Audio transcription

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

John Quackenbush  0:00  

October 13, 2013. The Harvard Film Archive screened Bless Their Little Hearts. This is a recording of the introduction and the discussion that followed. Participating are HFA programmer David Pendleton and filmmaker Billy Woodberry.

David Pendleton  0:19  

Good evening, folks. My name is David Pendleton. I'm the programmer at the Harvard Film Archive. And it's my great pleasure to welcome all of you to a very special evening here at the Harvard Film Archive, where we'll be showing two films by Billy Woodberry with Mr. Woodberry himself present. Besides my introductory remarks, I want to remind you to please turn off any device that you might have on your person that makes noise or sheds any light, andplease refrain from illuminating it while the house lights are down. Thank you.

As some of you may recall, this exact program, the short film, The Pocketbook, and the feature film, Bless Their Little Hearts, was originally scheduled back in April. It was scheduled the Friday after the marathon, which, as you recall, was the day of the manhunt, the shelter in place, order, etc. And therefore it had to be canceled. It was meant to be the opening night of our presentation of the films of the L.A. Rebellion, as it's often called. And Billy was here. And so I wanted to be sure and bring him back when we could actually show his film. He very graciously came the night after and introduced The Pocketbook, which we did show the second night. But at the same time, it's a great pleasure to have him here, not having to represent the L.A. Rebellion as a whole but representing his own work, which I think is so important.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the term the L.A. Rebellion, I'll just mention, it refers to the work of a number of filmmakers who met while going through film school at UCLA, the University of California in Los Angeles. There was a program, a short-lived program, that began in the late 60s at UCLA that was kind of an affirmative action program, reaching out to local youth to try and get them into the communications and filmmaking program there. And like I said, that was a smaller, shorter program, but it created the seed, out of which grew a community of filmmakers, largely African American, but it also included Chicano and Chicana filmmakers, Native American filmmakers, Asian American filmmakers, who then went on to make names for themselves doing their own work after they graduated. Besides Billy, the best known names from this circle of friends and filmmakers, would be Julie Dash and Charles Burnett. Haile Gerima as well, and Larry Clark. They’re filmmakers who worked in a number of styles. There’s Barbara McCullough, who made very experimental work; Jamaa Fanaka, who made much more commercial work in many ways. There are people who came later after them, like Zeinabu Irene Davis, continuing the tradition. And all in all, it's a very rich history. I hope that a number of you got to see some of the incredible films that we showed here last spring.

But two of my favorites are The Pocketbook from 1980 and Bless Their Little Hearts from 1984. As I mentioned, the films of the L.A. Rebellion exist in a number of different styles, from the expressionistic to the radically political—formally and aesthetically, radical as well—but there's also a realist strain that I associate with Charles Burnett and with Billy's work at the time; the two were colleagues. They knew each other very well. And you'll see that Bless Their Little Hearts has a screenplay by Charles Burnett, if you're familiar with some of Charles's work from the time like Killer of Sheep, you'll see that Bless Their Little Hearts has a similar structure in some ways, in that it's episodic, and it looks at the life of a poor working class family. Nevertheless, there's a tension that runs through the film that I think is evident in the framing, in the performances, and especially in the editing, that I think is distinctive to this film, and to Billy's work.

And I think that that tension goes to what's at the heart of the film, which is that it's not so much about the material conditions, or not solely about the material conditions of poverty, but more about the spiritual and existential narrowing that the grind of poverty entails on the people who live within it. You'll see it's a portrait of a family. It's also in some ways a portrait of three different worlds within one community. There's a world of men, a world of women and a world of children. And conflicts, sometimes, when those worlds overlap.

That's all I'll say about Bless Their Little Hearts. The Pocketbook is based on a short story by Langston Hughes, and is a beautifully done, little narrative vignette, with a very charming, almost sort of neo-documentary—well, neo-documentary-meets-almost-Chaplinesque prologue, as you'll see. More recently, Billy has created the two-hour video, The Architect, the Ants and the Bees, that was part of an installation in 2004, about the creation of Walt Disney Hall. He's a professor at CalArts; he teaches filmmaking at CalArts. And we're very grateful to have him here. Please welcome Billy Woodberry.

[APPLAUSE]

Billy Woodberry  6:14  

Thank you for coming. And I mean it, because this is the second time. So even if you didn't come the first time, thanks for coming the second time. And I won't say so much now or whatever, but I will stay as long as you wish. And talk to you after you have a chance to look at the films. But thanks. And thanks for your welcome.

[APPLAUSE]

John Quackenbush  6:46  

And now, David Pendleton.

David Pendleton  6:57  

Maybe I'll start by asking one or two simple questions. And then we can open it up to the audience. Do you want to start by talking a little bit about the the genesis of the film, how the film came to be?

Billy Woodberry  7:13  

Oh, can I sit down? 

David Pendleton

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Billy Woodberry

I think what happened is very simple, I won't make it a long story. But what happened is I was looking for a story for my third film, or whatever, in film school. And so I made some adaptation of some Faulkner story or something like that. And so that was an excuse for myself and Charles Burnett to drive around Kern County to try to figure out how we could make Kern County look like a place in Mississippi. So it meant we got to spend a lot of time and talk. And we became close. After he finished the short film that you saw, so we became sort of close then. And we spent a lot of time talking. And he knew I was looking for the next film to do. And he kind of knew my inclinations and taste. And he had this idea. Maybe he had it before. But he said, “Okay, I have a story for you about these kind of working class people that you like, and I'll write it for you. And I'll give it to you.” And the whole thing started, actually, at the end, because at the time, he saw these guys selling fish out of a car. And from that, he sort of thought back to how they might have arrived, and what might be an interesting story, you know? So he came up with the thing and he said, “Okay, I'll give it to you. And let's do that. It'll be a challenge. And let's see what we can do.”

So I got a grant, this independent filmmaking grant from the American Film Institute. And we thought we had a lot of money, so we thought like, why not, you know? $10,000, more money than we ever had at one time. So that's sort of how it came about. Very simple. He just gave me the story. And I said, “But it's kinda long.” He said, “Oh, it's not that long. It's okay. You can think of it like you just do a bunch of short ones and put them together.”

David Pendleton  10:12  

So you guys became friends after he saw The Pocketbook? Is that what you’re saying?

Billy Woodberry  10:16  

No, I had been looking to meet him because the way I came to film school is I had a friend who had gone to school there with him and knew him. His name was Mario DeSilva. He's a Brazilian guy. Because in graduate school, I did Latin American Studies. And I met this guy, and my teachers knew that I was sort of interested in film. And I met him. And he was a really talented man, well respected in the school. And he brought me the first time to UCLA Film School. But he told me, “Okay, out of all these guys, the one you need to meet is Charles Burnett, because they talk a lot, but this guy is for real.” So I looked for him, but I didn't meet him because he was working full time. Actually, I met him the first time I went to the school. I tell this joke, we're older now. But he was playing with a damn yo-yo, you know? So I didn't take it in, right? And he was so unassuming that I didn't know it was the same guy. So then three years later, asking the guys in the equipment office, who admired him and eventually I met him. And our first conversation was like, “Do you prefer Eisenstein or Pudovkin?” He says, “Pudovkin, he's more humane.” So that's how we started.

David Pendleton  11:58  

[LAUGHS] Can you say a little bit about the people that the actors in the film? Because I haven't researched it extensively, but it seems like– I mean, I know the kids are relatives of Charles Burnett or his kids at that point, right? But then the other actors… I'm assuming there’s a mixture of like, professional and non-professional actors.

Billy Woodberry  12:21  

Oh, what happened was– Okay, the woman you probably know, because you've seen her in Killer of Sheep.

David Pendleton

Kaycee Moore.

Billy Woodberry

Yeah. And she's also in Daughters of the Dust. The children are actually his nieces and nephews. And the two older ones were in Killer of Sheep, but they were younger. And the little girl is their younger sister. It was her first time. And the guy, Henry Sanders, you know, the lead in Killer of Sheep—and he's in other films, a lot of films by this guy Bob Roth. Henry Sanders, they had a kind of workshop theater, where they would do plays and invite people to come to see them. And so Charles was close with them, and he saw these two in a play. So we asked the guy to do it. And I met him on another film, he was playing a waiter in a country club or something like that. And so I met him, and he was the one we wanted the whole time.

David Pendleton  13:27  

Nate Hardman who plays Charles.

Billy Woodberry  13:28  

Yeah and not to tell too many colorful stories, right? [DAVID LAUGHS] But what happened was the first day he needed to paint this garage. After that, he quit, [DAVID LAUGHS] for like, three months. He thought, This is not acting, you know? We kind of helped him paint the garage. But anyway, I–

David Pendleton  13:56  

Didn't he know he was going to have to paint the– Was that in the script? Or once he actually had to paint the whole thing…?

Billy Woodberry  14:02  

No, it said he had to paint a garage, but I don't know, maybe he thought, movie paint, or whatever. But we spent the whole day and painted the garage with those people. And he stopped. And he said he stopped because he suspected that Kaycee Moore had told us a lot of things about his personal life, and they were incorporated in the script and stuff. Not true. [LAUGHS] He made it up. But he believed it, so!

David Pendleton  14:33  

Why did you have him paint the whole garage? [PAUSE] No, I mean, I can think of lots of reasons why! I'm just curious,

Billy Woodberry  14:43  

We didn't know these people who own that place. We went to the front door. And we said, “Can we paint your garage?” And they said, “Why would you want to do that?” We said “Oh, we want to take pictures of this guy painting the garage.” So they said, “Okay,” so once we signed up to paint the garage, we had to paint the garage. And you know, we were getting something. We were getting shots of the guy working, so...

David Pendleton  15:18  

Right. No, I mean, I asked because I'm curious... I guess when I'm really hoping to get to eventually is to talk about realism. And, you know, realism as the aesthetic choice for this film. I mean, again, now having seen the L.A. Rebellion program, and knowing the wide range of styles that people were making, I'm curious about how you at this point, came to want to make films in black and white, mixing professional and non-professional actors, that kind of thing. If you can maybe talk about why realism shouldn't important style to you.

Billy Woodberry

Sure. Okay, so I sort of fell in love with these Italian movies from the early 40s through the 50s. And I sort of convinced myself that all the tenents of that thing were the right way to do things, that there was no need to have professional actors, and all this kind of thing. That regular people could do this, if you give them the confidence and if you ask them to do things that are within their world, and that they could do it best, right? Maybe that was naive, a lack of experience. But I thought that, and I used to go around professing it. And so that was sort of what I wanted to do. And you know, these actors, they had been in films and some of them had some experience. The guy not so much, but he had been an actor in theater. There was a famous playwright from the Negro Ensemble Company, Theodore Ward. He wrote this play Day of Absence. And he directed a lot of plays, and he's a fine actor. This guy's from Chicago. So he started in his theater in Chicago, so that was his training and that was his expectation about acting. But I thought, okay, with someone with that kind of training, what you have to do in a way is have them unlearn a lot of the theatrical kind of things. So that was a thing, where you were asking him to underplay, and to not be so expansive, and so expressive, and, you know, exaggerated and that kind of thing. So I was learning, and I learned with them.

With her, it's not a problem, it was a matter of getting her to do without makeup. And convincing her that she was beautiful without the makeup and that kind of thing. And also to allow her to do what she was capable of doing, against the advice of the other actors and crew sometimes. It was like, knowing how to not stop her, that kind of thing. So it's two different things.

And then the children, they don't know all of that. They don't know Method. They don't know those things. They know and sense situations when you put them in a situation. And they can respond. They happen to be really intelligent and sensitive kids, and they've been around, they know how long it takes. And they were kind of gifted it that way. So that's how it happened with that experience.

David Pendleton  19:10  

Are there questions? I have a bunch more questions, but I want to go ahead and open up to the audience if there are people ready to ask the first question from the audience. If you look to your..  We’re passing a mic to you. Yes, ma'am, you.

Audience 1  19:25  

I was struck in a film by the moments that are alone and quiet. And the main characters, having this tension and expression just through their body, like when he's shaving in the bathroom, or she's on the bus holding the front seat in front of her. And I'm wondering if you could just speak a little bit about your choices, like they're quite long scenes, those and you know, obviously they struck me but how you made choices and those particular types of scenes.

Billy Woodberry  20:08  

And I have to say that there's a description of that in the screenplay. But I believed in the power of the image and the risk of doing it or taking your time or creating these spaces where you can breathe, or you can reflect, or to indicate something without words, without too much overt thing. And then to trust also, because he's a gifted cameraman, he has a gifted eye. And I knew we could get that. And the way we got that—I say it now and I don't say with any disrespect, because teaching in film school and being around film schools, there’s a big concern now about safety for film students, you know, and they need permission, they need insurance, they need all of these things in order to do their work outside of school.

But we simply got on the bus with a camera, and myself, and the actress. And we paid three fares. And we avoided including people that we didn't have their permission to include as much as possible. And we rode from one point to the other. And we knew the sun would be in the west on Wilshire Boulevard at that time, or we hoped it would. We got our shot, we got off the bus, somebody picked us up, and we went on about our day. And night time, very few people on the bus, we get on, we pay the fare, we do our work, and we get off the bus. Maybe that's not so simple now, not so easy. But that was how we did it.

The thing with him shaving is just, that was what we were trying to do, you know. And then there's a way to choose sort of fragmented shots, and you assemble them to give the sense about passing time and that thing, and then you have the little Chaplinesque business of the girl coming with the wrench. And it was just something we could do, just looking through the window of the bathroom because of the strange old apartment. So there's not so many shots and options in terms of where you can be with the camera. And in fact, when he appears to be looking in the mirror, he's looking in the lens. And it's just tricks that everybody does.

But it’s just a thought that it could work and we’ve seen it work in other movies. And why not? This movie, and then there are people who think like– Oh, I remember a man and one of the television agencies was saying, “You know, when she's on that bus, I would like to have a voiceover.” [LAUGHS] People prefer different things. So I'm glad you found it interesting, at least.

David Pendleton  23:55  

Are there other questions? Alright, well while you’re thinking about it, I'm gonna ask some more questions then.

Going back to this question of the screenplay. I mean, how closely did you stick to– Because some of the dialogue is delivered so naturalistically. And of course there's the climactic scene—which there's nothing like in Charles Burnett’s film at the time—of the argument between the two of them that's done in one take. Was that all scripted out? And can you talk a little bit about deciding to shoot that scene that way?

Billy Woodberry  24:26  

They had a page of description of where they were in a story, of what she knew, what he knew, where they were in their relationship, what he might do if she confronts him about that and what she might do if he says one thing or another. And that was all they had, but the dialogue itself is completely improvised by them. And it was simple. It seemed that was the only way to do it. So we just took all of the furniture out of the kitchen, so that that becomes the setting, or a place for it. And then you put, you know, just the three of them inside and filmed it like that in one take. And then we tried to film it again, but they had nothing left. And the second take complete is what it is. Something you try. And if you have really gifted people and you get lucky, you know, they can do that. And the only thing I said to him was, “Come out come out” once she sits down, to get him to come out of the room. But otherwise I didn't tell him anything.

David Pendleton  25:55  

Because that scene now almost seems to harken to different kinds of realism than Italian neorealism. I've seen that scene compared to Cassavetes; it's compared to Bergman. And so I think it's interesting the way in which the kind of realism that you're working with sort of shifts from time to time in the film.

Billy Woodberry  26:14  

I think we probably got that kind of thing– Maybe Charlie got it from somewhere else. But the thing that suggests to me it could work, is there's a Cuban film. Do you know this film, it’s three parts, it’s called Lucía? The Cubans and the Brazilians were famous for this handheld camera. And I always admired that and respected it. So I thought you could do it. But if you watch early films of Glauber Rocha, and you watch Ruy Gerra films, you watch Lucía and some of the others, they use it very effectively, especially in the third part of Lucía, which is sort of then set in the present, 1969. And it's a really young couple and they’re always fighting, and things like that. You know, we didn't sit down and say, “Oh we'll copy that.” It was like also, Can you do it? Because it's like newsreel and combat guys can do that. You work with people, they can't react enough. Also Mr. Leacock and all those people, they gave that to cinema, you know, maybe as much as anybody, that kind of shooting.

David Pendleton  27:37  

The opening sequence in the employment office is very much like a documentary film, it seems to me.

Billy Woodberry  27:42  

Oh, yeah, we had, again, the description—especially the details that the guy is very slow in writing his name. He doesn't do cursive. Remember the big scandal at a trial in Florida because the young woman said, “I can't read cursive.” And then everybody says, “Who uses that anymore with computers?!” My attempt to have humor, but… [LAUGHTER] He's very, you know, meticulous and doing that to make it legible. So those details were there.

We went again to the unemployment office in Compton ‘cause it’s a fairly quiet one. Some space in that thing. We only brought our guy. We tried to limit ourselves to him primarily. And the people, they didn't ask us a single question. And they didn't say “stop,” or “you interfering,” you know, anything. We finished, we thanked them, and we left. But the only thing we wanted was a guy looking for a job. We didn't want to stage any fights or anything. So we didn't seem so intrusive. But we had thought about it before we went in. So, “You need to go there, you need to be there, you need to do that, you need to…” and then we're the only people there when he's writing that thing. So we didn't interrupt. And they thought it was okay.

David Pendleton  29:29  

And that reminds me, maybe it's worth pointing out that both of these films were shot on 16 millimeter originally. And then they were blown up recently to 35 millimeter at UCLA by the Film and Television Archive there.

Billy Woodberry  29:43  

It’s a much more friendly device. You know, you don't seem so imposing, and also you can get away with some things that you need to be more precise with the larger 35 millimeter thing. That's partly how we could do it.

David Pendleton  30:05  

Oh, there's a couple of questions. Yes, this lady here. Okay, you go ahead...

Audience 2  30:16  

[INAUDIBLE]... they were easy to work with. It almost seems like it's easy for you to work with children. It was so interesting to have the kid in the barbershop’s chair, that was pretty conscious, and he was adorable. And then even in The Pocketbook, you know, that young boy seemed to be so comfortable in this role. So I'm just interested in your work with children.

Billy Woodberry 30:38  

Oh, I was lucky. But also, I have to say that boy in the barbershop is the cousin of the Burnett children. And the man with the main character is his father. And all he had to do was appear to get a haircut, right? And if he stretched and he yawned, and he was bored, and that thing, he knew it was okay, we weren't going to stop him, right? And his father was not going to interfere with him. So he was just being himself. The thing I learned, maybe I learned a bit with the other children. But my friends said, “Oh, you're lucky, you just find a kid with an interesting personality” and this thing, and the boy in The Pocketbook, what happened was, I just got them to play together. And then I wanted to see who would emerge as my guy. He had to have a little something, and he should be able to do it. And that boy, he could be by himself, and others kind of look to him, and that thing. And I kind of thought he was the one. Unfortunately, he was killed at about twelve, or something, on his bicycle at night on a big street in Los Angeles. But with him, I just needed to put him in a situation and he has a very expressive face. And then if I choose the right camera angle and right relationship to him, he could do it. And also, I find children if you put them in a situation, and also if you don't allow or create too much extraneous and distracting things, they focus on feelings even if the feelings come from a situation that you've created, right? He's sitting across from a woman who, by right, should have reacted to him differently. But she's reacting to him in a way that he doesn't expect, and he finds that overwhelming in a way. Or he communicates that it’s overwhelming. You know, he's so unsettled by that, that he cries, right? But it was just a situation, so...

The others because they're siblings, they already have a kind of order. And if you put them in situations, but they were really smart in a way. And if you put them in situations that they understand—a tension between the mother and father, they understand that. The father being aggressive with you, in an irrational way, and you can't beat him up; it hurts so you cry. Right? And he's insulting you. They understand that.

The other thing is I would read things and then I would sort of try them you know, like that Indian director Satyajit Ray. He says, “Okay, when you direct children, you must create a kind of complicity that's only between you and them. You don't tell the others. You don't give them instructions in front of everybody. You make it a conspiracy.” You tell them, ‘Okay, this is what we have to do. And I have full confidence you can do that,” or the equivalent, right? And then they do it. But you don't embarrass them. You don't allow others to talk too much, and don't let others talk to them. And then they will work with you. Sometimes they look at you to see if it's right, if you're lucky. But children are gifted that way. And a lot of them, when they’re around, they’re capable of all kinds of things, you know? A lot of us are guilty of loving films where you find some special kid that can do this. And you find them all across the history of movies. So.

[INAUDIBLE AUDIENCE QUESTION]

Billy Woodberry  35:29  

Yeah, that was plastic they found because those railroad cars, they come with things still in plastic. Okay, where did that come from? We went to that location and we found that. And if they are moving and doing things, they’re not bored, and they know how to play, and that kind of thing. And I remember in my elementary school, these guys who were much braver than me, and they lived in a different housing project. One week, they all showed up, and they had these whistles. [MAKES SHORT WHISTLING SOUNDS] And they were these banding things that came from the railroad cars. They had found them. And everybody in our school from that housing project had [one] and they were whistling. So when I found them, I just, I tell these guys, Oh, you can make a whistle of that. So that's how we did it.

David Pendleton  36:32  

Great. Mitch and then you.

Audience 3  36:36  

Hello. These are some of my favorite movies. I wanted to ask you a question about not just your work in particular, but you and Charles Burnett and a couple of the other filmmakers, whose work I had the great fortune to see, about the use of music. The use of music and these films is outstanding. It’s some of the best music in the 20th century in American music. I mean, Killer of Sheep is everything from Earth, Wind and Fire to Dinah Washington to Paul Robeson. And then the short here, I heard Miles Davis at Philharmonic Hall—“My Funny Valentine”—with the Herbie Hancock intro and “Just a Gigolo,” Thelonius Monk. Would it be fair—I mean, I ask you your thoughts about this—it feels to me in these films that you were trying to do something wholly original, with music and film it almost as if the music isn't accompanying or secondary, but it's right there equal to, and sometimes in the forefront. Could you talk a little bit about music in these films?

Billy Woodberry  37:46  

Music was important for a lot of us, and maybe a lot of us were, a lot of them were thinking about it from their own point of view or angle, and trying to learn about it, in a way, in my own case. I knew some music, but I had to, sort of, be taught, or encouraged to appreciate, for instance, a lot of jazz. Friends, my former wife and other people—who are much more sophisticated in a way—convinced me, and also I was able to study it. You could have courses in college and university about jazz and you could learn about the history of it then. And also we know that it's sort of important. It may be one of the older and more important forms of expression in Afro-American culture, and probably world culture, but what do I know? So, you learn about it, you learn to respect it, you learn to see it as valuable in itself. And that what it apparently gives to people and what it evokes for them. And then how can you relate it to the images you want to make? And you want to try to make something more full and the music seems to contribute to that.

I will try to be more restricted in my review because I can't speak for all of them. Charles Burnett, he knows a lot of different kinds of music. He knows a lot about classical music, as a matter of fact. Since he was a young man, he had a membership at the Philharmonic. I remember driving all over town with him to a record store in Beverly Hills because some new set of Beethoven's violin concertos were coming out, and he wanted to be the first to get them. So we used to do that, but he knew about a lot of different kinds of music.

Okay, so in the movie, I'll talk about one case, where what happens is alright, I wanted to give the sense that the main character has a richer inner life, maybe, than we would suppose, than we would suspect. So one way that I thought this might happen was that I would use a piece of music that sort of suggested, you know, in relationship to him, where he's not doing very much. He's laying on a car, right? But then when I play this Buddy Guy music, you think, “Oh, this guy, there's something more to him. There's something more to what I'm seeing,” and maybe the music gives you more of that than my image at the time. Then I connect he and his wife, because I use another section of the same music when she's on the bus at night falling asleep. So I try to build something with that. Thenthe main music in there is two disks from Horace Parlan and Archie Shepp. One is called Goin’ Home, and the other is called Trouble in Mind. And it's kind of classic spirituals and classic blues. And he played that, he decided to make that music after being a real firebrand and radical and an extreme avant-garde and free player. So to me, that music had a kind of depth. And I wanted people to hear it. And then it kind of worked out that it play between the blues, and the spirituals without being too overt about it, gave something to the film. So that's why it's in there.

And then there's a drinking song from Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, which is a kind of– Carla Bley is sort of making an homage to Brecht and Weill. And I like that. And Mingus plays something similar too, so I like that. And so that's the main music in the film.

And the other one, I was learning and you know, you're learning and Okay, so how do I end this movie? And then when I played the first few bars of “Someday My Prince Will Come,” I think, or “My Funny Valentine” and it just ends with the boy. He pops out. It’s just, you know, you play around with it. And “Just a Gigolo” is like Chaplin music, in a way, for me, because the images there behind him. And they were just shadows, you know, that kind of thing. And yeah, I used that. But we were learning. Now, the truth comes when distributors... They have to pay for that music. So that delays the thing, but great! They pay them. But we were not just ripping them off. So, they will be paid and good, more people will be able to see it. But some people who might see the film, they might have missed those CDs. So I think I've sold some for them.

David Pendleton  44:21  

Exactly.

Billy Woodberry  44:23  

And also I got strong reactions [from] young people. One young guy and Berlin came to me. And they know all that music. People in Canada, they write to me. They know this music.

David Pendleton  44:40  

You got a strong reaction in Berlin when the film was new? Because it played at the Berlinale right? Or recently, you mean...,

Billy Woodberry  44:46  

No, when I was there. The young guy came to me and said “Hey, what is this jazz music you're playing? This music is not right. Those people would be– You would hear more hip hop and more rap” or whatever, you know. He just was telling me, he differed with me about music. But the fact that he knew it, I was impressed.

David Pendleton  45:15  

You still have a question? Where's the...? Here comes the mic. And then you in the blue.

Audience 4  45:23  

Thank you so much for bringing your films and for coming back.

Billy Woodberry  45:26  

Thank you for coming.

Audience 4  45:29  

So you're talking about driving around and trading scripts. And then Charles Burnett is shooting the film. And you're talking about seeing these guys on the street and seeing other things like finding the whistles.... So I was just wondering how much if you could talk a little bit about observation just about going around and seeing things? And how much of that stuff ends up in the film? And also about collaboration, just about how much of it is you? Or how much is everybody kind of putting in to make the film?

Billy Woodberry  46:01  

Okay, your last question first. I think it’s everybody putting in, but then maybe you have the responsibility for the whole thing. Right? You have to see it through to the end. But without the cooperation of all these people, you can't do it. The other thing, working together, it was like, in some ways—because he was ahead of me, and he was more experienced—the thing is okay, how do I restrain myself and not solve your problems? So I would be looking for him to solve the problem, but he’d say, “You know the answer. “So, you know, he would, he was there, it was a support, I couldn't be completely wrong. But he wanted me to try to find my own way to it; he didn't hang on to “Oh, it’s my idea,” and this kind of thing. It was like, “Okay, I gave it to you. And I believe you can do it. And so let's do it. Okay, let's go to work.” And it was that kind of thing. It was very generous and very supportive. And all the friends who were working on the film were mostly just there to see that it got done, because the thing was, it was kind of sweat equity, right? I owe them, they helped me, you help the next one. And that was part of the time. You were expected to work on each other's films. And then some relationships became more extensive than the simple obligation to do that. But the way that I learned is I worked on a lot of those other people's movies. And observation, you know, you see things or you learn to try to be observant. And then it may come back to you and maybe something you can reuse, or you can redeploy to make something else. And sometimes that's the thing, is learning how to see and listen and see what's interesting, and how you might redo it. Make it more expressive, make it less, make it something that people will think about, or maybe it suggests something more than what it is, that kind of thing. That’s, you know, it’s hindsight. I'm thinking going forward...

David Pendleton  48:55  

Yeah. Raise your hand, Alexander will pass you the mic.

Audience 5  49:01  

So I think I noticed in the credits that you think Robert M. Young, who—if I'm not mistaken—was involved integrally in Nothing But a Man. And so, one question would be, how much of an influence was that film on Charles Burnett and you in making this film? And then the second question, kind of comparing these two films, hoping that there's an influence, I guess. You know, in Nothing But a Man, there's this external problem that's informing all the tension in that relationship, which is institutionalized racism. So I guess I would ask in this film, you know, what's the problem that's destabilizing this family? Is it something external or is it just between them or what is it?

Billy Woodberry  49:48  

I think, to try to answer your question, okay, it's both, because the external is a condition or the context, but the motor, the drive is internal. You can't change the outside without the inside, and the outside creates the way that the internal will work itself out. It can only resolve so much internally. It has to break out of that, right? But the source of change is not simply external, the external condition. Okay, the external condition, the macro condition, if that's the term, is the growing structural unemployment lived out by one person. But it's lived out from their particular point of departure and location. So maybe it's good to engage that, or try to see that to understand maybe why the external thing is not so easy to change, that they go together, if that makes any sense. And I think that's what we were aware of. But we are not saying that, okay, only if he can get along with his wife... Well, you can't get along, if you are under the stress of not being able to contribute materially, financially, in your own context, your own small world, however small it is, right? It's a couple, you've agreed that you will both raise children. So that was with the thought that each would provide what they could to the upkeep, maintenance and reproduction of your life. And then when you lose control of that, then you are in a weaker position. And the other, she's still able to do it, but at what cost? Right? So that affects everything. So it's that kind of thing.

Nothing But a Man, fortunately, and unfortunately, I didn't see the movie until I had shot three-quarters of it, or I might have copied more things. But I didn't see it until then. It was a rumor. It was a film you know that you didn't see, because you read about it. And it was starting to come back around.

David Pendleton  53:00  

And it was hard to see for a long time.

Billy Woodberry  53:03  

It was hard to see. But I saw him after I was maybe three-quarters of the way with this movie. I went and I met him. He had a screening in the history department at UCLA. And I went and I met him. And then I saw the film. I met him. He gave me his number. I sent him a copy of the film. And then he was friends with Eddie Olmos, who was then doing Miami Vice and all this thing. But you know, he did this version of Sullivan's Travels in Rome, where the pope wanders out of the Vatican and you know–

David Pendleton  53:51  

Are you talking about the actor from Nothing But a Man?

Billy Woodberry  53:53  

No, the director Robert Young. Or he was the cinematographer and writer.

David Pendleton

Michael Roemer, I thought, was the–

Billy Woodberry

Michael Roemer’s the director

David Pendleton  54:00  

Okay, but Robert Young. You’re talking about Robert Young.

Billy Woodberry 54:03  

Robert Young, I meant. Okay, noow I tell you this because he was quite generous, because on his way he was at the airport. He landed in Rome, and he called me on a telephone and said, “Oh, I was thinking about your movie. And I wanted to see if there's something I can do. I don't know what I can do,” this kind of thing. But it meant a lot to get this call on Sunday night. And even though he didn't help me do that, but it was very encouraging, and the fact that he recognized something in it. And then I met him later and spent some time talking with him and that kind of thing. And so that's why he's in there. And because I love and admire the movie, but I also love the other movie they made after that. The Trouble with Harry, is that the movie? Plot Against Harry, do you know this movie? It’s a lost treasure! You have to see it. It's a beautiful movie. Whole ‘nother milieu than Nothing But a Man but equally insightful and great. So that's why it’s there. Long story. I'm sorry. Long-winded but... I'm sorry.

David Pendleton  55:30  

Well, no, what’s interesting compared to Nothing But a Man, and this is what I was saying to you: there are no white characters in Bless Their Little Hearts. This is what I saying to you, watching this, I feel like it's a movie about class primarily, as opposed to race. There's a way in which in this milieu, the two are inseparable, but that really the problem that they have is poverty and as you say, creeping structural unemployment.

Billy Woodberry 56:00  

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, if it's not as precise as we would like, in terms of an analysis of the particular larger political economic moment, is a kind of useful, maybe, allegory of that. Because in some ways, it seems out of time, it seems to expand beyond the time frame of the movie. So to your question, I think, yeah, it's a movie about class. But the other thing is, I was admonished in Portugal by a young woman who said, “You showed us a false picture of the United States, a film with only Black people. And there are no whites. We know the United States, this is not true.” But what it reflects is, even in some precincts and the United States and parts of Chicago, Los Angeles, even you could live a good portion of your life and not have on a day-to-day basis contact with a lot of other people, right? Or you could, at one time, so I don't think it’s completely false. And I think there might be white people in that unemployment office. People tend not to see people, you know. But they're not speaking characters in it. Or they might have been on the bus. We didn't avoid them, or apartheid them, or anything.

David Pendleton  57:43  

No, no, no, but I mean, but I think you're right. I mean, there's a way in which you're showing a milieu where–

Billy Woodberry 57:48  

And also, we said, “Okay, a lot of people, they live their entire life within– If they don't work outside.” And this is really important. That was why it was important that people had industrial jobs that took them outside the boundaries of their neighborhoods, and that kind of thing. Because they saw other people and other things that expanded their understanding of the world. But if you're limited to, say, sixteen square blocks, you think that’s entire world, right? I mean, you see stuff on television, but that's not to be believed, like the moon landing, right? [LAUGHTER] So that's part of the, maybe the conceit, or whatever. But no, that's what we thought. And inside our—what do you call it—community of filmmaking people, it's very specific that he's a worker, unemployed worker. He's not a musician. He doesn't have you know, that kind of claim, to give him a kind of existential separation. No, he's a simple unskilled worker guy, but who thinks about philosophical questions, the difference between material and spiritual and all these kinds of things. So that was the suggestion. But Charles Burnett used to read this George Lukács, you know? Theory of the novel, and the fact that regular people don't realize that they live epic stories. But they do, if you can conceive of them. So that informed a little. We used to talk about those things

David Pendleton  59:41  

Right. Well, that was also kind of why I was asking about realism too, in relation to the politics of the film, and Lukács was sort of the juncture there, one of the things I was thinking of.

And can I just say one—I see your hand, Lydia—but one other thing I wanted to point out too, and this is a point that actually Thom Anderson in Los Angeles Plays Itself points out on why he has the shot where they drive past the ruined Goodyear factory that you have in Bless Their Little Hearts. And that's a really key moment too, because that's pointing out that once there had been in that neighborhood, jobs that would sustain working-class people and that now, those jobs are gone.

Billy Woodberry  1:00:27  And that was quite deliberate. And I'm proud of that, because I shot that sequence. They told me, “Oh, no, I don't think you can do it.” You know, the lighting and that thing. I said, “Okay.” So I just got between the driver and the guy and I made my shot. Because I knew that Goodyear plant. That's part of the story too is when those jobs, when when that process was underway, and when it was completed. That's what it meant. The proximity to industrial jobs, union jobs with good wages went away, and something had to replace it. You hoped. And what replaced it was not nice. And that's the next wave of films, right? Menace to Society, and Boyz n the Hood, and every other one about that kind of thing. But that was a changing–

David Pendleton  1:01:31  

Right? Well, and this is exactly between those two, because we have on the one hand, the wreckage of the Goodyear plan. On the other hand, we have some very early gang graffiti.

Billy Woodberry  1:01:40  

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. They were almost quaint, those gangs [LAUGHS] [compared to] what was coming, but you already have it. They were kind of nostalgic because the Brims, I think, are from Charles's pre-generation or something… [LAUGHS]

David Pendleton  1:02:01  

[LAUGHING] Yes, Lydia has a question.

Audience 6  1:02:04  

A little aside about segregation in Boston. I was driving with my family in Roxbury and a white police officer pulled us over and asked us if we were lost. Stopped us. This might be an idiosyncratic way of responding to the movie. But I had a very strong feeling of the point of view of the boy, almost as though he was the witness, and that he was the person who was at stake in the movie? I wonder if you could respond to that.

Billy Woodberry 1:02:39  

I think that's original.

David Pendleton  1:02:43  

I mean, he seems to bear the brunt of a lot of things.

Billy Woodberry  1:02:45  

Yeah. But I want to acknowledge that you're the first person to say that. And maybe it's true. Maybe it's something that we weren't fully aware of, but it might be good that it ended up there. And maybe a simple thing happens, two scenes may establish that. And that’s for people who make films and who write, I suggest to you. Because there are two scenes. There's a scene where she's admonishing him before he goes to church. And there's the scene where the father is clipping the nails. And then there's the frustration of trying to get in the bathroom. And he's calling for his mom. So without him actually having a lot of focus, it manages to impress that upon you. So I think it’s sensitive, and maybe it's right. And we're boys, so maybe we didn't see it. We thought we were men or whatever, when we were putting our wine in there.

I think it's a good thing too, because the challenge is, he might get to be a different kind of man. Maybe that was the pressure and what was happening. ‘Cause that other one is too simple. You get a job, you work hard, you build your muscles, and you don't cry, you don't grow your nails. You know, so maybe that maybe that's how that opening is there. So maybe that's a good thing. Actually, one young woman, cinema studies young woman, she had a whole big theory of what it meant when the father was doing this thing with the nails and that thing, and I think she was kind of wondering, should you show that in that way? But I thought, yes, I should show that in that way, because that's the way that kind of man would try to impress upon, assert, or salve his own uncertainty, is by trying to lay down the law for somebody else, you know? But thank you for that.

David Pendleton  1:05:50  

Are there any other questions? Well, in that case, did you want to say anything about what you're working on now?

Billy Woodberry  1:06:01  

I'm working on a documentary film. And I don't talk. I'm from Chicago. Not really, but my friend from Chicago, that's his response when I say, “You know, you really shouldn't tell anybody.” He said, “Billy, I'm from Chicago. I don't talk.” I'm from Texas. We talk a lot. [LAUGHS] But no, I'm working on a documentary film about a poet from the 1950s, a poet and a sailor, radical man, Bob Kaufman. You know this man? Yeah. So hopefully, I’ll finish soon. Thanks.

David Pendleton  1:06:43  

I just want to end by pointing out the line that you mentioned, where Charles says that, you know, he's surrounded by people who always choose the material over the spiritual and I think what's so moving about your film is the way that you actually fuse those two, bringing the spiritual out of the material and it's a really beautiful film.

Thank you for coming. Thank you for talking to us for so long.

[APPLAUSE]

©Harvard Film Archive

In the course of a botched purse snatching, a boy questions the course of his life in this adaptation of Langston Hughes’ short story, "Thank You, Ma'am."