Audio transcription

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.

Haden Guest  0:03 

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. My name is Haden Guest. I'm the Director of the Harvard Film Archive and it's a great pleasure to welcome you here tonight, as we in turn welcome Kevin Jerome Everson to the Harvard Film Archive. Kevin Jerome Everson is one of the leading voices in contemporary American independent cinema. And I mean independent in the truest sense of the word, for Everson is a director whose films are made of modest means, but without compromise of any kind. Indeed, Everson’s cinema, as you will quickly learn, is guided by a quite remarkably unwavering vision and ambition. Everson’s films are rooted in an intimate and sustained engagement with the local; with those places and communities upon which he most often focuses his patient yet nimble camera. Everson’s films together paint a subtle and compelling larger portrait of the African American community and experience traced from his native Ohio, to his more recent home in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he teaches film at the celebrated University.

Equally important to Everson’s films are their formal rigor. Their quiet insistence on making their structure legible and clear, with a careful emphasis especially upon duration and framing. In Everson’s films, we’re frequently made acutely and at times quite sublimely aware that we are watching an image come to life before us.

It's interesting to note how Everson’s work was recognized first and still most vocally by the art world and the experimental film world. He’s been a regular invitee to the Whitney Biennial and has been recognized with major awards by important avant garde festivals such as Ann Arbor and Media City, to name just two. Placed within this company and upon that stage, one realizes the profound dialogue taking place across Everson’s films with the cinema of such figures as Andy Warhol, or with the art of such figures as the painter Gerhard Richter, whose work is gently referenced in tonight's feature, Erie. Erie, from 2010, is a great entry point I think into Everson’s cinema. It's both a wonderful evocation of the local, the region around the eponymous midwestern lake, and also a showcase of Everson’s formal playfulness. It is also, like so many of Everson’s films, a meditation on labor, and the passage of time. Erie was something of a breakthrough film for Everson. It garnered many awards and received much very well deserved praise. And I'm so thrilled that Kevin Everson will be here tonight after the screening to discuss that film with myself and with all of you.

Kevin Everson is quite a remarkably prolific filmmaker. His opus now counts over 140 films. Some are quite short, but others such as Park Lanes, which screens next weekend, is a full and very rich eight hours long. Over the course of the next few weeks you have the opportunity to see and to experience Kevin Jerome Everson’s cinema and I hope you will seize that opportunity. Kevin is here at Harvard as the 2017/18 Film Study Center Robert Gardner Fellow, and this is an award given by the Film Study Center to recognize innovative filmmaking, and it's named in honor of the Film Study Center’s founder, Robert Gardner, the great filmmaker and thinker of film, about cinema, who is also one of the founders, I should say, of the Harvard Film Archive. So this is an award that resonates profoundly with us here. I also want to thank everyone at the Film Study Center for making Kevin's visit possible. I also want to thank our friends at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Studies at Harvard, who are also sponsors of this program and of Kevin's visit. I'd like to ask everybody, please turn off any cell phones, any electronic devices that you have, please refrain from using them. And now please join me in welcoming Kevin Jerome Everson.

[APPLAUSE]

Kevin Jerome Everson  4:31 

Thanks, Harvard, and the Film Archive, and the Film Studies program, and thank you guys for coming out on a cold, clear Cambridge night. But yeah, so this film, Erie, was one of the first times I did one of these long form films, where each scene is like the full length of a 16mm magazine. And it's slightly narrative, I think, in my own weird way—but I hope you enjoy, and we can rap a taste afterwards. So thanks again for coming, right on.

[APPLAUSE]

Haden Guest  5:15 

So, Kevin, thank you so much for this film. And so one of the things that I—aspects that I really find so intriguing and fascinating about this film is the way in which these separate shots on one level seem to have a life of their own, seem to have a sort of a rule of their own, and yet at the same time, as we watch, as the film progresses, we are finding commonalities and differences between the films and we start to see a larger shape, a larger pattern. We start to see these themes of labor and leisure emerging, and I was wondering—as a way to think about this a little bit more—if you could tell us, if you could speak to how the film came to take the shape and scope that is its final form.

Kevin Jerome Everson  6:09 

Yeah, I was trying to like—I think I made this that summer of 2009. I made this film called Old Cat, which was a single take film. I was on a boat and filmed these anglers going out into the river and then I thought, so maybe I can string eight or nine or ten of these together, I can kind of create this conceptual narrative. So then I was thinking about like, moving like, well a lot of my films, my artwork, is about black migration. So coming from the south to the north, because I'm from a place called Mansfield, Ohio. Is anyone from Mansfield here? Oh no, there isn’t—

[LAUGHTER]

Haden Guest  6:45

Anyone from Ohio?

Kevin Jerome Everson  6:47

No, wow. Anyways, I’m from Ohio, but my family's from Mississippi—Columbus, Mississippi—so I can never figure out why or what was the reason why they first got there, so to speak. So then I was thinking about, kind of conceptually, black migration. And then I thought about how like in the 40s and 30s and 50s, they would make billboards to advertise jobs in the north for African Americans. So in the first scene I made this fictional billboard. That's my uncle that was in the military. He was in Germany at the time, and there never was a Volkswagen plant in Ohio, but like I figured I could make this kind of cool looking Billboard and it was up, it was literally up for like a month in Angola, New York. And then—so the whole idea of that was kind of to lead us up to the north, and all the way up to the last scene where they're actually going to the Maid of the Mist in Niagara Falls, so they're going to Canada. So just kind of an underground railroad narrative, so to speak, but all based on the auto industry.

So then, that was the main industry in my hometown, like the tire plant, the GM stamping plant. And then those are my cousins who just were at a factory, speaking about the factory. So I was trying to string up that, and then the whole idea of like within this structure of the film, of each shot, I wanted somebody to be concentrating on something at the same time that the viewer will be concentrating. So the first scene I thought of, because my daughter was in martial arts at the time, I thought of like if she can stare at a candle for 10 minutes, it was just riveting cinema, but I can stare at a, you know, like candle. And then it was kind of like the Gerhard Richter painting of his daughter, and so I was thinking about that. Betty? I think, Betty, and the candle, so then I thought that would be the only one that would be self-contained like that, but then all the other shots would be kind of conceptually put together.

And then, I was thinking about sword fighting. I wanted something, I was telling the master class today that I wanted, like that scene had to come after the auto workers because just when I saw those, like just when I got to Buffalo and filmed it, I went to Taming of the Shrew—not Taming of the Shrew—The Tempest, at the Shakespeare in the Park, and then I saw those brothers like acting, and then I went backstage and took them to lunch on Tuesday, hired a fight coach on Wednesday, and we shot it on Friday, or something like that. And so the fight coach was asking me what kind of saber they wanted then, and I said the loudest, because sabers were handmade and I wanted that sound to come after the auto workers. Yeah, so they’ll—because all the time—because every time I see a General Motors car, I always think of my cousins’ hands on them. So I wanted those kind of shots to kind of follow each other and stuff. And then I wanted—and then the whole idea of like kind of action and non-action. You know, the guy trying to break into his car, and right next to the Krump dancers, and so I wanted to kind of move like that, so to speak, but also moving up again, from the kind of south to the north cultural and then to Canada, so to speak. Yeah.

Haden Guest  9:54 

I love the way the camera is so present. There’s the way in which your decision to—the sort of handheld constant movement, the water on the lens—there, speaking of water—water on the lens at the end. It's something that you seem—that you're very clear about always wanting to make us know that we're watching.

Kevin Jerome Everson  10:18 

Yeah, I mean, like anytime I want you, the viewer, to know that they're not looking out a window through reality, like it's always an art object so to speak. And for me, sometimes the handheld camera is like a brushstroke. It lets you know that there's the hand of the artist behind there, you know, like it’s more of an evidence of presence. So especially the sword fighting scene, like not only are they rehearsing, but I'm rehearsing. Me and the sound person, Federico, we're also rehearsing too as well. So I like that kind of sentiment, and even the Krump dancers going back and forth and the whole idea of me being active and athletic during the shoot, I think it's more important to us, especially for this particular film. So, because I knew I wanted a little bit more energy and a little bit more movement than like the other films, because it is the first time I was asked in the audience to kind of sit there and watch, you know, something without cutting in action. I mean without editing, because once you edit, what you're actually telling the viewer what to think, so to speak, so I wanted these kind of long kind of takes, and I didn't care if anybody would like zone out, or pass out, or do their taxes, or something, as long as they did them quietly.

[LAUGHTER]

You know, I don't care what, you know. But then, like the whole idea of like the experience of kind of dirty time. I think it was kind of interesting to me more so.

Haden Guest  11:33

Dirty time?

Kevin Jerome Everson  11:34

Yeah, the whole idea was just dirty, nasty, raw time. Yeah, and then the whole idea of like understanding that things take 10 minutes to be done, so to speak. So, and even—I made this one film, Island of St. Matthew’s—I think that’s playing here—and I remember because some of it was shot in the lock and dam of like Stennis Lock and Dam in Columbus, Mississippi, and I was asking the guy, “now how long does it take for the doors to open up?” and he said, “10 minutes”. I was like, hell yeah!

[LAUGHTER]

That’s a full clip! So that's the full magazine, so that I knew that was gonna be the—you know—so that's always the kind of template of what the materiality can do, yeah.

Haden Guest  12:11 

Well, I mean, there's so many individual shots I'd love to speak about, but this one that you just alluded to, the two musical performances simultaneously. And speaking of editing, there's almost like this inner cut between the two of them, and it's one of many shots in which you have this conflict and tension between two elements. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that?

Kevin Jerome Everson  12:35 

Yeah, and then this somewhat kind of narrative. I was thinking about having like, kind of artwork in it. African American art, the whole idea of dance, and then like music, so to speak. And then so I mean, you know, and even in America, like I mean, I remember reading something, I think it was Dick Hebdige, saying that two things that are inherently American are streamlined design and jazz. So black people are like half of American kind of culture, even though we're only like 13% of the culture, and then so the whole idea of like, kind of, music and dance and then, also I like this kind of painter, Whitney Stanley [Stanley Whitney],  the abstract painter, he has this great line, which kind of like simplifies black culture, basically our blackness. The whole idea of like, we practice our dance moves first and then we do our homework. And that's something that me and my brother used to do, that's what my daughter does, and the whole idea of like culture first, but then we can do our like, our calculus, so to speak. So then I like the fact that like, culture is like, you know, dance and stuff is very much part of it. So then in that particular scene I wanted to have like music, this kind of old school kind of soul and rhythm and blues, and then at the time what’s kind of new was Krump dancing, and this kind of like, just kind of going back and forth, and existing in the same space. You know, both kind of like disciplines practicing at the same time, so to speak. Yeah.

Haden Guest  14:01 

Well, in this case then it's music like labor, right? It's not so—

Kevin Jerome Everson  14:04 

Oh yeah, you got to practice it. And then for me, it's all about getting better at something. So I do like the kind of artistry of practicing, so to speak. Yeah. And even the guy kind of breaking in his car. He will eventually get in. He eventually did because I left. And I was still filming. I was like, “hey, man, I'm out. The clip’s over, good luck,” you know, and it's like—and because I never met the guy before. My son's mom, I was trying to say, “Do you know Charles Johnson?” So I don't know. Because everyone's got nicknames back home. So he went by Butter, and I didn't know...

Haden Guest  14:35

Butter?

Kevin Jerome Everson  14:36

Yeah, his nickname was Butter. I didn't know him. Yeah, he just gave me his name and tried to get into this car but it was funny because when I was shooting it, I was kind of rooting against him. But even if he did get in—and I was thinking, like I was going through the viewfinder, I think I actually shot two clips. I think I shot like 20 minutes worth of shit. But anyway, I just remember like, even if he did get in this car, like I would have had my son kind of reenact it, so to speak, and sometimes I was hoping that that would have happened, so to speak. But yeah so, I mean, these kind of—it was—I wanted to actually film more things on the street, because I just drove past him and then turned around and came back and asked him. And then I wanted to get more of that.

It was funny because I used to live in Cleveland, Ohio. Most of the films are shot in Buffalo and Cleveland has—like it was 2008 and then, just like a lot of municipalities in the United States when Obama was elected, like that was a lot of cities' first Black mayor. In Buffalo, they just elected their first Black mayor. So none of the city workers were African American. So I was wanting to find stuff in the streets, just like Cleveland, like Black people run that shit. Or at least they think they do, so to speak, you know, but then you can find stuff, but in Buffalo they still had the old kind of white nepotism of the city workers. So you couldn't kind of find that. This was when I was staying up there for like a month. So it was interesting. So I was hoping to find more of this particularly. And we—and then this particular film, I think there's eight scenes up here, but I shot like sixteen so, and some of them just didn't work. Yes.

Haden Guest  16:11 

So the way you describe this, the origins of the scene with the man breaking into the car as a—so, how much of this film was written and how much of it was inspired by sort of chance encounters?

Kevin Jerome Everson  16:25 

Oh, it was all written. It was all—every scene was written except for that one.

Haden Guest  16:28

I see.

Kevin Jerome Everson  16:29

Yeah. But I was hoping to find some more I could stick in there but everything was like—I wanted the candle scene and the billboard of course, because I had to, because the billboard is actually a work of art. It shows too, and I make props for films. And what else was in there? Oh, the sword fighting, everything. And then I wanted the Maid of the Mist because I wanted that kind of, like as soon as you got to Canada, like you wouldn't go to see much; it'd be obscured by the water. And we lost two microphones that night.

[LAUGHTER]

They got soaked. So the sound was this kind of super mixed, so I had to go out and do like in—you know, get different audio and… shit what was I—

Oh, yeah, so I was thinking of like the two main scenes were going to be autoworkers either at work in an auto factory and the hospitals—medical—because, probably in Massachusetts as well, but in the mid—like in the Great Lakes states now the main employers are clinics and hospitals. Yeah, but they're not union. So the whole idea of the factories of clothes and the main job is a clinic so I wanted those, the kind that [?butter up?] the kind of movement of the kind of jobs and stuff, so like those were the two main important things that I was trying to write and stuff, so like it was totally scripted out. Yeah.

Haden Guest  17:57 

Let's take some questions from the audience. If we have any questions or comments for Kevin? Oh, yes, right here.

Kevin Jerome Everson  18:07 

Person there.

Audience  18:09 

Hello. I'm interested in why your films are being presented digitally when it seems like a lot of your films structurally rely on like, properties inherent or really specific to the film medium?

Kevin Jerome Everson  18:21 

Yeah, I have some prints, but it’s just super expensive to get prints done. So I'd rather make new films, so to speak. Yeah. The short films I made are actually 35mm and 16[mm] prints but none of the features are prints. There was a discussion of making a print. And I was like, yeah, yeah, especially this film and Quality Control too, as well. But I’d just rather make another film, so to speak. So yeah, good question. Oh, yeah. I hope I answered it correctly with a good answer. Yeah?

[LAUGHTER]

Haden Guest  19:01 

So Kevin, you have a background as not just as a filmmaker, but as an artist and also some background in photography.

Kevin Jerome Everson 19:07

Yeah.

Haden Guest  19:08

Still photography as well. And I was wondering, photography in particular, what ways do you think that that informs your work as a filmmaker?

Kevin Jerome Everson  19:16

I think more so I was a street photographer like in the genre of Roy DeCarava and Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand. I think, you know, again, I like to kind of find the moment, so to speak, and then for me, in this one, is basically the guy kind of can’t like, unlock his car, whatever. That's the only thing that's kind of street photography oriented. But I think my films are more to deal with the sculptural aspects of my body of work and the whole idea of like, in the time it takes to kind of do things, but also the kind of three-dimensionality kind of, because in photography I'm looking for the two-dimensionality. But in film, I'm kind of—I know that it's going to be on a two-dimensional plane, but because I'm moving, there's this kind of three-dimensional aspect to it.

So that's a more—so I think, though, when I was starting to make films, I was actually—I would consider my sculptural work at times. So I think that has something to do with it more, and also the materiality, like this gentleman's question about film, like the whole idea of like, you see the flashes at the end of the roll and stuff and the whole idea—and then the fact that it is like a full clip of film, that it has to be part of this material, you know, like, it has to be this object. And then these things are part of the content, like what the materials are made of is part of the content of the film, so to speak, yeah. So that comes from the kind of sculptural background, kind of minimalist sculpture background, that’s when I was doing steel, because it had to be about—because when I was going through undergraduate school, a lot of my professors went through that great Iowa program. So they came out of this minimalist tradition of sculpture, where like materials, processes, and procedure were part of the content. So I still kind of think that way. I think like, how is this film going to be about its material? And even when I do HD or video, it’s all about recording; how is this going to be part of either the camera or the apparatus or something like that, or if it's a drone apparatus, you know something that has to be part of its content, so to speak. Yeah.

Haden Guest  21:30 

So you’re saying this film is about labor, it's also about the labor of filming?

Kevin Jerome Everson  21:34 

Yeah, there's some art you know, but it's easy to shoot films, but yeah.

[LAUGHTER]

Haden Guest  21:37 

You know, the holding of the camera, the containing of the space.

Kevin Jerome Everson  21:42 

Yeah, but they're working out. I think the subject matter is working a lot harder than I am, so to speak. Like if I had locked my keys in the car, I'm working hard, yeah.

Oh, there’s one from this gentleman here.

Haden Guest  21:54

Oh, great.

Audience  21:59 

I was—so most of your work I've seen shot on, like 16mm reversal. And then I was wondering—and then there's so many references to like different, you know, like in this film in particular, like factories that have closed and then also like the billboard, which was, you know, like kind of a fictionalized version of something that would make sense, and I was just wondering like, how important is it to you to kind of abstract like where in time this is taking place?

Kevin Jerome Everson  22:43 

Oh, it's totally important. Yeah, because it's not like, I know it, I mean, it's my reference, but it's not clear for the viewer, so to speak. And again I like—for me, abstract painting is kind of self-referential. So I kind of keep—so I like that as a kind of a form. So, you know, for me, as long as I'm comfortable with the content, then I think it could kind of come out better, but it's not important for the viewer to kind of get it. Yeah. I mean, you know, I try to share, but it's hard for me to share sometimes, you know.

[LAUGHTER]

But I mean, but for me, I just wanted to be—I think if it's handsome enough—I think if the image is, like, handsome enough, and if it’s long enough, then I think people can kind of get the content out of it. Like it's there. And there's multiple contents too, as well as multiple avenues that kind of get into work, so to speak. But that gets me up in the morning. The whole idea of this kind of, “how can I abstract?” and for me, abstraction is taking from what is real and kind of moving it around, so to speak. And so that's kind of important to me. And then also the whole discipline of abstraction is kind of it being kind of self-referential, non-pictorial in a weird way, so you can't just walk in there. So you have to kind of get rid of—an option is to get rid of the foreground so the viewer can only—so it only exists on the screen, like because there's no sign of Buffalo or Mansfield or Erie or—

Audience  24:13 

A girl’s shirt said “Buffalo” when she was singing with the piano; that was the only time I saw anything.

Kevin Jerome Everson  24:21 

Yeah, and then that church is where Ani Di Franco’s Righteous Babes record company is. Yeah, but that's not, you know—you only see it in the credits. But yeah, but then so it’s this—so for me, it's like, well the space that you can't walk into—so the foreground, so my option is to kind of get rid of the foreground, so you can't walk in there. Yeah, that's a good question.

Oh, man. Look at him in the back.

Haden Guest  24:49 

Right there, Dan. Is there a question?

Audience  24:58 

Thank you very much for being here. The two films I've seen of yours are both in black and white. And I'm wondering if you could talk sort of about your choice for black and white versus color, and especially considering that the primary subjects are Black people. So I'm wondering if there was a connection there or not, and if you could speak on that?

Kevin Jerome Everson  25:23 

Usually when I use black and white I'm trying to hide time. Like I'm trying to—so it's not like, you know, 2011 or whatever. You can kind of like hide it a little better. I think the film that played earlier last week was Tonsler Park. And it was shot—and it's basically about—it had single take shots like this of African American election officials. And so people always think, oh, like, it's about [the] 2016 elections—like “no”, it's about any election. But specifically [for] me 2008—because that's when, you know, like going to the polls when Obama was getting elected, so but also I was trying to hide, I mean, the people in that film. They were lovely; they were beautiful. But when I went to the election kind of office and kind of scouted it out, their choice of sweaters were kind of off the chain a little bit colorwise, so I was like, “black and white.”

[LAUGHTER]

In my head, I was like, I can't control the lighting like I want to. So and actually here too, as well, I didn't really know where I was going to be shooting the stuff. So I couldn't control the light. I think the more scripted films I make, the more changes I can control, the light and control stuff when it is multicolor, but I'm usually trying to hide something when I shoot black and white, or trying to like not have it to a particular period. And also I mostly shoot negative film. Every now and then I shoot reversal, but mostly negative film, yeah. So like that's the kind of main choice. Either I want form to come through more or actually kind of hiding kind of time so to speak. So those are the kind of strategies for both black and white and color. Yeah.

You know, some people—

Yeah, they're recording it.

Audience  27:21 

So not being a film person. This is not about—

Kevin Jerome Everson  27:25

That’s all right.

[LAUGHTER]

Audience  27:26 

So what it evoked emotionally for me is the 10-minute clip. I was very uncomfortable with this—which probably says more about me, but—and you're sort of forced to push up against your edge and—

Kevin Jerome Everson  27:40 

Yeah, totally.

Audience  27:41 

—of yourself, and sort of why it's becoming so uncomfortable to sort of sit with this. And I'm wondering if that's something that you sort of do intentionally, sort of try to get that kind of emotional response?

Kevin Jerome Everson  27:57 

No, not quite uncomfortability, but more actually familiarity in a weird way. One of my favorite filmmakers, and he was here last year at the Harvard Archive, no at Radcliffe, was Lav Diaz, this Filipino filmmaker. He's amazing. He makes these like nine hour narrative films. And if it takes 20 minutes for the oxen cart to come up the road, it takes 20 minutes for the oxen cart to come up the road. And actually the first time he actually screened in America is when I showed him in my class, you know, because we used to start them at 10:00 at night and go to 7:00 in the morning. But anyway, I think the longer—for me the longer you sit with something you get familiar with it in a weird way. But also, I think humanity comes out of it and then you become invested in it. I think so.

You know, I think you know, a guy’s films that I like, like I'll go see, but he's kind of a bonehead, are Quentin Tarantino films. And then I like the fact that, you know, you have all this dialogue and you become invested in it, and then you have a rash of violence, and then now you missed them like the basement scene in Inglorious Basterds. So I think that's a strategy, it's a good strategy, to kind of long it out and then you kind of miss what you—till you kind of feel a little bit of loss I guess, so to speak, something you don't get much in cinema. But for me I think it's not—I try not to make people uncomfortable. No. Although it's a form I could do, but I just think somehow you just get familiar. I mean at least I do. But I know people can get uncomfortable with it. Yeah.

Audience  29:36

No, that’s really interesting because I think familiarity and discomfort can be different sides of the same—

Kevin Jerome Everson  29:40 

Oh, yeah, totally.

Audience  29:42 

It reminds me of psychiatry. It reminds me of sitting with a patient sort of just having to sort of sit there.

Kevin Jerome Everson  29:40

Yeah, totally.

I should make a 30 minute long—or like, how long is a session? I think Glen [UNKNOWN] has one of these things where he's in this session. Yeah. What, it’s an hour-long session? So it gives me a form now—

[LAUGHTER]

—a four hour-long session.

Haden Guest  30:06

But including this beautiful shot of your daughter and the candle towards the beginning in a way sort of defines the so-called, like, playing field, right?

Kevin Jerome Everson  30:15 

Yeah, yeah.

Haden Guest  30:16 

So that's the shot that perhaps...

Kevin Jerome Everson  30:18 

It’s got to be first. Yeah, yeah, you feel. Yeah, because nothing happens... although she looks away for…

Haden Guest  30:24

Right, we see her licking her lips...

Kevin Jerome Everson  30:25

For a minute. Yeah.

Haden Guest  30:27 

And we're really attentive to the passage of time more so than any of the other shots.

Kevin Jerome Everson  30:32 

Yeah, and I'm in the—I'm down with the viewer, because it's kind of like a checkerboard, like one scene my cousins are talking, and then after that, it's like the sword fighting. So it's a lot more movement and then just back to something that's more static and then back, so I try not to kind of make it too static Okay, yeah—somewhat—I know everybody. It’s all family.

Audience  31:01 

So I know [you] just said all but one of these scenes was scripted. I was wondering… but there are definitely recognizable nonfiction elements to this, and I was wondering what the role of all your subjects were in the process of making these scenes and what responsibilities they had and how you worked with them.

Kevin Jerome Everson  31:25 

Oh, I mean, like if they're aware or not?

Audience  31:28

Yeah, and how much you directed them?

Kevin Jerome Everson  31:30

Oh, yeah, I mean all of them, and even—like all of them were super directed and... what do you call it when you mark on the floor?

Blocked! Thanks.

[LAUGHTER]

Kevin Jerome Everson  31:43 

Yeah, especially the dance scene and the sword fighting scene because that had to be—those are blocked. The Maid of the Mist, that just got chaotic. I wanted her to like just stare at me the whole time, but they were having too much fun, you know, and it was like wet. I knew it'd be wet, but I didn’t know it’d be that wet. So like, that was all blocked out. What else is? Oh and the guy with the medical facility—that was blocked. Oh, yeah, I forgot this. Yeah, I did, like, I made it like an option for this film. At first when I was writing it, I was thinking that characters would kind of reoccur. Like, even when we did the billboard thing. The sword fighters hung up a billboard. So I did that and the Krump dancers… we did a scene where that—I forgot the brother's name who was doing the medical supply. He was showing the Krump dancers—like he was interviewing them as if they were first starting to start work. So there was more of a kind of like the characters were kind of reoccurring. And we shot a lot of stuff on this—is anybody from Buffalo? Oh, yeah, there you go. What the main drag on the east side of town is Fillmore Street, which is the main African American—it was the artery in the African American community. So we shot a lot—we shot several scenes there, and those were all blocked. And people were yelling at us, “yo, Fillmore,” people were screaming, you know. So like, that was all kind of planned out, but we didn't—but I just decided not to use those, but yeah. So everything was like, so they're aware of—so like, what they're aware of is cinema. So they're aware that this is like—they're acting for me. So they're making this thing. The guy doing the breaking his car out, I just asked him like, “yo, bro, do you mind if I film you?” And I think he knew who I was, I think. Well, I knew who he was from being from—because that was shot in my hometown, Mansfield, and so he didn't mind. So, but I always tell people like, “yo, like, this is gonna—”

Yo, yo? Yeah, maybe? No, no, “hey,” yeah, I don't know, like, “hey, you.”

[LAUGHTER]

I never “yo-ed” anybody in my life.

But anyway, so I was like, so I was telling him that this was going to be in the film; that [it] was going to be a 10-minute take. So I'm up front with him so he understands what's going on. And then I was telling the master class the other day, like I think when people see things on cinema, it's like up there for life.

But I remember when I shot these cats—these cowboys in Natchez, Mississippi one time—and I spent all day with these guys at the rodeo on a Saturday and drove to Natchez and spent Tuesday with them. And as I remember, they had a flood in Natchez, and I knew they were on higher ground, but I wanted to call and check on Fred Mayberry and his family, and he didn't know who I was. Like, “yo, Fred, Fred”—and I yo-ed him—“yo, it's me, Kevin, the film guy.”  “Like Who? Who? Oh, yeah, my wife got your DVD.” It's like totally—so yeah, I'm not the most important person [or] thing that happened to them that day probably, you know. So like now I'm realizing my role is not that kind of critical in a way, like in their lives, you know. So I think that's like a—so I was hurt.

[LAUGHTER]

I spent—I was on their property for like six hours and they still didn't remember me. So I was like, man, so I didn't leave an impact on that family and his kids and everything, his neighbors and the guys down the street. So you know, so it was interesting, so like that whole idea. I like to kind of, you know, tell them how the film is gonna be in there, and even if it’s going to be edited, or there’s going to be a voiceover on top of them. You know, I just like to share whatever with the subject matter because I like to make films for the subject matter and with subject matter. It's a long answer, but yeah, yeah.

Haden Guest  35:41 

Any final questions or comments?

Kevin Jerome Everson  35:49 

Oh, you still mean again? Yeah.

Audience  35:56 

I've read in some of your interviews—

Kevin Jerome Everson  35:58

Uh oh.

Audience  35:59

—the disdain that you've had for some audience questions, so I was wondering—

Kevin Jerome Everson  36:03 

I've never said that. I love audience questions!

Audience  36:07 

It was the IndieWire interview that... but I was wondering if there's a question that you kind of wish people would ask you and if so, could you answer that?

Kevin Jerome Everson  36:15 

Oh, I don't know. I don't have a question. I'm not hostile to my audience. Who says that? Did I say that?

Audience  36:22 

I think so.

Kevin Jerome Everson  36:23

Oh, that was misquoted. I love my... I'm like, I'm always super friendly.

Haden Guest  36:25

Look at him, he’s so friendly. Exactly.

[LAUGHTER]

Kevin Jerome Everson  36:28

I don't think I've gotten in a fight—actually, Erie was really hot. When Erie first started, like it was really hostile. New York and LA are the worst audiences ever. I don’t know if anybody's from New York and LA. Because the art world is massively segregated in those areas. I mean, you go to Milwaukee, you’ve got Black folks everywhere. You go to Philadelphia, people are up in there. Houston, people are up in there. But New York and LA are a massively segregated art world. So I just remember being at REDCAT, a fight breaks out. Like every time I’m at REDCAT a fight physically—oh yeah, all the time. And then every time I'm at Anthology, whenever a fight broke out. Cats were like, “look, man, we can take this outside,” and whatever, because people are really... because those audiences aren't used to seeing people who don't look like them on screen for 80 minutes doing something that they can’t expect. And then that's how the questions were. I was like, you know, it was like this really hostile, like especially... REDCAT is the coolest place, best projection, and there's always some cat like mad at me because I don't film white people. But the two billboard cats are white, although you can't tell. You know, and the people are like, think I'm like, you know. So like, the ruling class gets violently upset when they feel like they're excluded, which, how are they ever excluded? The whole idea of it—I mean, you know, I'm like—and then you're always nice to those audiences too. But it was just you know, I had some cousins up in there who weren't quite as pleasant as I was.

[LAUGHTER]

Haden Guest  38:09 

Kevin, I want to thank you for being so…

Kevin Jerome Everson 38:12 

Pleasant?

[LAUGHTER]

Haden Guest  38:13

...being so generous. Yeah, to be here, not just tonight but also tomorrow night. I hope that you will join us again for a wonderful selection of shorter works. So, please join me in thanking Kevin Jerome Everson.

Kevin Jerome Everson  38:28

Thanks. Right on, man.

[APPLAUSE]

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