Audio transcription
For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.
Short Films - Program One introduction and post-screening discussion with Haden Guest and Kevin Jerome Everson. Saturday February 10, 2018.
Haden Guest 0:06
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Haden Guest. I'm Director of the Harvard Film Archive. I'm really thrilled to be here tonight and to welcome you all, to the second evening in which we welcome Kevin Jerome Everson to the Harvard Film Archive. Tonight, we are going to see a selection of shorter work by this remarkably prolific and talented artist, we're going to see a selection of seven films from a filmmaker who now accounts close to 150 films to his name, like last night's film, Erie. Tonight’s works are intimately invested in the local, in the texture, rhythm and orientation of specific places and communities, once again, grounded in the African American communities of Everson’s native Ohio. But in these works, we also find a fuller dimension, I think, of Everson’s, as a political cinema. A mode of filmmaking that uses structural, lyrical and subtle means to offer different, at times, a deeply personal image of black America. These are also films that explore an alternate mode of experimental cinema. Equally guided by formal experimentation and by a seemingly realist aesthetic. I say "seemingly" because in Everson’s films the theatrical and the realist are two sides of the same coin, and the boundaries between the performative and unrehearsed, and the actual are carefully blurred across tonight's films.
We also find intertwined a series of, I think, significant threads. On one level a subtly appointed autobiographical register that touches on family history and tragedies, an exploration of local history, and a meditation on the slow passage of time that defines everyday lives in labor in small-town America. I think Everson’s films, richly cinematic films, are also animated by a melancholy sense of nostalgia for time that might have been. Kevin Jerome Everson joins us now as a Film Study Center and Robert Gardner fellow. He's the 2017- 2018 Fellow. Robert Gardner was the founder, not only of the Film Study Center, but also of the Harvard Film Archive. So this is an award that has an especially significant meaning for us. It's an award that's given by the Film Study Center every year in recognition of a pioneering and innovative independent filmmaker, and that's certainly true. Certainly, that's a correct description of Kevin Jerome Everson. I also want to thank the Hutchins Center for African American Studies, who is one of the co-sponsors of this visit and retrospective.
I'd like to ask everybody please turn off any cell phones, any electronic devices that you have, please refrain from using them. I'd also like to make a very special request to please not use any cameras or recording devices at any time, especially during the question and answer period, people have been filming those without the proper permission that's required. And there've been a number of complaints about that. So please do not use any cameras during the Q and A session. And Kevin will be joining us for such a session tonight. And now with no further ado, please join me in welcoming Kevin Jerome Everson.
[APPLAUSE]
Kevin Jerome Everson 3:42
Oh, wow. Thanks for coming out on a balmy, Cambridge Saturday night. Yeah, this is about seven films. I think all of them are shot in Ohio I think, so it was my kind of take on versions and people and gestures and conditions in Ohio. But We'll be back. I'll be back a little later to kind of rap a taste about it. So thanks for coming, right on.
[APPLAUSE]
Haden Guest 4:20
Please join me in welcoming back Kevin Jerome Everson
[APPLAUSE]
Kevin Jerome Everson 4:35
Thanks for sticking it out. Yeah.
Haden Guest 4:37
Yeah. Thank you all. Oh, before taking questions from the audience, I thought I'd ask maybe a couple of my own. Kevin, I wanted to start by speaking about history, about the past.
Kevin Jerome Everson 4:50
Yeah.
Haden Guest 4:51
Many of these films share...
Kevin Jerome Everson 4:52
All but one I think, yeah
Haden Guest : 4:55
Right, a fascination with the past both of individual memories and collective memories, the past of this, most especially, of a place, right, written in a particular place. And in this case, and especially in Company Line, Mansfield, Ohio. I was wondering if you could speak about your interest in this history, in these different modes of exploring, at times, intensely personal, and again, individual histories that seem to offer, kind of, clues to understanding the meaning of a particular place.
Kevin Jerome Everson 5:33
Yeah, well, maybe I'm just fascinated with the 70s. More so but...Well, that was like this whenever I remember it. It was mostly when people had jobs. It was like a lot of, I don’t know, like it was like an economic boom, but well, actually automation started happening in the late 50s, early 60s. But then it seems like there's a lot of people like had jobs, but also, too you know, it's kind of like the end of the second wave of midwestern Black migration, so to speak. Then I was born in '65 and then we used to call ourselves "first generation northerners." So I think I was kind of fascinated with that kind of Black migration, people coming up in post World War II and stuff like that. So I think that was the kind of, especially Company Line, because I like that kind of narrative whatever, like, you know, because then we knew why, I think, people left the south for economic reasons and also oppression too as well. But then also like that, like Jerome Lanes, no Jerome Cross said that there was more jobs than people, I think it just at one time, he had missed a paycheck. So that kind of nobility of labor and work was kind of interesting. I mean, just growing up and seeing it, so to speak, and then maybe kind of nostalgic for, I guess, especially in that film, but that was mostly into that kind community and how that community isn't there anymore. Because I made a trilogy of films about the first three Black communities and Company Line is one of them. The other one was the Watch Works and The Camps and most of them were at the steel mill, and the steel mill’s not there anymore, and all these kinds of jobs aren't there anymore, so to speak. So I think that's kind of a lost community almost, so to speak. I mean still a lot of pride and proud people there and beautiful people there too, as well but then, I mean you know that kind of labor and industrial thing is no longer there anymore. So yeah.
Haden Guest 7:34
How did this project come to you? Was this a long standing interest or is this one that you–
Kevin Jerome Everson 7:40
Company Line?
Haden Guest 7:41
Just the idea of this kind of personal archaeology if you will?
Kevin Jerome Everson 7:46
Yeah, yeah,I started off in the visual arts, photography, sculpture and painting stuff. I kind of had that in there too, as well in those things. But also too Mansfield had this State Penitentiary there, and then the fighting, Seven Rounds was talking about that too as well. And then how like my friends would start working in those jobs, but I think a lot of it was like my brother graduated high school in '81. His friends all worked at the factories. By the time I got out in '83 there was no more factory jobs. So I mean, it was just that blatant, so to speak. And then also too I was starting doing stuff about, you know, I can never get an answer out of my family members, and then the two oldest ones that were in Mansfield that passed away, now like why did they pick Mansfield? Nobody can really tell me why, I mean, why not Cleveland, why not Akron with the rubber industry? But either they ran out of gas, or something [UNKNOWN] you know, but no, I mean it was no really clear reason, like, I don't know, it was always this shrugging the shoulder. So I think maybe I was trying to fill in the blank, so to speak. And how other people got there, so you know, so like I was using that kind of narrative, so to speak.
Haden Guest 9:08
It's a very personal search and this is something that we've seen in, I think, in all of these films too is your interest in using your films to both return to the past, but at the same time, mark a clear distance from that past.
Kevin Jerome Everson 9:24
Yeah.
Haden Guest 9:26
You know in the first film we have the memory and the boxer and we have the rounds being marked in this present tense.
Kevin Jerome Everson 9:37
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Haden Guest 9:38
Similarly, in Company Line, we have this distance between these memories, and then the...
Kevin Jerome Everson 9:43
[UNKNOWN]
Haden Guest 9:44
...an enigmatic sort of talismanic song from the past, it seems, actually floating up. I was wondering if you could talk about this distance in the films....
Kevin Jerome Everson 9:56
Yeah. Wow. Well, I mean, for me, especially Round Seven I was trying to–Well, I have a series of films about people from Mansfield that have been re-representated in either radio or movies or TV. And so I just remember seeing part of the Art McKnight fight, and my uncle was down there, and he said he was too drunk and he didn't know the woman. I don't know what was going on. He has some kind of drama I think, so he couldn't tell me all about it. Well, let me just find Art and try to find something about it. And then also things have changed as well, because the O'Hare arena where the fight was, it's actually still there but they've been trying to tear it down forever, but it's like, it's been there forever. That's in Dayton, Ohio, but also I had Lidia Hicks, who was a talented filmmaker, and she did my sound and she was the ring girl. But also too it was in Mansfield, Ohio, just when my son was around they used to call it North Side, South Side, but Mansfield, like I'm a big sports guy and Mansfield was a basketball town, although I played American football, but basketball is king there. And all the Black communities were always marked by the basketball parks, by recreation. So you can say, "Oh, well, you live over by John Todd," because that's where the John Todd basketball is. Yeah. And then yeah, I'm King Street because there's a King Street. And that was around eight, the last one. So then I wanted the ring girl to be around that kind of recreation, you know, kind of moving around that. So yeah, and then how some of them aren't there anymore. You see those kind of silos?
Haden Guest 11:35
The factory silos?
Kevin Jerome Everson 11:36
Yeah, yeah, the silo. I wanted to kind of place it in the past but also in the present. So it's how things have changed and stuff and how Art McKnight has changed and then also Art had never even talked about that fight until I started jarring his memory. And I even told him to make it up. So if you don't know this, make it up. But then he actually started remembering it. You know, I didn't care if it was true or false, because like I'm not making a legal document. I'm just trying to get this kind of atmosphere of this Art in this particular fight, because I do remember there was a riot at the fight. Art didn't remember that but I do remember him and my uncles and all.
Haden Guest 12:15
Because it was a split decision?
Kevin Jerome Everson 12:17
No because they called it, because I don’t know what people know about the fight game, but Sugar Ray Leonard was a famous boxer. He came out of probably one of the better– I'm a big Olympic [fan], you know, like the games are on right now. One of the better American teams ever was a ‘76 Montreal boxing team with the Spinks brothers. Aaron Pryor and Sugar Ray Leonard came out of that team. And then that was Sugar Ray who was the first Black person he fought because all the dialogue was about how he was "white and light," like you wouldn't find any Black person. But they pick Art McKnight because he fought Aaron Pryor like, weeks before that fight, you know, so they kind of rigged it, so to speak, but then they wanted him to win. Anyway then so all the people from Mansfield who went to the fight in Dayton, they all rioted. They were throwing chairs on the ring and stuff like that. So that last shot when Art was just when our stunt boxer was up on the ring, like I remember that image. In fact, that's one of seven Sugar Ray fights that you can't find. Then it was on ABC Wild World of Sports and you just can't find it. I guess they pulled it because big Sugar Ray was hit and was cut whatever, but I do remember Art McKnight on the ropes protesting and then he couldn't... I tried to jar him like "dude I remember," and I don't know if I remember it right or not.
But then you know, so my memory is foggy and even the new films I made about what the films the cops made in my hometown aren't based on what I saw, but based on what went on, what people told me and whatever I imagined. So I'm not making legal documents. I'm just kind of stringing these things together. You know Company Line is that kind of same thing but you know, I'm a big time guy like I know exactly when things happen. I can say, “Oh, it happened, you know, November 1984 about 5:15.” You know, it's like where did I get that from? But when I was making that film, I was like, that's where I got it from, it's my DNA. Like everybody in Mansfield knew what time they got there. It's not even what day or month... but what like you know, the guy said about 7:15, 7:30. I'm sitting there, we're filming, like he asked where I got it from you know ‘cause my friends all freaked out about making them always real punctual and stuff like that. Then just a very Mansfield thing. But anyway, so long answer.
Haden Guest 14:47
Well, no, but this idea of this–
Kevin Jerome Everson 14:49
And time is important. Yeah, yeah, so.
Haden Guest 14:50
Well, time throughout. I mean, all your films we talked about this idea of time of duration in the films, but there is also this idea of life, private memories I feel like the films often touch upon. Yes these are films you shared, that you screened around the world, but they contain private memories that are only partially revealed at times.
Kevin Jerome Everson 15:14
Yeah, yeah.
Haden Guest 15:15
It seems you're interested in maintaining this kind of intimacy there at the same time sharing it, and yeah Ears, Nose and Throat tells us an incredibly personal and tragic story of a death and yet it does so by both stating the actual facts, right? Of this eyewitness account, and at the same time keeping this kind of distance with this medical examination, and I was wondering if you could talk about that? Yeah, marriage of those two.
Kevin Jerome Everson 15:47
Yeah, that was Shadeena Brooks, and she was the eyewitness to the– And the first time that I met her she was at the trial. She had a sister too that saw some of the events that happened earlier that day. And her sister's son is actually a relative of mine. I think everybody in my hometown looks like me, or we’re all related in a weird way. But, anyway, so I remember during the trial, she told this great, you know, and of course, I was like, broken up because, you know the whole idea that she saw everything from her porch. And then there was a retrial because some of the jurors—the two young women who were on the jury—went to the crime scene. You couldn't do that, so we had to redo the whole thing over. So when you have a retrial—well the guy didn't really have a good case—but once you have the retrial, the first trial is a legal document. So if you don't say the words the same way, then he was always calling and questioning it, but she retold it the same way. You know, so it was like iron shut, but the guy was trying to trip her up. Then also too a lot of lawyers, and then you saw this with the Trayvon Martin case. It's very abusive, where always, when Black women are on stands, the first thing lawyers do is try to rile them and they question them about can they read? That's one thing like if you want to get punched in the nose by a Black person, question their ability to read, you know, so to speak, so they're always doing that. So they're always abusing, so it was very abusive, from both sides: prosecutor, defense attorney. So the whole idea like that trying to rattle her, like I didn't really like it, rattled her sister, but he didn't rattle her. So I liked how cool and calm she was. And then so about a year later, I found her. I kind of knew who she was then I found her, and I was trying to think of what can we, you know, how can we do this, whatever. And I do remember my daughter having a hearing test, and then doing this, and it was almost like swearing in. So I know I figure a good mise en scene would be to have a medical examination. So, I like to make films where as if the viewer just showed up, something happened before, just kind of backstory. So I figured, if we find that doctor, you know. Like we do a medical examination. My thing was like kind of her externally seeing something but also examined internally. I was kind of thinking, how can I, kind of just bring it out, so to speak, formally, whatever.
And so she was living in Fayetteville, North Carolina at the time. And then we found the only Black doctor there, Dr. Eric Mansfield—was the same name as my hometown. And then he was real cool, and like he was a military guy. So he let us actually record audio there and stuff. And then you know, he ended up being in the film. And then so I said, well, let's give her an examination. So we can film it, and then he ended up finding something wrong with her, with her vocal cords. That was something we just saw and that we just found there. And so that became kind of interesting because the whole idea of like, not only was she brave enough to do this, is that she had to, but then the strength of her doing it because her body was forbidding her to speak in a weird way. So that kind of gesture became more about too as well, so yeah. So yeah, it became just kind of a complete work of art for me, so to speak. But also staying in the present, but in the past as well.
Haden Guest 19:36
So also this idea that you know, these are the ears, the eyes, testing their strength?
Keven Jerome Everson 19:42
Yeah, totally. And then she kind of you know, just being young, brave and strong at the same time. So yeah, that was it, yeah.
Haden Guest 19:50
Let's take some questions, comments from the audience. And we have microphones if you have any?
Kevin Jerome Everson 19:57
There's somebody in the back. Is that all we have? No, it isn’t.
[LAUGHTER]
Audience 20:04
Hi. Can you please talk about your producer? Does she allow you the freedom to record more in digital? Or does she challenge you to record more in film and–
Kevin Jerome Everson 20:21
She just supports me, you know. Madeline is almost like family so she didn't make those decisions at all, that’s just all me, whatever. That's me. I like to film, I like to make things on film. Because I like the core materiality of things. I like to expose. You know, film is about exposing so I like to do this. When I want to expose something to somebody, I make sure I have film. But when I do HD or digital, and then I need to record something, and I need the audio and picture the same I usually use digital. I think the only film that was digital was Company Line. And that's because I had to stay athletic and move around and people were at work so I didn’t want to get in the way of people who were working, and so that's the only reason why. And even when Park Lanes is playing next week that will be on HD because I don't want to get in the way. And in film you have to kind of set things up and light things so yeah.
Haden Guest 21:15
Yeah you have a long standing relationship with Madeline–
Kevin Jerome Everson 21:18
Yeah for about 12 years or so. Now she just comes on at the end, whatever, sometimes she finds me talent. With these films, oh not with these films she didn't. Oh, she found me those guys. Yeah, Fe26 is made-up so they were in another film of mine. And then I reuse them because they look like Laurel and Hardy.
Haden Guest 21:40
Are they in [UNKNOWN]
Kevin Jerome Everson 21:43
No they're in Rita Larson’s Boy, though yeah, they're one of the 10 actors in that. But they also knew each other. Well, no, I think they are in that one shoot. I saw them talking to each other and then I remember them over saying something about cousins. I thought they were related so I figured I would use them. Plus you know they look different and just when I called up– But they had nicknames. Just when I call up [UNKNOWN] he said that they used to steal copper and shit anyway from people's homes okay? Because they call it scrap. I had no idea. I just wanted people to steal manhole covers. I just wanted to make all these tools for them to use and so they end up doing it anyway.
Haden Guest 22:24
You made the tools and manhole covers?
Kevin Jerome Everson 22:29
Yeah, cast a cover. One, because I was gonna use a prop and then I made the tools and one year I filmed the guy stealing copper in broad day and he came after me with a hammer.
[LAUGHTER]
So I made a hammer and we re-enacted it but I didn't use it yet. Yeah, he was a thief. I said "hold on." He came up with a hammer. It's like "wait a minute.... really bro?" [LAUGHS] Broad day? You're stealing copper and you mad at me because I'm like filming you from across the street or something like that? So we diffused it and there was nobody and he kind of got away. But yeah, so anyway, yeah, but that was, yeah...
Audience 23:14
I was just gonna ask if you could continue talking about that. Is it Fe26? That film. If you said that's actually not true. Can you just talk a little bit about the manhole-cover-stealing truth?
Kevin Jerome Everson 23:27
Well, people do it. No doubt. I mean, you go to New Orleans, like there ain't a manhole cover on nothing. Ever been to New Orleans? Because they got the designs on them and shit and people want them but the people like, melt them down... Well, Cleveland—Is anyone from Cleveland?—Oh, sweet, one person from Cleveland. Well, when I was there in the 90s, when they used to call it Thieveland [LAUGHTER] and people would like, I mean, I remember having my maps in my car stolen. [LAUGHTER] You know, kinda thing. You know, okay, but it was desperate... You know, people were desperate right? Because it was like the crack wars was going on in the 90s and it’s just third world. I mean, the Cleveland Clinic, which is the second best hospital on the planet outside the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, but then there was an outbreak of TB. I mean, you know, and I remember when I was there, one of the Cleveland clinic's police officers was shot and they couldn't even treat them. They had to take them down on the west side. Now they can do it now. So you're living in the third world, so you know, money and everything is desperate. So well, so people would just steal anything. I did a lot of public art and sculpture and stuff like that too, as well. But then you go downtown, like the monuments, like you know, the leg is missing. [LAUGHTER] You know, there's a couple of fingers you know, there's like an elbow, that kind of thing cuz people down there are like scrapping, blowtorching off the bronze because you can't have alloyed in any public art project because people will steal it. So especially on the east side, or the illusion people will steal it, so to speak, but a lot is based on race and bullshit too as well. But anyway, so I just knew people would like scrap houses and buildings and stuff like that. So I think I made two films that summer. I made one, Sound That and Fe26, and Sound That was about the water department. So it was basically about what was underneath Cleveland, but you couldn't see it. And so those were the two strategies with those films but only one of them played here tonight.
And then so I wanted to kind of like just kind of just move around with these guys for a little bit. And so we're just filming these guys, but they end up being like thieves. It was fun, because one was drunk the whole time and one was high the whole time. But I mean, you just had to kind of negotiate that. Yeah, and then one got in a fight. You see his eye was kind of messed up and we had to kind of get him out of a situation. Not to save him but so I can finish the movie. [LAUGHING] It's like we got to pick up streets. We got to get on before she kills him. And then I won't have an ending, so to speak. So anyway, so but that was that kind of strategy. So I wrote a lot of it, but they've kind of improved a lot of it too. And I just wanted to get footage and kind of drive around and stuff. Yeah. But I like making props for the things for films too.
Haden Guest 26:18
Questions or Comments? Question for Cleveland.
[LAUGHTER]
Audience 26:22
I'm just curious about the prop situation. So did you get permission to take the real manhole covers off and put your–
Kevin Jerome Everson 26:32
No we just took them.
Audience 26:34
Sorry, then you put them back afterwards? How does that work?
Kevin Jerome Everson 26:36
[LAUGHS] Supposedly, supposedly, Yeah. Yeah. It depends. I think so. I couldn't remember because I had broken my foot. So I had to crutch myself away and, and I don't think you know...
[LAUGHTER]
I just light meter it and make sure it's gonna expose well, I guess... yeah.
Anyway, that was the kind of a drama with that. Yeah. Yeah, there's a gentleman back there.
I think they're all put back. I can't remember, was it four years ago?
Audience 27:15
It struck me that these films were kinda like Zen poetry. And I don't know if you come from that tradition or think about that stuff at all?
Kevin Jerome Everson 27:27
Like I write haikus and stuff.
Haden Guest 27:31
You write haikus?
Kevin Jerome Everson 27:32
Yeah, like some poetry too, as well. Some of the scripts are poems and stuff. Especially like, was it Undefeated? It was a short film. And then Ninety-Three. Then I like the whole idea of like, for me, the middle class, or working class culture is kind of maintaining. Where you don't fail but don't succeed at the same time. So a lot of poetry is about that kind of push back and forth. Then in Undefeated there's a bunch of films where just the cars not working, but he's working, you know? So that whole idea, that kind of balance, so yeah, that's the whole strategy. Most comes from poetry but even the beginning of Company Line where like the Cleveland mentality where you’d just kind of make do, you know. Like even when your windshield wiper fluid thing doesn't work, but you just pour it on there. So you see people driving around doing that all the time. I won't be doing it in Boston and especially not in Cambridge.
[LAUGHTER]
But maybe in Fall River or some shit like that. I don't know what they do out there in New Bedford. But anyway, I like how people just kind of continue, you know but don't, you know, but things are kind of wrong, but right at the same time. So I like that as a kind of a formal strategy, as well, so to speak, and gesture.
Haden Guest 29:05
What I like about Undefeated is it's a great showcase for your ability to work with the miniature you know, again, speaking of Haiku, just this, this single–
Kevin Jerome Everson 29:14
Yeah, yeah. And it's all hand crank. It's a hand crank Bolex so that’s why the speed and the lighting is this kind of thing. So even parts of Company Line was hand crank, with the truck, the salt truck as well.
Haden Guest 29:28
Questions?
Kevin Jerome Everson 29:27
So, yeah, there's a couple there's a bunch of right here. Yeah, my man. Flaherty mafia.
Audience 29:37
Thanks for coming yeah. You started to talk a little bit about your editing process and working on film. Could you go into a little bit more depth? Feel free to rant about how you like touching the film and what you're looking for?
Kevin Jerome Everson 29:52
No, yeah, I don't touch as much as I used to. They just transfer it. [LAUGHS] There's not a lot of physical film cutting but I like the kind of texture with the film, and stuff like that, and I just like the camera. Like most of this new stuff is all shot with the the Arri-S and the 12, the 120 Angenieux lens which is one of the better lenses ever made, I think, for me. A lot of cinematographers say the same thing too as well. So I just like that kind of materiality and stuff, but yeah, with the cutting it depends on the certain kind of film. I try to find a form to it like in Ears, Nose and Throat. I try to do that balance where you kind of have the sound is more important, because of the voiceover of course, in the story, but also with the beeps of the ear–. Yeah, the sound test and stuff like that and in the boxing film there's not much sound. We couldn't figure out what kind of sound to do. It's hard to find a quiet room, so Art McKnight well, so we went back to his chiropractor's office and tried because he said it was quiet there. So "let's give that a shot." But then of course had to tell the nurses to be quiet and then had to go into the next building to tell them to be quiet because we're doing audio too. So those films are kind of driven more by... like I wanted 100-foot rolls of film to be the three-minute boxing round, and then that was the original cut, but then I just end up making that cut. So most of these things have like a template, like how I wanted to cut but usually I just abandoned it because, well that gives me a kind of template. And then [whether] I use it or not, that helps me with the cutting because I usually try to do long takes and then so I find the editing within the long take and in the shooting, so to speak.
There's somebody who had a question over here somewhere. I think so maybe not. Oh, this woman here, right, right there.
Haden Guest 32:15
If you hold your hand up?
Audience 32:22
So I was wondering how you decided what sequence to show the short movies in and if there was a theme you had in mind or just like your decision about the way to show them?
Kevin Jerome Everson 32:37
I mean, about how I come up with the concept you mean?
Haden Guest 32:39
I mean, the program came about through a conversation actually.
Kevin Jerome Everson 32:44
I think it was like Jeremy or somebody. Yeah, yeah something yes. I didn't put the films together, although I liked it. I didn't put the films together.
Haden Guest 32:51
Kevin has so many films now its a real challenge
Kevin Jerome Everson 32:54
I mean that's the first time Emergency Needs played in a long time. I forgot about that one.
Haden Guest 32:59
Yeah. Certainly a theme of history and the hubcap, I mean, the manhole cover one, it's this idea of, right [INAUDIBLE]
Kevin Jerome Everson 33:12
It's like what's underneath Cleveland. And then the Emergency Needs was based on that, but I can't remember. I mean, I like Carl B. Stokes. He was oh, like kind of Obama before Obama, kind of a just cool customer. But he was the first African American to be elected to be mayor of a major metropolitan city. And it was in 1967, Cleveland had the Hough Riots. It was this like uprising that happened in Cleveland, and then he was elected on the strength of that, that there wouldn't be no more uprisings. And actually, I remember interviewing people about the Hough Riots. And though you know, yeah, I mean, Hough is a neighborhood, it was on the Eastside. It was just burning down until everybody said that, “Yeah I remember the Hough Riots, and it was still white guys still driving around cruising for black prostitutes.” I mean it was just like chaos and guys would just like cruise you know. This horrible kind of thing, or whatever so anyway that's everybody's... I wanted to kind of redo like another day, another time but anyway.... I do remember this thing called the Cleveland shootout, aka the Glenville uprising, and is the only uprising where more cops died than police. No, more cops died than Blacks. So the police were indiscriminately driving around the Glenville area shooting African Americans for about a couple of nights. And then so what they end up doing—in case you see it in the film—where they wouldn't allow white police officers to go into the Glenville area. So that's how crazy the cops were, just kind of rogue police. But anyway, I like the mayor Stokes' performance and then I wanted to call attention to the performance. So I figured if I have another actor going to play him, then you would see that kind of the performance and stuff. But also today I was thinking about– I don't know if anybody knows a painter, Robert Rauschenberg. But he has a painting in the Museum of Modern Art in New York called "Phantom One, Phantom Two." It's actually two paintings that are kind of similar, that are right next to each other, so you don't look at the content, but you look at how they were made. So I figured that would be a formal gesture, to strip away the content, and see how the performance was, you know? So that was the whole idea of that, so to speak. Yeah. And then using found footage and using reenacting footage. So now I do a lot of reenactment films, but I like that as a kind of a formal quality so to speak.
Haden Guest 35:59
This project, this archaeology, if you will, of Mansfield, of Ohio, this is a project that's very much continuing?
Kevin Jerome Everson 36:07
Yeah, yeah, the police in my hometown were very corrupt. So they made some movies, some stag movies and some PSAs. Yeah, I've been shooting. I shot it. I like made three of them this past last month. But if anybody who's my age and been to driving school, but you've seen films like Signal 30 where you see everybody's mangled cars, because the police had a Bolex. So they would show up to the auto accident first and like, "wear your seatbelt," you know, and the people would actually be dying. They were actually dying in these accidents. But this is what they would show to driving ed schools in the 60s, 70s and 80s to scare you into wearing your seatbelt and shit like that. But then they banned them in the 90s. I don't know why. Yeah, ‘cause they're brutal. But then you can see them on YouTube and stuff. But also they made this film called Don't Take Candy from Strangers as well and also they made surveillance films. People cruising in bathrooms. The Mansfield police, the state police. And then also they made a film where they arrested the Black women for shoplifting and made her star in the PSA about shoplifting too as well. So I just reshot that and part of a stag movie too as well. So yeah, so that's kind of like the Art McKnight film I'm trying because big Art McKnight was a celebrity and the whole idea of using what was filmed in my hometown, you know just kind of use it as a template for other projects.
Yeah, this Yeah. We have this gentleman here? Yeah! Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's a–
Audience 37:51
Have you shown your films in Mansfield to some of the folks that have [inaudible]
Kevin Jerome Everson 37:54
I give them like links and DVDs and don't know if they watch them or not, [LAUGHTER] but you know, that's up to them.
Haden guest 38:01
There are a lot of family members though too...
Kevin Jerome Everson 38:05
They claim that they want it, you know, I don't know. You give them the DVD or the link and then you start talking about something else, and not that they watch them or not. You know, gotta give them the option, because people got shit to do! They ain't got time to be watching these slow slow films. But I only screened once in Ohio, that's at the Wexner Center. Yeah. And maybe a few times in Cleveland.
Haden Guest 38:29
They also supported some of your work.
Kevin Jerome Everson 38:30
Yeah, yeah. I used some for the camera work and some editing. So this because they had this great art and tech program. Yeah.
There's someone whistling.The Wexner Center? Somebody pro Wexner? Like right on! Ohioans!
Haden Guest 38:42
We have other questions, other comments? Right here, Jake. Yes, then we have people in the back.
Kevin Jerome Everson 38:49
I think we talked about all in all the films I think so. Yeah.
Audience 38:53
I've just been thinking a lot in watching your work about early cinema and actualities. And I was wondering if you could talk about if there's any relation there.
Kevin Jerome Everson 39:01
What is, I don't know what that is?
Haden Guest 39:04
Like the Lumiere brothers films.
Kevin Jerome Everson 39:05
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So what are you asking? What do I think about it?
Audience 39:13
It's a relation that I've been thinking about watching your films. I was curious if there's anything there for you.
Haden Guest 39:22
Like Undefeated for example.
Kevin Jerome Everson 39:24
Yeah, but it's... Yeah, no, yeah, but they're mostly set up. The Lumiere brothers were filming like the women getting off of work so to speak but...
Audience 39:35
A lot of the early ones were staged.
Kevin Jerome Everson 39:41
It can be... Yeah, yeah, I guess so.... Yeah. Everybody's all about it. [LAUGHS] But I mean, you know, I think about visual art more so than—like, that's my template, paintings and stuff, and you know, sculpture, more so than history of cinema but yeah... More so Ninety-Three I think because it happened so to speak, you know.
[INAUDIBLE COMMENT]
Yeah, black and white, yeah...
Yeah, there's somebody back there. Like another double-up.
Audience 40:19
This is a double double-up. Did you do a film on Charlottesville? And are you going to make another hundred films?
Kevin Jerome Everson 40:35
Make a what?
Audience
A film on Charlottesville?
Kevin Jerome Everson
I mean about the Nazis? Yeah, no, I'm not gonna fuck with the Nazis. I'm not gonna spend any money on Nazism. You know, like, I don't want to center. I was telling my colleagues– ‘Cause me and my colleague we make films about Charlotte about University of Virginia. And when the Nazis were coming, and they were saying, “Oh, we want to show your films.” There's like "no, because that's your problem." That's white people's problems. Our films aren't a protest for what you created. Our films are a celebration of what we have. It's two different things. And they just couldn't understand that, they were upset and it's like, “No, you deal with it. You admitted Nazis. You needed this. You know, the ruling class needs this hierarchy to make them feel good about themselves. So we're not going to give you objects to make you feel good about another reaction to that.” So then some people at the university were pissed off, but it's like "look, you created Nazism. You created white supremacy." The whole school was founded on white supremacy for Christ's sakes. Like Jefferson, because he bought six-year-old kids to lay down the bricks for the beginning of the rotunda. So you know, so y'all, you got to keep working on... so as soon as you deal with that– Because Black people have dealt with that all the time, but the ruling class have never dealt with that. So, I think they're struggling more. [LAUGHS] I'm saying this out loud, but I feel sorry about white people! [LAUGHS] Actually I don't but [LAUGHS] I mean, they just can't figure that out. So the fact that they ask us for films to do that and it's like "no," that wasn't gonna happen, but I do want to make another hundred and 40 films.
Haden Guest 42:29
At least.
Kevin Jerome Everson 42:30
At least! Minimum. Yeah. Attempt, start. Yeah. Yeah.
Haden Guest 42:34
I mean, certainly Tonsler Park is a film that many have tried to read as–
Kevin Jerome Everson 42:38
Yeah, well, they tried to read it as like about the– Yeah, I made portraits of African American election officials during the 2016 election, so people always thought "Oh, was that about Trump or Hillary?" No, it's about Civil Servant workers keeping democracy alive because that's what they do. And then they're always ignored because people, you know? Which is fine because folks will go and give them their names and go vote, but they don't kind of stand, you know, I think a lot of Americans are– I think that's why I do these kind of factory films, like Company Line. The last 40 years has been a service society, everybody wants to be management. I mean, like, I'm a big sports guy, and I remember watching the Cleveland Browns, holding the football in my hand thinking I'm Greg Pruitt. But now everybody has a spreadsheet and they want to be management because they want to do fantasy football. So it's service society, you know, that's the kind of mentality of the working people you know, like, "I don't care if you're LeBron James, you work for me." Even though LeBron James is a great guy, you know... Like people go to the game: "I pay your salary!" "No you don't!" [LAUGHS] You know, but that's how the ruling class treats people of color. You know, like I said, me wanting to be Greg Pruitt, you know, carry a football. I want to employ Greg Pruitt. And so that's the kind of service society you know. And then so this whole idea like everybody's in the service society, I forgot where I was going... the service society...?
Haden Guest 44:30
Well, we brought up Tonsler Park.
Kevin Jerome Everson 44:32
Yeah, yeah. Tonsler Park. Yeah, yeah. So when people like go vote, well they just assume that you know, they're just service people, but they have a whole regiment and then they take an oath to protect the constitution, to protect democracy. So just people just make the invisible even more invisible because, you know, they're so used to this kind of service society kind of mentality. All over the country, not just the midwest, in the south, in the west, in the northwest and northeast. So, you know. And another thing! No, I'm just kidding. [LAUGHS] Furthermore....
Haden Guest 45:14
Do we have other questions or comments for Kevin Everson? I mean, certainly we all hope that you will make many, many more films, in the hundreds I'm certain and I look forward to welcome you back on occasion.
Kevin Jerome Everson 45:29
Oh, yeah, I like it here.
Haden Guest 45:31
I want to encourage people to come and see the remainder of the films in the series. I was wondering if you want to if we could give a special plug for Park Lanes your eight-hour film...?
Kevin Jerome Everson 45:42
Oh, yeah. That starts the week from today.
Haden Guest 45:45
Yeah, exactly. Do you want to tell us something about that film just as a kind of introduction and enticement?
Kevin Jerome Everson 45:50
Yeah, yeah. Well, when I was, again, like Company Line, people used to work in the factories and stuff like that. I used to work in between my freshman and sophomore year in college. I painted plastic GM car parts. And I probably only get about 12 more years of life left because I was sucking down– I didn't have anything that looked like a mask in front of my face. And then between sophomore and junior year I worked at Westinghouse and made dryers. So the whole idea was kind of factory worker or in factory and the regiment of that. So I always wanted to make a film about that and also like one of my favorite artists who was here last year, I think, as a Radcliffe Fellow, was this Filipino filmmaker, Lav Diaz, who makes these nine-hour narrative films. And then like I said last night, 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. But I like his long takes because you become more invested in the person because it becomes more humane I think so to speak, and I always wanted to just justify an eight-hour film and I figured, well, I want to do a full day of work. So we've shot it and you know Jack Doerner was here to help as well and we shot in this factory. They make bowling alley supplies. But the southern factories are actually opened four days a week, ten hours a day so they can save money on the extra day. Because the south is the south, so to speak. So anyway, we shot three days in the factory and then I strung it together as an eight-hour work day. So it's a kind of an experience for me. It's more of an experience like if I can do this, but also a lot of people stay. I remember when I was in London, like so many people stayed the whole time and there's always one cat I can tell who's gonna stay and then we take him out to dinner because it's like in Korea, the 71-year-old guy stayed the full clip. And I said "we should do something" and he couldn't speak English. So we did get a translator [LAUGHTER] and we hung out with him for like about an hour and a half and he said he was working in a jewelry factory, I think. So he was into the tools that people use. So for me it's more experience. I've watched people because I know when it played in LA, one will say, “Oh, Kevin I'm sorry, I only stayed three and a half hours.” Like Lawrence of Arabia is like two and a half. So they're like, Oh yeah, we did stay a long time but it's actually kind of watchable in a weird way. Yeah. Well.
Haden Guest 48:24
This audience is no stranger to long films.
Kevin Jerome Everson 48:27
Yeah, that's true.
Haden Guest 48:31
Yeah. I just wanted to ask you one question. It's a little out of left field. Now I ask you about Frederick Wiseman. He's very much on our minds these days.
Kevin Jerome Everson 48:39
Oh, yeah, I've seen a few of these and but not a lot of them.
Haden Guest 48:44
Is he a filmmaker that's important to you?
Kevin Jerome Everson 48:45
You know, like, you couldn't see them. It's like being in a small town you just, you know, being in the midwest. You didn't see a lot of them but I've judged some doc award shows and stuff and I saw like In Jackson Heights, you know, Is it called In Jackson Heights? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've seen Public Housing and Public School. Yes, I've seen some of these, but again, I'm looking at more visual arts than like films and stuff like that. But I like his camera, you know, but I mean, like people don't talk about his audio.
Haden Guest 49:18
He does the sound of course.
Kevin Jerome Everson 49:19
Yeah. He does the sound, so I think people don't study the audio enough for these films, because then they kind of give it kind of like the brevity I think so to speak. Yeah. So I always think we put people, like filmmaking people, always think about the visual, but I think the sound kind of like drives you especially in some of the older ones.
Haden Guest 49:39
Well, thank you. Please join me in thanking Kevin Jerome Everson!
Kevin Jerome Everson 49:45
Right on, thanks. Cambridge!
[APPLAUSE]
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