Awakening to the Realities of Black Life

On his way back from the makeup trailer, actor Danny Glover paused momentarily to let a small boy wearing a brightly colored warm-up suit run past his feet. A few crew members nearby looked on unconcernedly as the child crashed into his father, film writer and director Charles Burnett, and wrapped himself around his father’s leg.

Glover shook his head, smiling, and continued into the house to shoot his scene.

“I think it annoyed some of the more experienced crew members who weren’t used to having kids running around on the set,” said Burnett from the production office of his film “To Sleep With Anger,” which recently finished shooting in Adams Heights, near Western Avenue and Adams Boulevard.

“One of them told me, ‘This looks like a day-care center,’ ” he said.

That’s because Burnett’s grass-roots project is not a traditional Hollywood production.

The low-budget dramatic film--about three conflicting generations of a modern black family who are pulled into the beliefs and influences of the past when a mysterious old friend from the Deep South pays a visit--is expected to be completed for less than $2 million. The film features an experienced assembly of cast members who are all working for scale wages. (In fact, Glover’s estimated salary for the current summer smash “Lethal Weapon 2” almost equaled this film’s total budget.)

“Outside ‘The Color Purple,’ working with an all-black cast is unusual to me,” Glover said. “Certainly it’s not new to me--I’ve been around black people all my life.” He laughs. “But in this business, I haven’t, you know?”

“I hope this film means there will be more allowment for these kinds of films,” said the quiet, soft-spoken Burnett, who wrote and directed the project. “There’s always the concern that a film like this will not be commercial--that was certainly the concern of the producers. That’s why this film is so hard to do. But I think you have to keep eating away at it. Each film like this lays the groundwork for the next.”

The shoestring budget for “To Sleep With Anger” is nonetheless a treasure chest to Burnett, a 44-year-old film maker who has never worked with a budget of more than $80,000. The UCLA film school graduate grew up in South-Central Los Angeles. He won critical acclaim in 1977 for his self-financed $10,000 production “Killer of Sheep,” a stark, black-and-white examination of social values through the eyes of a black slaughterhouse worker.

“There’s too many movies about shootings and stabbings, where the only interest is to reduce human beings to butcher-shop byproducts,” Burnett said. “It’s nothing in a film anymore to see a person get their head bashed in or blown apart, and I think that’s probably one of the reasons why there’s so much violence on the streets today. Film makers have to take a responsibility and be accountable.”

In 1984, Burnett wrote and directed his second feature-length film, “My Brother’s Wedding,” and wrote several scripts for other independent film makers. His work rarely played outside of film festivals and art houses, but last year it caught the eye of the MacArthur Foundation, which awarded Burnett a $275,000, no-strings-attached “genius” grant over five years. The money helped the independent film maker to purchase medical insurance for his family and move them out of a small apartment into a modest home.

Sony Video Software Inc., a film production arm of the Sony Corp., is financing “To Sleep With Anger.”

To keep production costs down, Burnett hired many crew members who had little or no experience working on feature films. Several more-qualified workers agreed to sign on for less because they believed in the project. In hiring a mostly black crew, Burnett said he was offering blacks an opportunity that Hollywood seldom presents.

A profit-participation plan will compensate key cast and crew members for their lowered salaries, depending upon how well the film does at the box office. Glover’s considerable financial stake, via his vastly reduced salary, earned him the title of co-executive producer in the film’s credits.

“Because it was such a low budget and the salaries were so low, we didn’t want to embarrass anybody and ask them to work with us, unless they really wanted to,” Burnett said. “I had worked with some of the people before. The whole idea was to build this team that really wanted it.”

Burnett said that one of the most difficult parts of making “To Sleep With Anger” was casting it, because there is such a tremendous amount of black talent who don’t get many chances to showcase their skills in major roles. The casting call for the film attracted hundreds of hopeful black actors.

“There was one guy trying out for only one line in a scene,” Burnett said, “but looking at his resume--I mean, the guy had years and years of schooling and training in theater. And he was pleased just to play this one scene.” The actor got the job.

Unlike Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” about an escalating race riot in Brooklyn, “To Sleep With Anger” is not about racism but about a family’s struggle to survive in a changing world. The film’s cast is hoping that with the help of film makers like Lee, the theater door has opened far enough to permit a film starring a black family.

“Blacks usually play isolated roles in films, like the best friend, or the criminal, or the musician, or an extra,” said cast member Richard Brooks, who was recently in the Vietnam film “84 Charlie Mo-Pic.” “With a movie like this, when there is an all-black or largely black cast, then I can play the son--the kid with the normal problems dealing with my mother and father. Those things are more real to me, as opposed to always being the loner, the outsider, trying to swim across the current and move through the world.”

When casting the lead roles, Burnett said he and his producers considered “just about everybody in the business.” Glover committed to the project first. Others actors who followed: Mary Alice, Paul Butler, Carl Lumbly, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Vonetta McGee.

In “To Sleep With Anger,” Glover plays Harry Mann, who Burnett said is a folklore character handed down over generations from the Deep South. As a child, Burnett was told that if he went out to a wooded area alone, Harry would steal his soul. In order to keep that from happening, kids have to learn to out-wile him.

“I think those stories are traditionally kept alive more in the South,” Burnett said. “I remember when I was a kid my grandmother used to tell me a lot of those stories. I don’t know if that’s happening as much today. I think there’s this concern about losing that oral tradition.”

In his script, Burnett said, “the father, Gideon, tells his sons animal stories to instill old values in his sons. One son embraces his father’s world, while his materialistic brother rejects it and chooses his own course. When Harry shows up, through a series of trivial conflicts that lead to life or death, he changes the whole nature of the situation.”

“I like the kind of trust that Charles has,” Glover said. “You can see his silence and patience on the screen. He allows everything to unfold. It’s like a flower you can’t rush. It has to blossom.”

The producers of “To Sleep With Anger” say that they are taking a chance on a film by a little-known director whose subject matter may be too narrow for general audiences to find appealing.

“I think any film maker has to do films about his own experience, and if he’s a great film maker, then that will translate into a universal subject,” said co-executive producer Ed Pressman (“Wall Street”). Pressman is known for producing the early commercial films of directors such as Oliver Stone (“The Hand”), Brian De Palma (“Sisters”) and Terrence Malick (“Badlands”). Last year, he approached Charles Burnett to work with him.

“It would be crazy for Charles to do this subject and adapt it for popular consumption. It wouldn’t be real to him and it wouldn’t be his vision. And those are the things that make a film work,” Pressman said.

“This film is not about a white family,” co-executive producer Harris Tulchin said. “I don’t even know how you would fit a white person in here. What you don’t want to do--which I’ve seen done in the past--is try to fit white people into a story about a black family just so you can say, ‘Hey look, we have a white star. We can get much better promotion. We can get more people in theaters.’ ”

“There’s always skepticism in these situations,” said Mary Alice, whose performance in “Fences” on Broadway won her a best-actress Tony. “When we opened ‘Fences,’ nobody thought that a play about a black family would make it on Broadway. But look--the play was a smash. Night after night, the audience was filled--with whites and blacks.”