Jada Pinkett Smith Channels Her Inner Hippo and More

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Monday, 11 June 2012 14:50

Written by Brad Balfour

As the rail-thin Jada Pinkett Smith bounds into the Waldorf Astoria suite for a friendly chat about life and family, she exudes energy and an intensity that makes this petite 40 year-old actress a lot bigger in the chair than she seems.

Opening at Cannes Film Festival 2012, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted -- the third installment of the billion-dollar franchise -- stars Central Park Zoo refugees Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), Gloria the hippo (Pinkett Smith) and Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) who are determined to return to New York City.  

Leaving Africa behind, they detour to Monte Carlo on a hunt for the penguins and chimps who had left them stranded. 

After their pals break the bank of a local casino, the animals are soon discovered by dogged French animal control officer Capitaine Chantel DuBois (Frances McDormand) who doesn’t appreciate these foreigners running wild in her city and is thrilled by the idea of hunting her first lion! 

Once they’ve surfaced, quite literally, in Europe — the Zoosters hide out in a down-and-out traveling circus where they plan to reinvent it without humans, discover a few new talents and make it home to the USA alive.  

For the first time in 3D, the Madagascar crew are doing death defying tricks with a wild bunch of new friends. 

Both as hippo Gloria and in her many other roles, Pinkett Smith has proven to be a versatile star both on and off screen. She has amassed an impressive array of film and TV credits, including Hawthorne (the TNT medical drama that ran from 2009-2011; she also served as an executive producer), Reign Over Me (opposite Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle), and in Michael Mann’s Collateral (where she had pivotal role opposite Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx). But she’s probably best known as the take-charge Niobe in the iconic sequels, Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions.

Through her production company, 100% Womon, Pinkett Smith wrote, directed and co-starred in The Human Contract opposite Jason Clarke and Paz Vega. She also put pen to paper resulting in the New York Times bestseller Girls Hold Up This World, published in 2005.

In 2010, Pinkett Smith assumed executive producer duties for the feature film The Karate Kid, starring her son Jaden Smith and was also an executive producer on The Secret Life of Bees. Together with husband Will Smith, she created and executive produced the CW Network’s All of Us.

Beyond the medium of TV and film, the Smiths have collaborated with record industry mogul Jay-Z to produce the Broadway musical hit Fela! which earned three Tony Awards. 

Focusing on her musical interests, Pinkett Smith became the lead singer of the rock band Wicked Wisdom, which opened for Britney Spears during her Onyx Hotel Tour. Her most recent musical project, a sensual ballad entitled “Burn,” was released on iTunes on Valentine’s Day 2012 and was dedicated to her husband.

Born and raised in Maryland, Pinkett Smith studied dance and acting at the Baltimore School of the Arts and North Carolina School of the Arts. Her big break came when she landed a role on the long-running NBC series A Different World.

Though Madagascar 3 is her latest high-profile project, this actress/producer/writer is constantly developing or producing for various media including now a web series, Red Table Talk.

Q: How was it channeling your inner animal.

JS: Well, for the inner hippo in me -- this is our third installment so it’s like putting on an old jacket, shirt, or a pair of old slippers that you are very familiar with. So it’s not difficult at all.

Q: Do the animators give you pointers as to how your dance moves should be or or do you have a certain strategy around your moves?

JS: No. I mean…. You know it’s funny because while we are actually recording they have a video recorder, and they are actually recording us while we are doing the voices. 

Whatever movements that we are doing at that time, they actually use them in the film whether it’s facial expressions, actual physical movements or what have you. So that’s always interesting to see their interpretation of what you’ve done.

Q: At least they didn’t make you wear the suit with all the little sensors. 

JS: Oh yeah. No, didn’t have to wear that this time. That was for Matrix, but not for this. 

Q: Is it easier being in a studio talking to a microphone, than it is being on set as an actress performing in a regular film?

JS: It’s not actually. It’s difficult when it’s just you and a microphone because you are so used to interacting with other actors. And yes, it can be challenging because you are there alone all of the time, and so you don’t know… the directors tell you, “Oh, you know, Chris did this.” Or, “David did this, and we would love for you to try and do that.” But you really don’t have a reality on what it is.

Q: Chris Rock made a few comments last year about his work in animation that a black guy can play a zebra and white guy can play an Arabian prince, as well as, someone feeds you your lines and you get a million dollars. Is the process of animated film really just that easy?

JS: It just depends on how you come and approach it. It wasn’t that easy for me because I found it took me three installments to get the swing of this. 

Okay and because Chris is a standup comedian, he’s used to being a one man show, right? I was so used to interacting with other people and didn’t have a set or clothes, and you just have people telling you all of this stuff. I’m like, “I don’t know what I’m doing right now, and I don’t know what this is. So let me just… I’m just going to give what I got.”  

So I found it to be a very trying process because also you have to be able to reenact. Like if you see Gloria running, I actually have to run, I’m screaming, my voice is hoarse and I’m [heaving]. They’re like, “Okay we are going to save this section because after this you aren’t going to be able to talk. I was like, “We will do this at the end of the session.” It was like, “Okay. Cool.” 

It’s a lot of work. But for somebody like Chris he’s probably like, “I do this every night.”

Q: Have you seen the finishing product yet?

JS: Yes. 

Q: What are your favorite parts from the film?

JS: I love the bear, Sophie the bear and Sacha Baron [Cohen who voices King Julien]. That is probably the most adorable aspect of the story line to me. I just I love it. I don’t get enough of it. That bear is hilarious. 

Q: What did your family think of the film?

JS: They haven’t seen it yet. They won’t see it until the premiere.

Q: So are there obligations to see each other’s films when they open so near to each other like Men In Black 3?

 JS: We try, definitely. It’s like when you create that’s just being part of a creative group like we are, you have to check out each other’s products.

 Q: So you don’t worry that the kids might want to see Dad’s film versus your film anything like that?

 JS: Oh no. No you don’t have any of that. Oh no you don’t have any of that.

Q: You recently released an episode of your web series The Red Table Talk on Mother’s Day and that was so empowering.

JS: Thank you. 

Q: A lot of what you do is empowering women. Why is that so important to you  and when will the next installment happen?

JS: It’s funny because it was really something that I did organically -- I just wanted to offer it as a gift to women, especially mothers, for Mother’s Day. 

I get asked a lot about how do I communicate with my daughter [Willow], and about my relationship with my mother [Adrienne Banfield-Jones] being that we’ve had very humble beginnings as far as our relationship and what we have overcome. Because of Red Table Talks I am now in discussion about creating a television show. I have a couple of people coming after me for a television deal for it. And also a couple of web deals which are interesting. 

So I will continue it, and want to focus on issues in regards to relationships that will eventually and extend into other areas. But not just relationships in regards to familiar or even love relationships but also like we have the Human Trafficking Report is about to come out. 

I don’t know if you know this, but African American women and Latino women hold the number one and number two spot as far as women who are trafficked in the United States of America. So I want to do a Red Table Talk with a fantastic beautiful woman, Rachel Lloyd, who heads the GEMS organization here in New York which works in regards to this issue. 

I have another special project coming out on June 19 with Salma Hayek that I’m doing in Spanish with regards to that particular issue as well. 

I want to use Red Table Talk as a forum in which you can come and be real. It’s really that simple. I think that any relationship that you have with anyone you have to be able to put it on the red table. Meaning it has to be raw. So whether you are dealing with love, with family, a social issue, or whether you are dealing with creation, it has to be raw. 

I think that now in this particular culture people go so hard at artists. So to be able to create a place where people and artists, can come and feel safe to just be raw and not feel that they are being attacked or stripped down. That’s the only way that we can keep our authenticity as people, as human beings, to be able to keep those genuine relationships to ourselves and to whomever we are interacting with. So to me that is the reason for the red table. 

Q: It’s exciting. Real and raw are two very appropriate adjectives for watching it. Your openness was inspiring. 

JS: Thank you.

Q: Even watching Willow she displayed a lot of vulnerability and strength, and it was very interesting to see you interacting with her and kind of getting her to put words to her emotions. What was it like for you in that moment?

JS:  I have to be honest with you, I don’t know which segments you watched because there’s been so many segments dispersed but there was a segment where Willow comes to the table and says, “I just want to tell you how much you mean in my life.” And she bursts into tears. The Red Table Talk was over, okay. And we’ve gone to the other room, and she goes, “Mommy, I still have something that I need to put on the table.” 

I was like, oh the lights, the guys, the technicians, had taken the lights. The cameras were down, but she was so adamant. Because you can see it’s dark outside, right, versus when we started it was light, right? And I was like, “I’m sorry guys but we’ve got to put these lights back.” 

And she got on the table, and I didn’t know what Willow was going to say. And when she started to cry I was like, you know, I was just like, “Okay. Just let this flow. This is her moment. This is what she wants to express.” 

But it was challenging because as a mother you want to go, “Cut. Cut it. Okay. Cut it.” You know what I mean? But she wanted to come to the table, and her expression and words…like the things that she said, I was in utter shock. I had no idea. I was just like…and just her perspective I was just like, “Willow, I never even thought about it like that.” 

You know, so the red table for us was just as I meant to be because it was… You guys saw, it was a bowl with questions. You know what I mean?

I learned more about my daughter and my mother in that day, and I think that Willow learned a heck of a lot about us. I still have probably… We were at that red table for about two and a half hours. 

I think we’ve shared with you maybe 45 minutes of that. But she has another segment that’s crazy. She has another segment that’s out of sight. You know I had to just figure out when to, but she was just amazing throughout the whole thing.

Q: How do you balance your career and raising your children? Obviously they are top notch, how do you do it? 

JS: Balance?

Q: The career and motherhood? 

JS: It’s not separate. I never stop being a mother and I never stop being an artist. You understand? Which is probably why my kids are so creative, because it’s not separated. You see, when I’m with my kids I’m creating, and I’m still a mom. 

And when I’m creating I’m still a mom. It’s not like… I don’t wear two different hats. My kids will be on the set with me. 

That’s one of the reasons that I had my mom on. I had that segment where my mother was on because I was breastfeeding so she had to sit on that set. Like literally, like on a chair while I’m sitting up there doing karate she’s sitting up in that chair with Willow in her lap and walking Willow around because she can’t go anywhere because I’m breastfeeding. 

None of my kids took a bottle. They would not take a bottle. Do you hear me? So they couldn’t leave my side for a very long time. 

So I’m sitting up there doing Kung Fu, the movie Kung Fu, but I still have to do the mommy thing. There’s no separation and if I’m at home with my kids and feeding them... I remember talking to Latifah and she’s like, “Girl I remember coming to your house and seeing you dancing in front of them kids. Feeding them kids, rapping, and signing, and all that.” 

And I said, “That’s why, that’s how they got all that.” 

I was like, “That’s just what you call good genes. You know what I’m saying?” You get with the artist, you make artists. You know? So. Yeah.

Q: One of the things about Gloria is that in all three movies she never apologizes for her appearance and how she looks. How can we use that to empower little girls as far as positive body images?

JS: That’s why I love Gloria. The idea that she’s a lot of girl, and she loves it. I try to give her that sass and swagger. It’s not even about necessarily talking about it but sometimes just showing it, that it’s about how you look at yourself and how you carry yourself. 

I’m dealing with this issue very deeply right now in dealing with the idea of romanticism in this next video that I’m doing, that comes out on June 19 in regards to human trafficking because how most women and girls get caught up in this is the dream. 

You get sold the dream, that whole romantic idea that you are going to find the perfect person, you are going to find the perfect situation. 

A lot of times it steals…we give away our power in thinking that we have to look to someone else to have acceptance for who we are. And that our images of ourselves are based on how other people see us. 

Anytime that you do that you are going to be a very unhappy person because it varies too much. He might be happy with something that she might not be happy with. So now you are stuck in between the middle in trying to figure out, “Well who am I supposed to be?” versus focusing on, “Who are you happy with? What are you happy with?” 

At the end of the day what she thinks and what he believes has nothing to do with your existence. I tell you what, the moment that you understand your power and your beauty, your life changes. 

When we get out of expecting him to accept you, her to accept you, or anybody else to accept you, okay because it’s too varied. It’s too varied. But I’ll tell you what’s not varied, how you feel about yourself. And if you can carry that with you, you are going to be okay.

Q: When did you understand your power and beauty?

JS: Listen, that’s something that you continue to…because you learn it on so many levels. You find one aspect… I look at even my daughter Willow, and she’s way ahead of the game now than I was at her age. 

I can only imagine who she’s going to be as a 40-year-old woman because it’s a journey. It’s a journey. It’s something that you continue. You don’t get to a destination of it because the more you start to grow, and the more you start to understand, you never stop. So you never get to a place like, “Ah, here it is.” 

You might get to a place like, “Okay, I’m finally glad to be here and be comfortable in my skin no matter what.” But the lessons don’t stop. 

Q: You are known for balancing business and your artistic side. You have your own production companies, and take your own ideas and actualize them. How do you know what to do from this business point of view or that creative one.

JS: Even now I’ve learned how to separate art from commerce. There are certain things I do creatively for commerce and there’s certain things that I don’t do for commerce like my music. I don’t do it for commerce at all. I just do that to be creative, so I separate that from business completely. That is strictly art creation. 

And so depending on what I’m trying to achieve really depends on how I will approach something from a business standpoint. It’s like, “Okay if I want the masses, how do I get masses of people to gravitate to this particular project?” 

Then you have to strategize creatively, and you have to strategize business wise also, like what partnerships you create or what have you. Like Fela for instance. Jay Z came to us about that particular project. So here you have three very recognizable African-Americans that are behind this Broadway show Fela!

Q: Great show by the way.

JS: Right. So when you look at it from a business point of view, for us that’s something that we did creatively and something that we did for business as well. 

We joined forces and I have to say one of the things that I love about Jay Z, and love about the relationship that I have with him business-wise, I think Roc Nation and Overbrook Entertainment [Will’s company] are maybe the only two African-American entertainment groups that I know of that merge together all the time, on all kinds of different projects -- and we have such wonderful success. 

I’m hoping that, that will set an example for African-Americans. We don’t always have to be in competition. 

There’s more power in numbers. That goes for everybody, not just African-Americans. That goes across the board for everybody. Everybody just want to have…just be a law. Forget about the power of the groups. 

But I’ve learned that over the years that to really be able to create alliances on a business side to encourage growth and prosperity on the whole for everybody. 

Q: With the summertime coming up who are some of your favorite artists that you are listening to on your IPod?

JS: Oh my gosh. Who am I listening to right now? Probably not many people you would recognize because I like a lot of…. You know I’m a metal head. I like a lot of metal music. 

That’s really what I listen to a lot. Or off the cuff, I listen to a lot of…  I love artists like Santigold or GoldFrapp. Yeah. And Pelican. That’s kind of where I’m at right now. And I like a lot of old Police. A lot of throwbacks. What else am I listening to?

Q: A Police song like “Roxanne” would seem appropriate of course with the sex trafficking issue in mind. 

JS: Yeah. Of course. Of course. Of course. 

Q: A lot of people have been vocal about negative images on reality TV particularly with Basketball Wives and the Housewives. People like Star Jones and even Nicki Minaj have come forward saying how negative they are. As a mother, and as someone who is in the industry, what do you think about these shows?

JS: Listen, I think there’s room for everything. You know? I think there’s room for everything, and I think what we have to focus on is balancing. I don’t think we have to focus on, you know, listen everybody is trying to create. 

Everybody is trying to make a living. Don’t be mad, don’t come down on them. Talk to the people that are actually putting these shows on and ask them to balance it out. It’s not that those shows shouldn’t exist. It’s not about coming down on people. 

It’s just about creating a balance. But also as a community, we have to be more responsible about what we are willing to watch. Now how about that? Okay? And that’s really…that’s what people really don’t want to talk about. 

I’m going to tell you something. It’s not that people try to put on programming for us that’s varied. It’s not that people don’t try to create movies for us that are varied. 

I’ll tell you what, people we need to be more responsible about what we are going to see. Because people only create what we are going to watch. So don’t you come down on them. Folks need to be looking.

Take responsibility about what you have you have on your TV and about what you are out there supporting. People need to check their own individual selves on that one. 

Theater Producer Jane Bergère Bets Her Bottom Dollar on "Annie"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Wednesday, 06 June 2012 20:37

Written by Laura Blum

On November 8, 2012, two days after America elects its next president, Franklin D. Roosevelt will be on the minds of many of its citizens. That's when curtains officially rise on a new Broadway production of Annie.

Inspired by the Harold Gray comic strip Little Orphan Annie, this Tony Award-winning musical follows a young Depression era orphan who finds refuge with fiction´s richest character, as Forbes magazine ranked Daddy Warbucks in 2007.

FDR and the New Deal play supporting roles.

In today's shaky economy, will the show meet with zeitgeist resonance or tighter wallets? Sing a bar of Tomorrow and you´ll feel what Annie's producers are feeling.

Read more: Theater Producer Jane Bergère...

Mario Van Peebles & Boys Become We The Party

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Monday, 04 June 2012 20:13

Written by Brad Balfour

A revealing look at contemporary youth culture, writer-director Mario Van Peebles’ We The Party shows teenagers as theyare, not as adults would like them to be. 

Besides the Van Peebles clan (including patriarch Melvin and grandsons Mandela and xxx), it features Snoop Dogg, YG, The New Boyz, The Rej3ctz, The Pink Dollaz, Michael Jai White, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Tiny Lister, Simone Battle, Moises Arias, Orlando Brown and Quincy Brown. Set in a relatively middle-class mixed race neighborhood, this film show a broad swath of kids from a diverse range of socio-economic backgrounds mixing together in one melting pot -- or rather a simmering stew.

Focused on five high schoolers the film deals with romance, money, prom, college, sex, bullies, facebook, fitting in, standing out, and finding themselves evoking such classic teen comedies as The Breakfast Club and House Party. This indie dramedy has an attitude and style all its own, and captures the hopes, confusion, challenges and dreams of today’s teens as they plunge headlong into an uncertain future. 

Drawing on the latest trends in music, dance and fashion, We The Party is a colorful, cutting-edge comedy set in an ethnically diverse Los Angeles high school during America’s first black president. 

Van Peebles and his sons become not only actors in their own film but also serve as writers, producers, promoters and philosophers.

Q: Did you have all these children just so you can have an automatic cast?

Mario: I just always thought it’d be cool to have five kids after seeing The Jackson Five. We’re like the Jackson Five, just without the talent.

Q: How do you manage working together and also being a family?

Mandela: We know when dad’s dad and we know when he’s Mario van Peebles. When he’s Mario van Peebles we know not to talk back, but in general we have a pretty good understanding as far as raises and stuff go. And when he says it’s crunch time, it’s crunch time, no question, you do it.

Q: How do you see it from your point of view, Mario?

Mario: This was an interesting situation because I spent a lot of my life learning from my dad. This required picketing around and learning from my kids. Because if I was going to make an authentic movie, I really have to be ready to listen, so I wouldn’t be making the movie I wanted to make, but more the movie that it is. Does that make sense? 

There were definitely times when I would defer to them as my think-tank council. I would know what I wanted narratively, but, case in point, I took the boys out of private school and put them in public school in the ‘hood. The decision to do that was that I felt the dividing line wasn’t just about race, it was about have and have not. So it was important, I thought, that they hang out with kids of different socio-economic backgrounds. 

So when Makaylo and his brother went to this school in the hood, it was a magnet school. If you played basketball well, they say you’re trying to be like Michael Jordan, if you golf well they say you’re trying to be like Tiger [Woods]. My boys don’t do either; Makaylo is on the debate team. So guys would come up to him and say “you guys are cool, you’re like Obama.” 

So it was interesting because it was saying “we know what gangster looks like culturally, and we know what hip-hop looks like. Now we know what smart looks like culturally.” 

Smart is becoming the new gangsta. I thought how interesting it is with a black presidency, that culturally we have this shift in America, kids are starting to say “The president can look like us! We can take smart all the way to the top.” 

So that was an interesting cultural seismic shift that I wouldn’t have been aware of if I didn’t have these guys. And so in the movie, We the Party, his character is nick-named Obama, just like he was. Since the characters are written inspired by them, a lot of it was listening to them and being inspired by their voices. 

Mandela had a girlfriend that was a 4.0 student and was studying with her over Skype, and a scene where that happens comes up in We the Party, too. When we went out they turned me on to music. I think in a different situation it’d be a different thing, but a lot of these characters had energy that they brought to it.

Q: It's almost a documentary in how the film addresses race and class.

Mario: What we show in the movie is that there are socio-economic differences now. There’s a very interesting scene, that I’ll let Mandela speak about, where he befriends a young man that wears a hoodie. Now that’s timely.

Q: How timely can you be?

Mandela: Y.G’s character, C.C., wears a hoodie and he has tattoos on his hands, his face, all over. And he’s a misjudged, and pre-judged character. A lot of people avoid him as much as possible, and fear him, and whatever the excuse may be, but my character gets put in a situation where we befriend each other and that friendship pays off when we see that he’s a conscious guy with a different side to him and he does want to show it, but they can’t open up to him, so he can’t open up to them. That’s also interesting, because We the Party is kind of the ending I wish we got to see for Treyvon.

Q: Have you guys, both in the course of your life and making the film, found that there are pre-conceived notions about people that do rap, do hip hop, that seem ghetto and people expect them to be a thug, do you find that in the real world?

Makaylo: I do. My perception is this, people get especially that kind of feel, they also make assumptions, but the reason for that is that rap and hip hop were made in this materialistic mold where you don’t really need to think much. You just have to rap how much you have in a certain amount of time, which is called a verse. The reason is people have these conceptions because for the most part, that’s what rap is right now, that’s what we expect. For example,Y.G., his last real single was Toot It And Boot It, but now he has a conscious side to him. 

We have Y.G.’s Truth, which has been released on Youtube. So it’s a situation where people ride certain expectations. If rap’s expectations is to be “I got hos, I got bitches, I got this, I got that,” then that’s what it’s going to be. But if people expect and place their expectations for rap, and hip hop, and music in general to be a little different, then that’s what it will be.

Q: Mario, you started in acting in the Sinbad movie with your father. How did you manage to teach your own kids?

Mario: I think he got a better one than I got.

Q: Answer or experience?

Mario: The experience. What I do with my kids when I’m shooting a scene is that I’ll shoot the scene the way I want or think it should be, but at the end I’ll say to Mandela, “Hey, why don’t you Mandela-fy it?” 

Which means take it and do what you want with it. A lot of times he’ll do something that's fun, and inventive, and take it to a new level. I'll say the same thing to Makaylo, play with it and add to it. Basically I think my role as a director is to create a stage where they can do their best work, and can do the best dancing. 

What I did learn with my dad was work ethic. I did learn with my dad is making films you believe in. He would say he makes films like a poor guy.

He says “well, when I cook something, I cook something I like to eat because if I’m the only one eating it, I’ll still be happy.”

I make films thinking I want to make a film I really want to make. And in the case of We the Party, we made it independently, I paid myself a dollar to direct it, ten dollars to write it, all the people you see in the movie, no one was making big money, they all came to be a part of it.

It was about the project and that was exciting. I knew I couldn’t make this with a studio where there’d be a lot of lines and things I’d have to water down. If you think of the original movies Fame, Risky Business, House Party, all those films were rated R. And now it’s all PG and watered down.

I wanted to make this one show the way they really talk and their lives are not really PG. So when I decided to make this realistic, I had to sort of make the film the way he made Sweetback and some of his other films. So I went back to his blueprints and said “okay, I’ll fund it and do it myself with my buddy, Michael Cohen, and we’ll make the movie we want to make.

Q: The production values are remarkably slick.

Mario: Thank you.

Q: It works as a teen movie where people have certain expectations about the music and the editing. How did you pull that off? Or did he make you guys do the extra work? [laughs]

Mario: The other day someone said we’re like a dynasty. And I said “well that sounds a little grand, makes it seem like we’re sitting in thrones and other people are doing our bidding. We’re probably more like family farmers. My dad is on the porch with a shotgun and a fiddle and I’m fixing the tractor, they’re rolling up their sleeves.”

So we make films like that, but we know how to make the most of it. When you grow up in by-any-means-necessary filmmaking family, you know how to get it all up on screen. So part of what I did was engineer it in way that I knew we could be really strong, and one of the resources we felt we were really strong in was human resources. 

I know Salli [Richardson-Whitfield] from working with her posse. I know Tiny Lister, I know Snoop Dogg. Not everyone gets to be flavor of the month for 25 years, but I started with New Jack City and Snoop started with Gin and Juice, it’s still relevant to today. So I knew the human resources could bring a lot into it. And there guys, what were the bands we had in there?

Mandela: YG, The New Boyz, The Rej3ctz, The Pink Dollaz.

Mario: So with their generation saying “we’ll get our guys and you get your guys,” we get a pretty good mix. The rest of it is making it and trying to pull it together.

Q: I used to be a music journalist. Where did rap go wrong with this path towards bling-bling and the big thing? I hope you make a point that there’s a conscious side to rap and a return to musical values.

Mario: I’m glad you see that, you’re the first person to bring that up. What I think was interesting in this film is that Mandela’s character starts out by saying “Baldwin Hills is three schools in one.” It’s the performing arts, so you get all the artists like in Fame, it’s the magnetprogram, so you get all the braniacs, and it’s the public school, so you get all the brothers from the hood. 

So you really get a socio-economic cross section of humanity. That’s a real important underpinning to the story because that allows you to hear everything from violins, to cellos, to acoustic guitars. Check out the song YG sings in the movie, Truth. The first time you hear it it’s in a classical form as Pachabel’s Canon. 

Pachabel’s Canon is almost like the frist pop song and it’s in the public domain. So you have this great pop song the kids are playing on the violin and cello, and then you have this African section with the girls dancing to these drums. We establish that the YG character in the first act just encases himself in a hoodie and almost never speaks, and we show that he can rap.

When push comes to shove and his brothers push him, he can actually rap. So you take those three elements and it becomes the song Truth. You take the African drums, that beat and the Pachelbel’s Canon and you put the words of Truth on top of that, you get this performance piece in the center of the movie. So everyone comes out and has to participate and that’s what the teacher sets up in the first act, where the teacher talks about the project and talks about what everyone’s role in the piece will be.

Q: What about you guys? Did you have to set in straight about what hip music really is?

Mandela: How the movie came about is that we wanted to see these clubs in LA and see what that was all about. So we said “dad, can you give us a ride to some of these clubs?” And he said...

Mario:  “Hell no! Not without taking me with you.” 

Q: How old were you?

Mandela: 17. So we went back to the drawing board and started thinking how can we bring him into the club without getting crap from our friends? So we decided to dress him up in skinny jeans, give him a snapback hat, swag him out a little bit, and let him rolls with us in our entourage.

We brought him to clubs where The Rej3ctz were performing and YG and I think some of that brought a freshness to the movie, as far as the music goes, but also the dialogue. One of the great things the directors of The Breakfast Club and films like that did was have all the cast hang out before the shooting and that’s what we did on We The Party. 

What me, and Patrick and Makaylo and all of us did was just hang out together for two weeks before shooting just so the friendship feels real. We talk how we talk and when it was time to shoot, we developed our lines a little differently. We’d switch ‘em up. That’s one of the great things about working with dad, we could look at a line in the script and say “no one our age really talks like that, maybe we should say this.” And if he likes it, he’ll say yes. He likes most of it.

Makaylo: One thing we were really open to was creative freedom. He had a script, but that was more a blue-print for the movie. As long as we went through every scene and made things clear, it was easy to ad-lib and go in between and make it more recent, make it more new. Basically he drafted the script and we were able to personalize it to each of us. So it was very authentic.

Q: We're of a generation where our parents never got our music. Does it ever frustrate you that your dad can talk to you about music? My daughter always gets frustrated when I’d talk to her friends.

Mario: What do you guys think?

Mandela: It's fine by me. He can get the music, but he has his own music that he likes. He’s a pretty well-rounded guy.

Q: I heard you shot a lot of the big party scene in sequence to make it easier for people to get into it.

Mario: The big party sequence, part of it is at the neighbor’s house, but the original party scene was at these guys’s party. And it was amazing.

Makaylo: We had to put our birthday money together because we didn’t get a lot from him. He has light pockets. So me and Mandela combined our money together and we hired a DJ and security and turn our house into a party, so that’s where that scene came from. We made money from it, lots of money.

Q: It wasn’t Project X.

Makaylo: No, he knew about it, he was there, we had security. 

Mario: The way they dance now is like safe-sex on the dance floor. The last time I danced like that I had these guys. I walked around with my video camera just making notes, and it wound up being stuff that I said would be the basis for something. But sometimes I think that good movies come through you organically. You can be a conduit to it, just like your kids come through you. I can’t really say “you’re going to be my producer, you’re going to be my lawyer.” They’re gonna be who they are, and I’m going to help them be the best version of them they can be.

Q: The movie both defies and embraces expectations. Kids want to defy parents, but they also don’t want to be Project X either. You dealt with expectations and defying expectations and I assume you all talked about that and had that in mind.

Mario: We did. The other thing that felt natural was we talked a bit between us. And I wanted to make sure that we were not afraid to move a conversation forward that society had already started with our kids. So society has already hit them with hyper-materialism and hyper-sexuality, let them know, through the course of the film, that you might not be able to buy your sense of self at the mall. 

It might not be the rims on your cars that get you respect. The people that are really respected are the Gandhis and the Mother Theresas and the Malcoms and the Martins, and people that stood up for things and not just bought big house.

So that comes up in the course of the movie, but organically as a conversation. It’s stuff that kids are really facing now, they’re being bombarded and facing the environmental challenges of tomorrow.

Mandela: One of the scenes in We the Party is that my character gives a speech to his class where he says “there’s 7-billion people on the planet now and the earth can only hold 9-billion. But the catch to that is that if those 9 billion live like us Americans do with a big house and two cars, and a boat on a weekend will have a carbon footprint of 19-billion.” 

The social issues that are going on in the world are really important to us, and it might seem like a big deal “who got the new Jordans, who got the new car.” That stuff seems so important to us, but in truth, if we don’t get straight with the environment, that stuff’s not gonna last very long. My metaphor is imagine that there are these two species of ants in Katrina in the 9th ward. There’s a red and a black ant, and they’re fighting over this anthill. It doesn’t matter who gets the anthill in the end because Katrina is going to come wipe it out anyways. So if we don’t get straight with the environment, it doesn’t matter who has the new J’s, because it’s all going to be gone anyways.

Mario: Dr. King said “we must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we perishtogether as fools.” I add to that, we must learn to live together as brothers and sisters in harmony with nature or perish as fools. So it’s not enough for this generation to just get along together as black, white, straight, Asian, or gay, they gotta get along and figure things out together in a compressed period of time.

Q: A lot of times it might be the media or Madison Ave that makes it want to seem like kids only care about Air Jordans and all this stuff, but you guys show that your generation cares about the world and have more awareness than people expect. 

Mario: There’s an astute cultural shift. You have a lot of kids embracing smart as the new gangsta. The geeks are running the world. There’s a scene in We the Party where two girls are discussing who they want on their Facebook page and they say “pretty is temporary. Dumb is forever.”

They lose today, but they become Bill Gates, or Zuckerberg, or Obama. So you gotta look where things are going. You got some kids looking at things in a different way, so I thought that’s interesting to touch on.

Q: The big question is how do you get your movie out for everyone to see?

Mario: That is a huge question. It’s not enough to have the kid, you gotta get the kid through college. We made this independent film and we said all the things we wanted to say without watering it down, now how do we get it out?

Q: You still made it appealing to the core audience you want to get.

Mario: I think so. I hope so. When we showed it at high schools the kids loved it. The kids said “dude, this is real, this how we talk, this is really us, these are the kids we know.” So they got it. The question is the gate keepers.

Hollywood gate keepers right now are supporting, what I consider to be, reductive cinema when it comes to black folks. It tends to be these big comedies where people are buffooning and clowning, and that’s okay if it’s part of it, but if that’s the only representation that you have, it gets to be really reductive and tired. 

Look at House Party, pretty much a black cast, Breakfast Club was a white cast, Stand and Deliver was a Latino class. With this movie we mixed it up. It’s about people of color, but it’s also about a socio-economic divide. So how do we get it out there?

We have this new company called XLrator taking the film out, we’ll be in 60 theaters across America. The first weekend, April 6, we open, then April 13 we open in more cities. I have no idea how it’s going to do. There’s two qualities in film. 

What’s the first one, Makaylo?

Makaylo: Playability.

Mario: And Mandela?

Mandela: Marketability. 

Mario: Right. How the movie plays and can you sell it. For example, Mean Girls. I really enjoyedd Mean Girls, but I never would have seen it if my daughter hadn’t taken me  and made me see it on girl’s night out. You gotta figure it out with this viral generation. If these two guys can help get it out and the cast can get it out. Word is spreading.

Q: Are you going to do a lot of Q&A’s?

Mandela: We plan on it, once the movie gets out, being proactive about getting it out there and bringing more attention to it. So we’ll be there doing autographs signings.

Q: In New York?

Mandela: No, Los Angeles.

Mario: Mostly LA, then New York as well. We love going to Tokyo, man.

Mandela: Last time we went was awesome.

Mario: You were young. We went in ’04 with Badasssss in Tokyo.

Makaylo: We went to Mt. Fuji.

Mandela: And Akihabara. We like One Piece, Naruto.

Q: I like this movie showing tough love as a way to make the kids grow. Your wife’s character says if you use too much tough love you might lose the kid’s self-confidence, so you have to balance it out.

Mario: That’s the scene between me and Salli Richardson. We talk about what’s the balance. She talks about giving him an allowance and I’m saying I want to give him an allowance, but I also want him to have a work ethic. That balance between how much you let the kid do himself and how much you help him. And that’s especially tricky with second and third generations because you see the first generation has to fight to make it on their own. Like my dad, for example.

But then my dad was able to send me to a pretty good college and give me things that would help me along and then at a certain point he wouldn’t help and I had to go on my own. So it’s that balance that I have to find with the kids, where I help them along enough, but not too much so they don’t end up not knowing how to do things on their own. And with each kid the balance is different. One thing that I learned from having kids is not to use one size fits all parenting.

 Not every jacket is going to fit every kid the same. I have to treat Mandela a little different from Makaylo, or Makaylo and little different from Maya or Morgana or Marley because I think kids come through you, but not from you. So you have to kind of take your ego out of it a little bit. Case in point, my eldest daughter loves to talk, she’s got the gift of gab, she loves gossip and be a drama queen sometimes. At school they said if she spent as much time on her academics as she does on her social life, she’d be an A student.

So I said, “Okay, you love to talk, let’s try in a different language.” I sent her to France for a year at school there. She hated it for the first year and in the second year she got tired of not knowing what was going on, so she learned French so she could gossip and know what’s going on in both languages. The other Summer she was in Ghana working at an orphanage and Makaylo, where were you teaching?

Makaylo: I was teaching in Thailand.

Mario: Mandela?

Mandela: South Africa.

Mario: So we go all around and do things and you get a perspective. If you’re going to do art or work in film, you have to be able to put life in your work. If you don’t live, you can’t put it in, but part of that is, as a parent you say “how can I outsource this piece of their growth here?

I can show them this much, but then they have to find a part on their own.” There’s a balance between loving them, tough love, the mom, the dad, it’s always changing and no matter what I do, I’ll get something wrong. You gotta know that. Somehow you’ll end up embarrassing your kids on some level or disappointing them. You’ll give them blue and they’ll say “oh, I have blue, but I always wanted yellow.”

Q: Compare and contrast what you learned from your father, what you emulated from him, what you didn’t? Also, are you planning on expanding to other mediums?

Mario: The first thing is, we want to see if we can get We the Party through the first weekend. We’re sitting here being afraid of going to the theater. What if it’s like Badasssss when granddad saw only two people in the movie theater and one demanded their money back. Mandela doesn’t know if he wants to go, but me and Makaylo want to go. So we don’t know if people will know about it since you won’t see big billboards for it, it’s all word of mouth. 

If the movie works, then other things will come from it. If it doesn’t, people will say “of course not, you have to wear a wig and a dress!” We have to make big comedies, which I don’t want to do. I don’t know what the future is. The golden rule is whoever has the gold makes the rules.

In this particular case it was my money and my friend’s money that funded this particular movie, so we had enough to do this one. If it works, that’s lovely, if it doesn’t, at least we made the movie we wanted to make.

Q: You learned from your dad.

Mario: It’s the three loves in your life. Love what you do, love who you work with,  and love what you say with it. And four, make friends with people that can help get you to Tokyo.

Q: Tell me about your dad.

Mario: I saw my dad against all odds picking up and doing things and I saw my dad at one meeting was looking for funding for a movie and was talking to a lawyer. And the lawyer said “you’re going to be doing this movie with your son?” This is a Mario story you don’t know.

“You’re son’s going to act in it with you? What if you fail? Your son will fail” And my dad said “Well shit, failure’s a part of life. And he’s also going to see me get back up.” So here I am working on this movie with my kids.

What if we totally bomb? What if this weekend no one goes to see We the Party? They will have first class front row seats to a colossal failure where we literally bet the farm on this. That is a possibility. But they will also see I’m resilient enough to say “okay, let’s get back up.”