TV One premiered the movie White Water this weekend from director Rusty Cundieff. Cundieff made one of my favorite movies of the ‘90s, the rap mockumentary Fear of a Black Hat, and we became friends when the film hit DVD in 2003. So when I saw he had a movie at the Television Critics Association winter press tour, I had to catch up with him.
White Water is seen through the eyes of Michael (twins Amir and Amari O’Neil), a young boy in the South in the ‘60s who dreams of drinking from the Whites Only water fountain because he believes it will taste better. Segregation seen through Michael’s eyes includes other childlike fantasies, such as a painting of Jesus that changes expressions depending on what trouble Michael gets into. Check TV One to see White Water again and learn about the making of it in my interview with Rusty Cundieff.
The first three movies you did, you were a writer/director. Do you still write?
Rusty Cundieff: “I do still write. Just more directing stuff comes my way than writing stuff. When I was working on Wanda Sykes’ show, I wrote some sketches over there. Yeah, I do still write. I actually did a lot of work with the writers on this, I’ll put it that way.”
Did you have some influence on the tone, balancing childlike whimsy with what was really happening in the ‘60s?
Rusty Cundieff: “Yeah, I met Michael [S. Bandy] and Eric [Stein] in a class that I was teaching. They had this really interesting script. I liked the fact that even their first iteration that I read of the script was very much seen through Michael’s eyes. When I started to work with them, I tried to add some of that stuff in. A big example were the Jesus pictures. I had them put all of that stuff in there because that’s totally how a kid sees the world as he’s dealing with whatever he’s dealing with and he gets spanked. Some of the journey through downtown, just trying to make sure it stayed through Michael’s eyes and not through the adult point of view so much.”
Did someone have to paint those Jesus paintings or did they already exist?
Rusty Cundieff: “No, no, somebody had to paint those paintings. I actually had a guy in Alabama who was working as our locations guy. He also owned one of the buildings that we put our production office in. I had him model and then we had Michael Bandy’s cousin or sister, she’s an artist. So we actually hired her to make the paintings based off of this guy’s expressions. We had him do a whole bunch of different Jesus expressions. That was kind of fun.”
How did you hook up with TVOne?
Rusty Cundieff: “I hooked up with TVOne through [producer] Dwayne [Johnson-Cochran] I had given the White Water script. You know how it is. You get a script, especially something like this, it’s not an obvious choice. So I had been pushing this thing for years and one of the people that I gave it to was Dwayne. Dwayne had a relationship with D’Angela Proctor who’s at TVOne. Ultimately the script got to her and she decided that she liked it enough to put some money behind it.”
When you saw the script, did the idea of a child in the ‘60s imagining that white water tasted better seem like a good way in to inform this generation about what it was like during the ‘60s?
Rusty Cundieff: “You know what I really like about the film, and having screened it a couple times for a person here and there, not a large group, is that for people who are not totally informed on the period, stuff kind of sneaks up on them in kind of a cool way. When Michael goes to the bus and the whole thing of getting on the bus and off the bus and where they have to sit and stand and everything. They kind of go, ‘Wow, we didn’t quite know that it was like that.’
So I did think, because I have kids now. I’ve got a 14-year-old, 11 and five, so I figured this is a great way for them to see in a nonthreatening, not so angry version of what happened. That’s the other thing that I really find unique about this, that I like about the film is that despite all the stuff that’s going on, people still had lives and they still found fun and love.
That’s not to say that bad things weren’t happening, but the context of it I think is perhaps more accurate than some films that only focus on the drama, because as you live your life, bad things happen but you still live your life. You still fall in love. You still find humor. You still have all these other things that go on in your world. I think that really that’s one of the things that White Water has and what really appealed to me about the project.”
With all the Civil Rights movies being made in the last few years – Selma, 42, The Butler, even 12 Years a Slave – did you notice some heat building in the industry that helped get White Water made?
Rusty Cundieff: “We definitely did but the curious thing is that that didn’t make it any easier. All of those films that you mentioned I loved. They were all great but they were all driven with these incredible casts, big directors, big producers so we’re coming at it with me, Dwayne, not to say I don’t think we’re talented, but our name doesn’t carry the same weight as when you walk in the room and say we’ve got Oprah and Brad’s involved and all of that stuff. Yes, there have been more of those films.
I think what you’re seeing is the people that push those great projects were folks that grew up aware of that period and are now at a place where they go, ‘Yeah, this is something I want to explore.’ It’s still hard to do if you’re not those folks.
We’re dealing with these issues that these other films have dealt with, and oddly enough with issues that are resurfacing. We shot in this little town called Waverly. The week before we were supposed to shoot, the mayor said we’ve got some problems. They had a big town hall. This is a town of hundreds of people maybe.
I had to go speak to this town hall with the city councilman. We had heard that there were a couple of people that were really against us, but one of the guys that was against us gave $5,000 a year, which was a lot, to the town of Waverly. I had to give a speech and presentation on what the movie was, why we were doing it. I took the kids book that it’s based on, White Water, a picture book, did my whole song and dance.
After the meeting was over, the mayor says, ‘Anybody have anything they’d like to say?’ One hand went up, he said, ‘I just want to say, I grew up in Waverly and I had a black friend. We were fine until all these marches and protests started. He would say, ‘Why are they coming down here messing with you white people.’ And, I want to say this. The Klan did a lot of good.
They did a lot of good. If a man was beating his wife, the Klan would come and say, ‘You need to stop that.’’ Me and other people couldn’t believe he just said this. I talked to him afterwards and his whole angle was this stirs up a lot of stuff, I like black people and I think we should all come together. We got the votes on the council, by the way, to shoot there.
We go to shoot, one of our locations falls out, ironically by a very progressive hippy. We can get this other spot that would work for the general store. It’s owned by one of the ladies who was on the council and she voted for us so that’s great. But when we called her to get it, she said, ‘I do own it, but I’m leasing it to the other guy and I’ve really got to check with him’ – the guy who said the Klan did a lot of good things. One of our team talked to him and he let us use it.
When we shot there the first night, I saw him there and I said, ‘I really want to thank you for letting us use your place.’ He said, ‘I just hope this is something that brings people together and doesn’t pull them apart.’ All that is to say you never know with people. That’s not to say I don’t believe he had some very incorrect views about the value of the KKK, but his words to me the night of that meeting, that he really does want good, he probably does really want good and for whatever reason doesn’t see how revisiting this is a positive thing.
That was one of the things we ran across not a lot, but here and there, from some of the older people in these communities. It’s almost like they want to pretend it didn’t happen and they’re afraid to confront it. I told him I would send him a copy of this at some point and I hope he sees the value of what we’ve done.”
The twins who play Michael, it’s their first movie. How did you find them?
Rusty Cundieff: “God, we got so lucky with those two boys. We were very, very low budget, Fred. With the rules of how you can use children in film without getting into trouble, I didn’t know how we would do this film in 18 days with one kid. It would practically be impossible unless you went completely non union and hid yourself in some place where Child Labor couldn’t find you. So we knew we wanted to find twins. We didn’t look at a lot of twins. Most of the actors we looked at for the role were just kids. Our casting director, Aisha Coley, brought in this tape of these two little kids. I asked them what they had done.
One said, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve done some work. I was on a cup at Raging Waters. I got cast to be on a cup.’ But you could just see. Some people are born to do certain things and I think these kids were just born to do this. In fact, since we had so many kids in the cast, I would always act why are you acting? Do you want to do this? Just to make sure they weren’t being pushed by an overzealous parent, which could get really ugly. All of them were really self-motivated to be involved which was good. The little boy who played Red, Zhane [Hall], I asked him and he said, ‘Yeah, at about five or six years old, I realized this was my calling.’ So you go, ‘Okay, great. I guess this is what you really want to do.’ We got lucky finding those two and they’re both talented which is even more amazing, to find two twins that both have talent.
I wouldn’t use them interchangeably. They had specific skill sets. One would tug at your heartstrings a little bit more and one was a little funnier. I don’t know that they know who’s who. We didn’t tell them who’s who.”
Would you tell us now who’s who?
Rusty Cundieff: “Yeah, Amari was more of a heartstring tugger and Amir was a little goofier, but all in a good way. They were both really, really great kids.”
The DVD of Fear of a Black Hat came out over 10 years ago. Is there any heat on it today?
Rusty Cundieff: “Every now and then someone says, ‘You guys should do a reunion.’ I’ve thought about it at different times. It still may be something that Mark, Larry and I get together and do. I kind of see it as a thing where you come back into it and Ice is in a mansion someplace that he bought when he had a lot of money but now he’s holding onto it. In the kitchen where there used to be a big Sub Zero, there’s a small Amana. That whole thing.”
There must be all sorts of crazy music from the last 20 years you could spoof.
Rusty Cundieff: “There is so much stuff. Rap or hip-hop, whatever you want to call it now, has gotten very interesting. You could work your way backwards now from Iggy Azalea and slowly back through all these different characters. I was just commenting to my wife the other day, rap or hip-hop, whatever it is now, is just so different and for the most part, for the exception of maybe Kanye and a couple of other people, all the social part of it has mostly been stripped away and it’s become very much about flaunting and how I look and how I party.”
And twerking.
Rusty Cundieff: “And the whole twerking thing. It’s as if you could take folk music that was made about all these important things, if you could take Neil Young and turn that into, ‘And I’ve got a big car and I’ve got diamond rings, and I’ve got lots of women that do lots of things.’ I don’t know.”
I was surprised to learn Fear of a Black Hat premiered at Sundance. What was Sundance like in 1993?
Rusty Cundieff: “Oh God, Sundance was so different. It was a big thing for us. We were the first midnight screening. I don’t think they had one before us and they were like, ‘Okay, we’ll give you guys a midnight screening.’ I remember after the screening walking out in the snow and someone had written in the snow along the sidewalk, because it snowed while we were inside, NWH, Niggas with Hats. They added four more screenings while we were up there so it did really well. That is still probably my favorite movie premiere experience. Sundance felt big then but it wasn’t big compared to now. It was a lot smaller. It was a bit more intimate. Everything gets bigger as it rolls along.”
Do you know what you’re doing next?
Rusty Cundieff: “Actually, right now I’m working on a documentary. Why, I don’t know, but I’m from Pittsburgh. There’s a little place in Pittsburgh called Hazelwood and whenever I would go back to Pittsburgh, I would end up talking at high schools where you want to talk to the kids about what they want to do. The first 10 minutes is them asking you about what famous people you’ve met. Then they finally start talking about something important.
But while I was back there, I met this pastor who had a program where he taught jazz, hip hop and dance in his church. We literally walk into this old church and it was insanity. Dancers were dancing in the sanctuary to hip hop. Upstairs, rappers were producing tracks, really incredible tracks. In the basement, he had jazz guys playing and he would get really accomplished jazz musicians to come through and mentor. He got some great producers to come through and talk to the kids. Some of his kids had gone off to travel the world with different jazz groups and play on albums. So it was a really incredible program and he paid the kids to do all this stuff.
The whole thing was he treated you like you were an employee, so if you didn’t do something and they had a show coming up, he’d go, ‘You can’t perform and you’re not getting paid.’ So it wasn’t a warm fuzzy thing. It was more really teaching you how the world works while letting you learn any of those three skills.
His idea was learning how to do jazz correctly is the same skills you need to be a good historian. You still need to study. You still need to be on time. You still need to be focused on your work, so he was kind of teaching these skill sets. Some of these kids will go on and do this and some will go on and do something else. He had a really interesting story because he started out as an investment banker or stock broker and became a jazz musician and then became a pastor. Earth, Wind and Fire wanted him to play with them and he was too religious at the time. I always say, because I’m basically atheist, he’s the closest pastor to how I think.”
