July 2007 | blackfilm.com | features | TALK TO ME: An Interview with Don Cheadle

TALK TO ME: An Interview with Don Cheadle, continued
By Brad Balfour

July 9, 2007

Greene is rather unrestrained in the things he says. What did he express in the film or in his life that you wish you could say yourself?

DC: He embodied the kind of spirit that I think would be refreshing today. People who just spoke their mind, whether you agree with them or not. I think people often walk around with a smile on their face. You really don't know what's happening, especially in my town.

One of my favorite cartoons was in The New Yorker magazine. The top panel showed two guys walking by each other and it said "New York." The guy was saying "Fuck you" [but] his thought balloon said "hi." And it showed Los Angeles and the guy just saying "hi." That's L.A.--you just never know. People don't say no to you. They just don't call you back. Stuff life that.

I think Ralph "Petey" Greene and characters like him, Miles Davis and others like him would say, "get out of my face, I don't like you." [They would] let you know straight off the bat, so you don't have to wonder. Petey, not just in that regard, but anything he felt, whatever it was about, he was going to say what he felt about it. And I think that's refreshing and rare.

How do you respond when someone is direct and speaks their mind to you?

DC: It depends on what they say. But I always appreciate it. I want to know who you are and where you are – I don't want to have to guess. I think that's what really drew me to the idea of somebody like Petey Greene. Somebody that would just be upfront. I think that when people are that way with us, even if we're insulted, we're like, "Wow, that's rare. He just really told me that I looked fat in this shirt."

That kind of candor was intrinsic to the '60s, and so was radio--it was a major force at the time. What was it like to look into that period?

DC: It was great to talk to my family about it. Talking to my parents and my uncles and aunts who were of this generation, who were contemporaries of Petey Greene even if they didn't know who he was. And [it was interesting to] get their take on what was happening in the country at the time. Obviously we were coming through, the film spans an era of a lot of tumult in our country and a lot of controversy, and I think he's the perfect person to come through that time. We've seen the P.C.'ing of everything. And I think to our great detriment, a lot of where we are in the world today is because people aren't straightforward and honest. We've been diminished by it in a lot of ways.

When you do a standard character like Basher Tarr/Fender Roads in "Ocean's 13" and then have an opportunity to play a realistic, complicated person like Greene, is it important to play characters with a social awareness or sensibility?

DC: No, not to me. I like to do characters that are like Petey Greene but I [also] like to do characters that are like Mouse (in 1995's "Devil In A Blue Dress")--completely anti-social and someone you don't want to really be around. Or people like the friendly robber, Basher Tarr in "Ocean's 13."

To me, it's not about… I don't have an agenda. I don't sit down with an agenda, other than I want to do films that are interesting and fun and something I haven't done before. It's great if they can address something that speaks to something greater than the film itself. That's not always the case. When that happens, it's a nice by-product but I don't think that's mainly the point of movies. I think the point of film is to entertain. I think that's what we're trying to do.

Was his girlfriend in the film, Vernell (played by Taraji P. Henson), based on a real person, or was she a composite of a lot of women?

DC: His girlfriend? She's a composite. I mean he was with many, many, many, many women. I think she was a composite of several of the ones that he was with that were important.

There aren't many black women on the screen like Henson's character.

DC: Taraji's the only woman who I know who's like that. There were other women up for the part when we were casting it. But I was like, "What are you talking about?" Taraji – that's it. There's nobody else to play this part. I'm glad they came around. This girl is off the hook. This is the girl that has to be. You would need someone like her to be with somebody like Petey.

How many women have you met in your life like Taraji?

DC: One...her. [laughs]

Through a degree of persistence and determination of your own, you've expanded into all these projects--movies, media, the talking book and this book project--you're determined to branch out into all these areas.

DC: I always want to be hireable. I want to do many different things. The book, "Not on Our Watch" came out of my relationship with John Prendergast, who was at the time senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, and what we experienced in Africa, in Darfur, in Sudan. [The book is] a way to, in one document, try to answer the hundreds of questions about what can we do that I'd gotten since going over there and doing "Hotel Rwanda." In our many, many discussions, I said, we should really write a book about it so we can answer it in one decisive place, in one concise way. I didn't realize I was going to have to do it when I said it. He kept pressing and we finally did it.

People looked to Petey for guidance and leadership, for answers to questions they had to the pressing problems in their lives. He had a charisma. You have that kind of charisma and people look to you for answers. How do you feel about that?

DC: I wish people would just get off my back! [laughs] I'm not the answer man. I think people ask me specific questions about things I'm involved in because they want to know how they themselves can get involved in them. I don't get asked questions like a counselor, but it's a lot of responsibility anyway. You want to take people seriously. And I want to take those questions seriously. I'm a student of this myself. I'm not an expert on what's happening in Darfur. I'm not an expert on activism. I'm someone who's learning. I'm swimming in the stream with all these other people who are trying to figure out what to do. I don't think there's an answer.

But I do believe that from the amount of noise we've been able to make, from the positions that we've been fortunate to hold--myself, George Clooney--that activism, and I'm just specifically talking about Darfur, that we've seen it reach levels that I don't think it would've reached had there not been this kind of light shown on it. So in that regard, I feel very fortunate and very blessed to have anything to do with what might be any solution to Darfur.

Did you come up with the idea for "Not On Our Watch" on the set of "Ocean's 11"?

DC: I went to China and Egypt, and eventually the UN with George in December. He's been to Darfur, he's been to Sudan. We have a project/organization/foundation, I don't know what we're calling it yet, that we started just a few weeks ago called Not On Our Watch and we've raised about ten million dollars so far and just gave 750,000 to Oxfam last week. And that's George, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt and myself and Jerry Weintraub, who's produced the movie.

So the tendrils of this just keep folding in, and I'm trying to braid them all into a rope that we can use to really start flogging this issue and get people to focus and push our government. I believe our government is actually, compared to the rest of the world, doing a great deal. But we need to be doing it in a way that is not unilateral--which we haven't wanted to do--and work with the other leaders around the world, France, China and the middle powers to try and push this thing through because genocide is a crime against humanity. It shouldn't be a crime that's looked at specifically as an American issue, or China's issue or South Africa's issue. It should not be allowable anywhere on the face of the earth.

You say it shouldn't be allowable but if you look here in our country, we have serious gang problems in the schoolsystem. The violence still happens and no one does anything about it.

DC: It's the human condition. I think we're not a very evolved race. You look at our time line versus how long the earth has been here and how long we've been here... we're infants. I think we've got a lot of infantile behavior. I'm not shocked that it's happening.

Sure, people getting shot on the street is a horrible tragedy too. [But] 450,000 people... two and a half million people displaced in a systematic way is something that I think deserves an international response, that's all I'm saying.

A spotlight has finally been shining on Darfur for some time now. With so much attention, some are concerned that it'll reach a saturation level where we lose attention and it will be yesterday's story even though it hasn't been resolved.

DC: That's the battle that we face. And all of you [journalists] play a big part in how that is played out. You have to be strategic. You have to be smart if you really want to help. You have to consider those things. You have to think how do I do this in different ways? We're trying to address it in many different ways to get leadership to respond, and I think we're there in this country.

Now the challenge is to get other countries involved. One of the pressing issues right now, a place where we're trying to turn up the heat and get focus, is the Olympics that are coming up in Beijing in 2008, because China's relationship to the Sudan is such that they buy 67% of their oil. It's a four billion dollar industry for the Sudanese people right now. A lot of that money is directly going to buy weapons, bombers, paying for militias and it's underwriting this genocide that is happening.

We want to focus on China's relationship to the Sudan and find ways to bring that issue to the light, and to try to press on them to do something. And if they won't, then to press on whoever ends up being the [television] network that's going to show the Olympics--so that they're aware of it. So that they're aware the activist community will be pressing on them. So those 5 rings are going to have blood dripping off them, do you know what I mean, if this continues to go on and China doesn't do anything about it.

Is there going to be a documentary as well?

DC: There's a documentary coming out at the end of this year. I think in October.

TALK TO ME opens on July 13, 2007

Page 1 | Page 2