In Universal Pictures’ Get Out, a speculative thriller from Blumhouse and the mind of Jordan Peele, when a young African-American man visits his white girlfriend’s family estate, he becomes ensnared in a more sinister real reason for the invitation.
Now that Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend, Rose (Allison Williams), have reached the meet-the-parents milestone of dating, she invites him for a weekend getaway upstate with Missy (Catherine Keener) and Dean (Bradley Whitford). At first, Chris reads the family’s overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter’s interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he could have never imagined.
The Knockturnal attended a private screening of the film at The Crosby Hotel on Monday evening with stars Daniel Kaluuya, Lil Rel Howery, Allison Williams and writer/director Jordan Peele and producer Jason Blum. The film hits theaters this Friday.
Read highlights from the panel below:
So Jordan let me kick off with you. So you are familiar to many people out there for your comic work on screen. What propelled you to do the horror genre for your directorial debut?
Jordan Peele: Well I’m just horror fan, I’m a horror nerd. All the classics are my favorite movies. So I’ve always wanted to do this. This is a dream of mine. Just being here, hearing the sound that an audience makes watching a horror film that I got do. It’s a surreal journey to come to this moment, but it’s a dream. Horror is my dream. To make that more clear, horror is my dream.
Have you been surprised by any of the audience reaction that you’ve seen?
Jordan Peele: You know the only surprise is like a good surprise. Everybody seems to get what I was doing here and this is a movie I didn’t think would ever get made in the first place. The fact that every beat plays, is awesome.
Speaking of getting a film made. Jason can you talk about coming to the movie in the first place and what attracted you to it?
Jason Blum: The script had been around for at least two or three years.
Jordan Peele: Yeah around three years ago.
Jason Blum: And I read it and I love to do low budget movies because you can make movies that should never get made and definitely this movie fit into that category. I’d never read anything … there was no comps. It wasn’t like we went in on Monday and said no it’s like this one and this one. It’s like no one and when we say that, we tend to make those movies. So it was really from reading the script for me and seeing how unique this was.
So Jordan, 2008 Obama becomes President. There is this kind of crazy idea going around about a post-racial America. We know that’s crazy now. This film is premised on the idea that white liberals had just become very very skilled overtime at hiding their racism. That’s what this film is about. Can you just talk about that idea and how you’ve used it in the film?
Jordan Peele: Well I think first of all, I think we all have issues of our own racism. Every one of us. I think it’s a human trait and I happened to be exploring the white liberal part of that. It was almost as if talking about race would somehow perpetuate the act … racism itself as opposed to address these things that are happening. This movie is about a lot of things, one of the things that struck me while writing it was the disproportionate amount of black men in the prison system. There is this silent abduction happening and we toss them to the back of our minds, figuratively. So this movie is about taking black people and tossing them into the back of our minds literally. The sunken place itself is kind of about representation and he has this personal demon which is this element, this idea of inaction, being paralyzed by fear in the moment when he needed to step up. I think black horror audiences is a very loyal horror fan base. I think Jason can attest to that because we’ve made him millions of dollars … I felt like we yell at the screen because we cannot affect what’s happening on the other side, people making stupid choices, people making the choices we wouldn’t make and we cannot get represented on the other side of that screen is how I felt. So it’s not a mistake that the sunken place, that place of paralyzation, marginalization is like a darkened theater, where you have a screen and no matter what he says he cannot break through.
You know Ishmael Reed has talked about how from slavery onwards the African-american experience has been kind of like Horror and Sci-fi anyway and that this film really struck me as commenting on that. From the very first moment you can’t help but think of Trayvon Martin, in that very first scene you’re on edge. Daniel you’re from London like me. We have our own issues in London with police and so on and so forth. Can you talk about what you learned about black American experience, making this film?
Daniel Kaluuya: I feel like we are so exposed to the black American experience around the world. I’ve got family from Uganda and they’re watching Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne videos so it’s worldwide man. And everyone is invested in it so … I lived it and I felt it as opposed to seeing and reading about it. Black American content, were were always drawn to it as young black western people because it just resonates more than the other stuff … To speak to that point there was something in the scene and it kind of broke me man when I said it during the script. It was the bit when Chris was in the chair he said, “Why us? Why black people.” And it was like yeah, “What the f— have we done? What have we done?”
All this is happening, but what did we do, we’re getting persecuted, battered and everything, killed. What have we done and that kind of shook me, man. Every day you live your life in London or everywhere you go and some bullsh*t happens, what did I do to you man? I came in the game in the 80’s. What happened before I came here that I have to like live this. I have to navigate my whole life in order to go through all this, in order to live my dreams, do you understand? And I feel that’s everywhere. That happens in the fact that the majority of Africa was colonized by England, it’s that same thing. It’s quite frustrating when I go in to do interviews and people are like, “oh, that’s really timely now” like what Racism is new? Racism is just mainstream now. It’s just you guys are seeing it but it’s been happening for centuries … I just got empathy and I feel it and I feel bad when I see these stories and I see people dying for no reason, I feel bad.
Jordan Peele: Daniel’s whole process is led with this amazing empathy. Everybody works different. All Daniel needs is to get in touch with the emotion that I’d like to get him to. And from that point forward, you can sit and react and he can do it in subtly different ways but real ways each time. You can just see, the hypnosis scene for example, I have four equally beautiful performances from him that are all different. It’s like which one do I choose. Like the one where tears started coming out of his eyes in minute 04:10 or minute 04:12, like who the f–? is this guy? So he’s the real deal and one other thing I’ll say is that I didn’t really think about it until I started looking for black actors, specifically a black leading man, 26 years old; that you realize how few people have gotten a shot. That there are dudes like this who should have done been a leading man in a film for a long time and I know you will be for a long time to come. If someone will put you in them!
***For those who have seen the film, there are some additional cast comments on the next page. Major spoilers ahead! Only read the next page if you have seen the film!***
