Steve James interview
I had the pleasure of speaking with Steve James earlier this week about his fantastic new film The Interrupters. A few excerpts:
RM: Did you zero in on the three interrupters that you wound up focusing on right from the start, or was that something that developed as you were filming or even in editing?
Steve James: With Cobe [Williams] and Eddie [Bocanegra], they kind of emerged ... Eddie was a new and young interrupter and we had wanted to follow a Latino interrupter. He was not our first choice, but he ended up being a great choice for this film because we were really struck by the fact that his story as much as anything is not about the mediations he does. It’s about him, and about how does someone who has committed the ultimate act of violence live with that, and what does he do with it? And you see what Eddie does with it. And of course we were really fascinated with just what a stereotype-busting individual Eddie is. If you think of a guy who was well placed in a Latin gang and went away for murder, you don’t think when you meet Eddie that he’s that guy.
RM: Can you tell me a little bit about the process of selecting the music for The Interrupters?
Steve James: Most of the music is scored by our composer, a guy named Josh Abrams, who was a founding member of The Roots. He’s just a terrific composer who’s very much plugged into many different things from rap to jazz. He’d done music before for films, but he’d never done a full score for a film before.
We heard some of his music through a mutual friend, and there was a real sort of authenticity and a Chicago sound to it that we felt would make a good match for the film.
RM: Was there anything that surprised you during the filming or changed some ideas or preconceived notions that you may have had going in to the film?
Steve James: I feel like every film that I’ve done, that’s happened. And where it happens on the most profound levels, I think, are in the better films that I’ve done.
I think in the case of this film, I had this sense that people in these communities had maybe kind of given up, that there wasn’t much fight left in them over this issue of violence.
Everybody we met had lost a loved one or a good friend to the streets, without exception. And of course, many of them had lost more than one. And when you think about that, that’s pretty astounding. This was surprising too, just how prevalent it was. I didn’t expect that.
Full interview here, including more on all of the above topics plus how James got involved with this project and what he feels are the keys to getting interview subjects to open up:
http://www.examiner.com/movies-in-atlanta/steve-james-interview-acclai med-director-talks-the-interrupters
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