Antoine Fuqua and Wesley Snipes
An interview with Sergio Mims
2010-03-01
By Sergio Mims
Brooklyn’s Finest, which opens Friday March 5, is the latest film by acclaimed director Antoine Fuqua whose previous films include action thrillers such as Shooter, Tears of the Sun and Training Day, for which Denzel Washington won the Oscar for Best Actor. Aside from being an intense, tough and incredibly well made film about the lives and complications of a trio of New York City cops (played by Richard Gere, Don Cheadle and Ethan Hawke) Brooklyn’s Finest also features a stunning performance by Wesley Snipes in his best performance in years as an ex-con slowly drawn back into the he abandoned.
Recently Sergio Mims of Ebonyjet.com (along with WHPK-FM radio host Nick Greyer) talked to Fuqua and Snipes about the film, the representations of masculinity on the screen and why Snipes’ Blade films still don’t get the respect and or credit they deserve.
EBONY: I have a feeling some people will think Brooklyn’s Finest is a grim, violent and depressing film. But it isn’t. It’s really a film about redemption.
FUQUA: It is very grim, but it deals with those real life issues that we deal with as black men, as we deal with America and society itself. The film deals with a lot of different layers of things, mainly the pressure of police officers, the fact that they
make no money, the fact that psychologically they don’t get evaluated enough, the fact that spiritually many of them die in a way, because they see the worst of mankind every day.
That’s what they do, all day long. So how do you go home feeling positive every day? So that leads to a lot of extreme pressures that we deal with in the film and also choices as well. Selfish choices that can lead to deadly consequences.
That’s one of things I wanted to bring out in the movie. The spiritual part in the movie, which me and Wesley talked a lot about, was the story of Job, which is why the film starts off over a graveyard. Are all the good men dead? I wanted to raise that question and explore it spiritually. But ultimately it’s about redemption and hope.
You’ve got to go through hell sometimes, you’ve got to go through hell to get out on the other side. This country is going through hell. That’s why I have that image of Richard Gere at the end, all bloody with one eye closed. He had to go through hell. That’s our country. The handsome America, as we know it, with the Statue of Liberty, standing looking beautiful, but look at it closely there are scars all over the place... that’s the idea. So yeah, it is a little dark but there’s hope. That’s why at the end I froze the image of Gere looking out on us. He’s saying to us we’ve got to do something. We cannot be allowed not to do anything
EBONY: Another thing I like about the film is that you take a many of the old archetypes we’ve seen many times before in cop movies like the hard drinking, burnt out cop days away from retirement, the undercover cop so deep undercover that he doesn’t know where his loyalties lies, but it doesn’t go the clichéd way you expect. Like what happens to Wesley’s character, which we won’t give away. I didn’t expect that to happen.
SNIPES: I didn’t expect that to happen that day either (Snipes and Fuqua laugh.)
EBONY: But watching your character in the film, I thought to myself this could have been your famous character Nino Brown from New Jack City, if he had lived at the end of that Film, but now older and wiser.
SNIPES: He could have been, he could have been Nino. Refined, aware now, weary, and registering that the old ways don’t work, the old games don’t apply anymore. And that it was a trick and he got caught up in the trick, caught up in the trap. And now it’s time to move on. If he can’t bring all of them with him, fair enough, he’ll go by himself.
EBONY: Antoine we’ve have talked before just recently and I told you that I was so anxious to see this film because I love tough violent R-rated action films. I’m a guy. I make no apologies for that. I want tough hardcore movies
FUQUA: That’s what it’s about!
EBONY: Too many black films now are aimed at women. Or nerds or comic book geeks. I mean what happened to us? What happened to movies for men?
SNIPES: That’s right!
EBONY: What happened in the film industry?
FUQUA: I think we’re in a time they’ve cut the cojones off or are trying to. You want me to put it to you for real? Everything is soft, they’re putting everyone in dresses and O.K. that’s fun. But I grew up watching movies about men. Watching movies from the 1930’s the 40’s the 50’s Movies like Public Enemy and Scarface (i.e. referring to the original Howard Hawks’ 1932 version with Paul Muni).
EBONY: Exactly! You don’t have those definite masculine actors today like you had back then like Robert Mitchum, Gary Cooper, Lee Marvin, Yul Brynner, John Wayne, William Holden. You can go on and on the list was endless back then.
SNIPES: We just had this same conversation…
FUQUA: Yeah we just had this exact same conversation just recently. Even in casting now, it’s hard to find men. I mean we have Denzel. No doubt. We’ve got Wesley. But Wesley now is going to come back and help me do that. Because if Denzel is busy, then where am I going to go? We’re not that deep with skilled quality actors and masculinity.
The thing is, it’s hard to make films about men, about the pressures of men, about our lives. What we go through, but in a very real way. But on an international way where it’s not local. Where it’s not small. We’ve gone past “back on the blocks”. We’ve got to be a little more global on these things as well. I think it’s up to filmmakers to do that. I was raised by a lot of women, but when I was on the streets I was around some men. Some real cats, who kept me alive and kept me out the game.
So when I look back at some of the pressures they were dealing with, my father, my uncles, my cousins.... You can’t be soft in my house. I now look at how does that effect us now, how we’re living now? What does that mean? And I think women want that too, because they want to see some real men like Wesley Snipes up on the screen. They want to have a variety on the screen. They want men. I mean most of them are from Australia now (laughs).
EBONY: Or if you’re talking about masculine black actors then you’ve got to go to the U.K. like Idris Elba or Eamonn Walker. We’ve got too many soft black men from the U.S. in movies now.
FUQUA: Yeah, so I’m on this with a vengeance right now
EBONY: But of course, Wesley, there’s been already lots of buzz about your performance in the film. People have been waiting to see you in a standout role like this again. How can I put this delicately…do you see this as your comeback?
SNIPES It’s a comeback to people… (laughs) who have a lot of talent and lot of respect for the craft. It’s a comeback to quality. (laughs)
EBONY: That’s been sorely lacking?
SNIPES: Absolutely! (laughs) You know, I’ve been in some films that I don’t even watch (laughs) I see the results of it and I say “That’s garbage!” and I call them up and tell them “That was garbage do you guys understand? Oh man you’re killing the brand. Snipes is a good actor in bad films!”
FUQUA: And that’s heartbreak. That’s heartbreak to see that to one of our own great actors….great actors… I’ve been trying to find my Pacino, my DeNiro forever. And when I first met Wesley ten years ago I said to myself I’ve got to get my hands on this brother. When I got my hands on Denzel we got an Academy Award and I know, and I can say this on record, with the right piece of material, he will be on that stage and I’ll bet my life on that!
EBONY: Wesley, in the film you look older, beaten down tired. Is that makeup or did you somehow physically get into that mindset? Right now you look 20 years younger than you do in the film.
SNIPES: That’s my makeup up artist (laughs) But that’s a part of it. That’s about embodying the character and letting him emerge. But as a physical actor I was taught to try to express the character physically, the look, the posture, the speed and pace in which they moved should reflect the conditions they’ve been through and the experiences they’re been through .
EBONY: So it’s like a form of Method acting or is it your method?
Yes it’s a form of Method acting. I didn’t go the Stanislavski school specially for this, but I am trained in that way, but it doesn’t apply when you’ve got 40 days to shoot a movie.
EBONY: But getting back to your character Caz in Antoine’s movie and comparing it to Nino Brown. In New Jack City you’re a cold ruthless, arrogant ,selfish person while in Brooklyn’s Finest you’re more compassionate in way or sensitive which is seen by others in the film as weakness. Is it a form of social commentary on black men, that having compassion not resorting to violence when it is expected is seen, unfortunately by some black men, as a negative aspect, something to be avoided?
SNIPES: Well definitely showing compassion is not weakness. There’s a martial arts system called Aikido and it is about receiving the energy of the other person and redirecting it. That’s where compassion comes in. You don’t always have to step into a situation like a bull, you can step like water. You can step real soft and embrace it and let it pass through you. That’s why I always say that compassion is strength.
But Antoine talked to me a lot about the character and wanting to show that arc, the story of those guys who were in the game, living the bulletproof kind of mindset and then reality sets in. Solitude. Then they hear God and they hear their heart and they change, almost every one of them. And when they come out they have a different perspective.
They don’t want the conflict, they just want to move through life, eat well (slips into a Jamaican accent) drink some nice coconut water, some mangos , have a beautiful girl on each arm and move to Ibiza (laughs)
FUQUA: They grow up, they grow up.
SNIPES: But I never anticipated that New Jack City would have the impact that it had and has. I never anticipated that character would become something of an urban folk hero of sorts. And honestly that kind of troubled me because I’ve always been socially conscious and I didn’t want to be a contributing to a continuation of a stereotype. Brothers are all drug dealers, brothers are all innately criminal, especially the dark skinned brothers, they’re dangerous.
So brothers would come to me over the years and say: “Snipes that’s Nino is cold! That’s me for real I’m living it right now!” I’m like that’s the wrong message, that’s not important. He died at the end remember? So when we got together for this project I said O.K. this is another opportunity to say it that don’t work!
EBONY: But with all these comic book films seemingly coming out every week making billions of dollars worldwide and I’ve noticed that your Blade films really started off the whole wave yet they’re never given the credit that they deserve. Especially since they’re much more adult in tone than the stuff coming out now aimed squarely at kids.
It’s amazing. It really is amazing. And I appreciate being in that lane. It was always about taking a character and bringing the layers and personality and inner conflict. And those things I would be doing if I was doing a Moliere or a Shakespeare play, bringing that sort of depth to the character and then add the martial arts and the action.
They seem not to have figured out that formula when you put a strong actor and let him create the character and
then those of us who recognize that this is a fantasy world get can immersed with the character and not just sit there and watch images jump around on the screen. But to make a long story long, they keep doing their thing and that’s great because it develops a platform for what I’m going to do next with Omandi Mech 5, which is a futuristic animated science fiction piece set in Africa 120 years into the future.
So I appreciate it, but I find it an interesting commentary that they don’t include Blade in the general conversation about the genre. But quiet as it’s kept though they will openly say, yes, the Blade films saved us from bankruptcy.
But what they don’t understand that they are people out here making movies and in other areas who are very conscious and very aware to what the current climate is and they’re not speaking out and they’re not blowing whistles but they’re getting stuff done in the background. But watch. What we are discussing now, it’s
going to be a new game and new playing field but then we will be held accountable for the quality of the work because there won’t be any more excuses. We have the money, we have the distribution and have the accessibility and we have the fan base so then it’s all about quality.
See the teaser trailer for Wesley Snipes animated sci-fi series go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz67jkwlnMA
Special thanks to Nick Greyer for his invaluable assistance for the interview
