday.

Lyons, Troy's 34-year-old son from an earlier relationship, comes by the house to borrow money, leading to an argument that ends with Rose lending him the money from Troy's pay pack.

Later, Troy and Rose hear a commotion in the street and find Troy's younger brother, Gabe, who suffered a traumatic brain injury during the war.

Gabe now has religious visions and carries a trumpet, ready to alert St. Peter to open the gates of heaven to the blessed.

Before long Troy heads off to drink at Taylor's, leaving behind the unfinished fence Rose wants built in the backyard to separate it from the yard of the abandoned house next door.

August Wilson, revered as theater's poet of Black America, was born on April 27th, 1945 in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

He was the fourth of six children born to a German-born baker and his African American wife who worked cleaning homes.

August's father was seldom around, so his mother essentially raised the children alone.

She later divorced her husband and remarried, but as a mixed-race child, August had difficulty finding his place among his peers.

He was intelligent and a voracious reader, but found school didn't meet his needs and left at 16 to work a series of menial jobs.

In time, he was inspired to write, drawing on people he met at work or on the street.

He first tried poetry and later turned to writing plays.

In 1968, he co-founded the Black Horizon Theater in Pittsburgh's Hill District and staged his first play, "Recycling."

Wilson, who died in 2005, is rightly famous for his 10 plays known as the Pittsburgh Cycle, nine of them set at that city's Hill District and one in Chicago.

Each play deals with African American urban life in a different decade, reflecting the Black experience in America and written in the language of everyday Black life.

The plays often include supernatural elements and always feature strong female characters.

Wilson wrote in 2001, "My mother's a very strong, principled woman.

My female characters come in a large part from my mother."

Reflecting on his work, Wilson told the Paris Review, "I think my plays offer white Americans a different way to look at Black Americans.

For instance, in "Fences" they see a garbage man, a person they don't really look at, although they see a garbage man every day."

By looking at Troy's life, white people find out that the content of this Black garbage man's life is affected by the same things, love, honor, beauty, betrayal, duty.

Recognizing these things are as much a part of his life as theirs can affect how they think about and deal with Black people in their lives.

August Wilson's play, "Fences," opened on Broadway in 1987, starring James Earl Jones as Troy Maxson and winning the Tony Awards for Best Play, Best Actor, and Best Featured Actress.

Wilson worked for years on a screenplay based on the play, but left it incomplete at the time of his death in 2005.

Although there were earlier attempts to turn the play into a movie, Wilson was adamant that any film version be held by an African American director.

Denzel Washington and Viola Davis started a 13-week Broadway-play revival of, "Fences," in 2010 that was nominated for 10 Tony Awards, winning for Best Revival of a Play, Best Actor in a Play, and Best Actress in a Play.

After that success, Washington, who had previously directed, "Antoine Fisher," in 2002, and, "The Great Debaters," in 2007, announced in 2013 his decision to direct and star in a film version of, "Fences."

Since Wilson's own screenplay for a motion-picture version of, "Fences," was incomplete, Washington, filmmaker Spike Lee, and playwright Tony Kushner all worked on revisions of what Wilson had written.

Washington also continued to work on the script while, "Fences," was being filmed in Pittsburgh's Hill District in April, May, and June of 2016, but Washington, Lee, and Kushner all declined writing credits so Wilson could be the sole, official screenwriter of the finished film.

Co-producer Todd Black later said, "The star of the movie is the screenplay, "and August Wilson's words.

"What Denzel said to me, to Scott, to all the actors, "the cinematographer, and the production designer was, "'Don't make any decision without August Wilson's words "'leading you to make that decision.

"'Whatever you do, let the words inform your decision first.

"'That's what we all add to abide by.'"

[light inspirational music] Wilson was nominated posthumously for an Academy award for Best Adapted Screenplay and a host of other awards in the same category.

All of August Wilson's work is loaded with metaphorical and supernatural weight.

In, "Fences," Gabriel reminds us twice that rose is a beautiful flower, as well as the name of Troy's wife.

Troy was the ancient, walled city besieged for 10 years by Greek armies as chronicled in Homer's, "Iliad."

It's a good name for a man who feels embattled on every side.

Troy tells wild stories about his encounters with death and the devil, stories that seem to hold some deeper truth for him.

Troy's mentally challenged younger brother, Gabe, short for Gabriel, always carries a trumpet and talks about St. Peter, Judgment Day, and the gates of Heaven.

His trumpet call at the end of the film, faltering at first, at the third try brings out the sun, seeming to invite Troy's soul through the gate, through the fence and into the heavenly realm.

There are a lot of fences in, "Fences."

Rose sings the Sam Cooke song, "Jesus Be a Fence Around Me," as she hangs out close.

While working on the backyard fence, Tony asked Bono, "What does she want to keep out?

"She doesn't have anything that others want."

Bono replies, "Some build fences to keep people out, "others to keep us in it.

"Rose wants to keep everyone together, she loves you."

David Edelstein wrote in, "New York Magazine," at the film's release, "Troy, a gifted baseball player, was fenced out "of the major leagues when he was young.

"Now, he sees fences everywhere.

"The fence that he's building, though, "underscores the barrier he has erected "between him and his sons."

"Fences," was both a commercial and a critical success, with reviews especially praising the lead performances of Denzel Washington and Viola Davis.

A. O. Scott of, "The New York Times," wrote, "If the sound were to suddenly fail "or if the dialogue were dubbed into martian, "the impact of their performances would still be palpable."

"Variety," said simply, "The acting is all superb."

"Fences," was nominated for many awards from different groups, including the Academy Awards, the African American Film Critics Association, the BAFTA Awards, the Golden Globes, and the NAACP Image Awards, but the person who won over and over was Viola Davis for her performance as Rose.

As David Calhoun wrote in a review in, "Time Out," "Washington is very good, but it's Davis, hurt, proud, "determined, who's the star of this show.

"August Wilson's mother, Daisy, would've been proud."

Please join us again next time for another, "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm Glenn Holland, goodnight.