A Conversation with Kevin Willmott - filmmaker - Interview

African American Review, Summer, 2001 by Jeff Loeb

Loeb: So it's a case of conscience prevailing over duty?

Willmott: Yes, it's all about conscience, which is the struggle, and one that should occur before you go to war as a nation, not after the fact. We lied to get there in the Philippines, and it's obviously not the last time this happened.

So the metaphor of Little Brown Brothers revolves around our lying to get there and then claiming to see the truth. Of course, then the rationale changes, just like it did with Vietnam: "Yeah, but now we're too involved to get out."

Loeb: You mentioned The 70's earlier. Flow does it tie in?

Willmott: Well, we see the same theme in the Watergate story in that film. Byron, the main white character, basically doesn't understand. He's lied to by his father, his country, even his own self. He doesn't face up to the truth until Nixon goes down. It's another example of a conscience gained almost too late, after CoIntel-Pro and the FBI destruction of black leadership.

Loeb: How about the theme of identity in C.S.A.?

Willmott: Well, it's about how we got here racially from the images and norms being the things that defined black people. By reversing the concepts, we expose the flaws underlying these images. The South really didn't give up anything important after the Civil War; their way of life was maintained for another century. In the process they came to define black people in this country; Cone with the Wind is a good example. In trying to unify North and South, the North in essence agreed to accept a lie about slavery. Even in reversing the situation, the South wants the North to come back into the fold; they're going to romanticize the war. They're not going to talk about the real issue, a common identity in a common lie, which was that the war was never about slavery, but rather States' rights. This goes down a lot easier than genocide. So, the result is that the classic image of the slave is a happy, nonthreatening one--for example, Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen--that black people spent decades trying to live down. All my films deal with the complexities of African American identity and the lies that have to be broken down to arrive at a more secure self-definition of who we are.

Loeb: Let's talk about Ninth Street. It seems like one of the reasons you got involved in the project in the first place, even as a play, was from a sense of personal history, obviously because you were there and saw it firsthand. How much did this figure in?

Willmoti: Well, I could never call myself a 9th Street expert. For one thing, my parents wouldn't allow me to go down there. You know, we'd sneak down there when we were in high school. But more than anything I grew up hearing about it, which in some ways might be better than if I'd been an actual participant. I got to hear the other side of the story, the one about who these people down there really were--not about the vice but about 9th Street as a cultural center. They were my parents' friends, and I got to hear about their personal lives, their personal problems, their struggles trying to keep going. These were--most of them, anyway--legitimate business people.