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The Knockturnal sat down with Director Stephen Hopkins to discuss his new film “Race,” which is now playing.
Born in Jamaica, Stephen Hopkins began his career as a comic book storyboard artist and then as an art director. His directorial debut was an Australian film entitled Dangerous Game. He went on to direct music videos, commercials, and theatre in the U.S., Australia, and Europe. He was also director and Executive Producer for the pilot and long-running Showtime series Californication. He also directed the pilot of and served as an episode director and executive producer for the first full season on the smash hit series 24, receiving Golden Globe, Emmy, and Directors Guild of America Award Nominations amongst many other credits.
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Our reporter Chasity Saunders sat down with him to discuss the film. Check it out below:
Chasity: So Stephen, I saw the film and I am incredibly impressed. Congratulations first off. Can you just talk to me about what is was that brought you to doing this film. We know you from so many things both as a Director and a Executive Producer as well but what tied you to this story? What made you say I’ve got to direct this film?
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Stephen: A french colleague, a producer brought the idea of doing his whole life story and I’m never really a big fan of that in a movie format because you cant really do it. I don’t think someone’s whole life — so I researched like crazy and I thought these three years from the end of 1933 to 1936 were the pivotal years, an amazing story that can never be repeated you know of the Nazi’s branding this sporting event and creating really the modern olympics and while that’s happening, this young kid who really just wants to run and is not interested in all this stuff is brought into this very complicated world of politics and racism. The NAACP didn’t want him to run, other people did want him to run, the Jewish people weren’t sure whether America should go or not. America almost didn’t go to the Olympics, there’s so much controversy in sports about the corruption in sports right now and so it all seems very timely and it doesn’t feel old fashioned in a way but these are also a series of events that could never happen again.
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Chasity: From the 1930’s now to 2016 It was so spot on because we’re dealing with so much of that right now and I’ll definitely get back to that in a second, but I want to talk about the work that you did with the actors on the film, incredible, incredible acting from the actors that were in the film. Tell us about that because I know that you came from doing all kinds of stuff from Nightmare On Elm Street, all the way up to 24 and Californication so how different was it for you working with these actors on such a different kind of film?
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Stephen: Well I’ve done a bunch of different drama’s too I feel like Drama and Comedy and Action and stuff they’re not all that different from each other you just have to find the truth in them as much as you can. I’ve worked with great actors in my life you know, I’ve worked with Jeff Bridges and Forrest Whitaker and Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman, Cuba everyone and I’ve been very lucky or I’ve been very smart to surround myself with great actors you know. This one we had to get a near fight to play Jesse because Jesse was only 22 at the end of this story and we looked around for a lot of actors you know and there’s no one really that famous at that age, we found Stephan in Toronto he was not only an athlete but he was doing Selma actually when I first met him, so he was in Atlanta and he trained like crazy for the role. Jason we fell in for because a lot of the actors that were up for that role were much older than he really was and I didn’t feel like I wanted to do that sort of cliche father son thing because it wasn’t like that really, he was sorta like an older brother and they became mates really the two of them. Jesse Owens described Jason Sudeikis character in the film as an accidental non-racist. He just wanted to win, he didn’t see color because, not because he was a saint he just didn’t see it because he didn’t care about it, he wanted to win races you know and like I said Stephan and Jason are sports nuts. Man they live and breathe it, that’s all they care about is sports, they like to act a bit, but otherwise they’re watching or playing sports, and I think that was important.
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Chasity: And it came across in the film. You’ve been nominated for Emmy’s and Golden Globes and with so much happening, we spoke about this a little earlier on in the interview when you reflected on what’s happening now and what happened then. How do you feel about what;s happening right now with the #OscarsSoWhite and everything that;s going on with no African Americans being nominated and you know back then in the 30’s it was them going to the Olympics in Germany and we’re still dealing with that kind of situation with race. Where does that put you Stephen?
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Stephen: Well you know I’ve worked with so many African American actors whether it was Don Cheadle, Forrester Whitaker, Cuba Gooding Jr., Morgan Freeman and all of them said the same thing to me. They felt like they wanted to work in a kind of blind way, they didn’t want it to be proactively African American or not, they just wanted to be on the same playing field and I think that’s where the controversy lies I think. This film is coming out now, so I’m going to be asked this question at this moment in time, but I’m not sure how you fix the problem except carry on doing great work and carry on doing films like this and we started the film three years ago; so it had nothing to do with anything that’s going on right now and I’m certainly not trying to sidestep the problem. I’m not clever enough to figure it out. I’m rebooting 24 right now actually and an African American actor is playing the lead in that and so it’s not because he’s African American, it’s just because he’s a super cool actor so in the end you just have to just do the right stories. And yeah, I think there’s race all over the world, there’s race problems certainly in Britain, I was born in Jamaica you know if you look at India where there’s a cast system, I mean it;s really mental that there’s any of this stuff still going on but it’s some sort of ancient tribal human thing. I don’t know what the hell it is man.
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Chasity: We’re grateful for directors like you. We’re so excited about the film and Congratulations!
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