Ep4records Music

For the first time since 1999, not a single white man was nominated for the 60th annual Grammy Awards’ Album of the Year category. 

This year’s nominees are Childish Gambino, JAY-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Bruno Mars and Lorde. Additionally, all five tracks nominated for 2017′s Record of the Year came from artists of color.

The Grammys have been under fire for their lack of diversity over the years, so an absence of white men in the top category this year could signify a sea change in the organization.

Last year, the Grammys snubbed two artists of color ― Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar ― for Album of the Year, instead favoring white female artists Adele and Taylor Swift. Many noted the enormity of Beyonce’s work in “Lemonade” and Lamar’s in “To Pimp A Butterfly.” Adele herself even expressed concern over her win, saying of Beyonce, “What the fuck does she have to do to win album of the year? That’s how I feel.”

Fans have also been asking another awards institution ― the Academy ― to increase diversity of nominees.

At the Academy Awards in both 2015 and 2016, all 20 actors nominated in the lead and supporting acting categories were white (which, as USA Today noted, hadn’t happened since 1998). The lack of diversity sparked outrage in the form of a trending Twitter hashtag, #OscarsSoWhite, and many celebrities boycotted the show altogether.

It’s not clear if the Recording Academy voting members, which determine the final nominations for the Grammys, considered last year’s fan feedback in making this year’s choices. But as Vanity Fair noted, if Jay-Z wins for his 444 album, just imagine his possible acceptance speech after his wife’s work was passed over in 2016.

Sherrie Lawson was in a meeting when she heard the gunshots.

Because she was on a Navy installation where firearms were heavily restricted, Lawson assumed the loud bangs were the sound of people dropping tables or chairs.

Less than a minute later, when more shots rang out, she and her colleagues realized something was wrong. People ran by, shouting about a shooter on the grounds. Lawson joined the crowd and they ran, trying to get away from the sounds of gunfire.

Soon they found themselves in an alley, facing an eight-foot brick wall. Lawson scaled it with the help of her colleagues. Minutes later, the gunman shot and killed someone in that alley. He had been behind Lawson’s group.

“It didn’t make a lot of sense to me until later, when I was kind of given a timeline of what happened,” Lawson said. “Why the gunshots were so loud in my experience, and why I felt he was right there.”

Four days after the shooting, Lawson got on the bus to return to the Navy Yard, in southeast Washington, D.C., and get her laptop. When she reached her stop, she realized she couldn’t get off the bus. She stayed on for a few more stops, then got off, walked to the middle of the sidewalk and burst into tears.

“I think that was the first time it all just kind of hit me,” she said.

The procedure for the aftermath of a mass shooting is by now depressingly familiar. News stories list the number of dead, the number of wounded, the status of the gunman, the timeline of events. In the Washington Navy Yard shooting, which happened in September 2013, 12 people were killed and eight were injured.

Yet these tallies don’t account for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other people directly involved in these events. Most people who are present during a mass shooting are not physically injured. Most do not die. But that doesn’t mean they emerge unscathed.

In the aftermath of a mass shooting, a nation’s sympathies and fundraising dollars are directed toward those who died or were physically injured. Meanwhile, people like Lawson are left grappling with guilt and shame over wanting to ask for extra help, even as they are swarmed by psychological symptoms.

“It feels very selfish as a physically uninjured survivor to ask for resources when others died or were shot, which is one of the reasons why this group of people goes without,” said Lisa Hamp, a survivor of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting. “We stay quiet because we realize how lucky we were, and how much worse others have it.”

On April 16, 2007, Hamp was barricaded in a classroom in Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall while a gunman fired at the door and pushed to get inside. Hamp and a few of her classmates were on the other side, pushing against the door to keep him out. The shooter ultimately killed 32 people that day, and then himself.

Staying quiet has its costs. After the Navy Yard shooting, Lawson’s post-traumatic stress disorder was so severe that she had to leave her job and her doctoral program. She drained her savings to pay for specialized treatment. Hamp struggled with an eating disorder and subsequent fertility issues, and she estimates she’s spent a few thousand dollars on counseling since 2007.

Usually, when people talk about “trauma,” they’re using the term to describe an emotional reaction to an event. In this colloquial sense, the greater a person’s distress, the more “traumatic” the event must have been. But in the medical sense, trauma is a physical, chemical experience, where a person believes their life or body is under threat ― and it triggers temporary changes to a person’s strength and cognition in order to help them make it out alive.

During this “fight or flight” response, the brain sets off a series of hormonal changes that help the lungs take in more air, send blood to the muscles, sharpen the senses, increase mental alertness and give the body a burst of energy. These enhancements give a person extra strength to flee, as Lawson did, or fight, as Hamp did.

When trauma happens to a group ― as in the case of a mass shooting ― these physical reactions take place in dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people. For most, their bodies return to normal functioning soon afterward, and even though they may experience serious distress in the short term, they will be able to recover and return to life as it was before.

But a minority of people develop post-traumatic stress disorder, which occurs when the mental and physical responses to danger don’t switch off. These responses, which are normal and often helpful in traumatic situations, linger on and become an intrusive, sometimes intolerable part of daily life. Regular, everyday stimuli can jolt a person back to the day they thought they were going to die, cuing hypervigilance, crying, panic attacks or worse.

After the attack, Lawson grew frightened in grocery stores. She couldn’t see over the rows of food; anything might be back there. When she heard a siren or a helicopter, it could trigger a crying jag or a panic attack. At night, she would dream she was running. Fall is Lawson’s least favorite time of year, because the smell of Pumpkin Spice Lattes brings her back to the breakfast she ate the day of the shooting.

And when Hamp returned to school for her senior year, she was haunted by the fact that during the shooting in Norris Hall, her teacher and a classmate took charge of making the barricades and directing the other students to their positions. Hamp herself just numbly followed along. Back in the classroom, she vowed to be more vigilant about her surroundings, and to always formulate a plan to take action if things went wrong.

In a 2013 research review about the mental health consequences of mass trauma events like shootings, terrorist attacks and natural disasters, Dr. Sandro Galea, an epidemiologist and dean at Boston University’s School of Public Health, writes that PTSD may be present in as many as 30 to 40 percent of disaster survivors, and 10 to 20 percent of rescue workers.

And while the research on this point is mixed and still emerging, Galea notes that disasters of human origin ― those that are caused by technology, like a nuclear accident, or those that involve mass violence, like terrorism ― appear to have a “more pronounced psychological impact” than natural disasters like hurricanes or floods.

Lawson’s symptoms were so severe that her doctor recommended she leave her job as a Defense Department contractor and withdraw from her Ph.D. program. She filed for short-term disability and worker’s compensation (which her company appealed three times), drew down a $20,000 nest egg and tapped into her 401(k). She had a lot to pay for: out-of-pocket therapy sessions; copays for doctor’s visits and prescriptions, including a partially covered six-month PTSD outpatient program at the Psychiatric Institute of Washington; and frequent trips to her family in North Carolina for emotional support.

Last year, Lawson filed for bankruptcy over the debt she’d incurred from medical bills since the shooting. This debt also included bills from when she had a stress-related mini-stroke in 2014.

She says she also lost her social network due to her depression.

“I had some friends accuse me of wallowing in my sorrow and refusing to get over what happened,” she said. “I was told that I should just be thankful I’m alive. They couldn’t understand why I was still struggling and upset.”

Like Lawson, many survivors have little recourse for financial help if insurance and community support don’t stretch far enough for them.

After high-profile events like terrorist attacks or mass shootings, donations tend to pour in from all over the world to help survivors and loved ones deal with losses of income, or to help supplement hospital, rehabilitation and funeral bills.

But technicalities about who is considered a victim in need of financial help ― meant to protect the charitable donation pool from being diluted by an abundance of claims ― mean the psychologically injured often don’t receive money, explained Camille Biros, deputy fund administrator at the law offices of Kenneth Feinberg, the firm most often called upon to oversee these funds.

The Feinberg law firm has helped, pro bono, to determine which victims get a portion of donated money after the Boston Marathon bombing, the Virginia Tech shooting, the Aurora theater shooting and the Pulse nightclub shooting. The firm is also helping define the criteria for how victims of the Las Vegas shooting will qualify for money, but it will not be in charge of administering the distribution.

“Typically, the people who are covered are the families of the deceased and the physically injured,” Biros said. “Sometimes the emotionally traumatized are included in some of these types of funds, but it really all depends upon if there’s enough money.”

In the case of the Boston Marathon fund, for example, people who were psychologically traumatized but not physically injured were not eligible to receive anything. After the Virginia Tech shooting, however, physically uninjured students in the classrooms the gunman entered were able to receive money. (Hamp was not among that group, as the shooter never made it into her classroom.)

Because of the sheer number of dead and wounded after the Las Vegas shooting, Biros expects those deliberations will be even more difficult. At least $11.5 million has been collected for the Las Vegas Victims Fund ― a testament to the generosity of the American people. But when you consider that 58 people were killed, hundreds were wounded and about 22,000 people were actually in attendance at the music festival, suddenly that amount looks quite modest.

If emotionally traumatized survivors can’t rely on the funds collected after a mass tragedy, their next step is to apply for the victim compensation program in their state.

Every state has a special fund for the victims of violent crimes, sustained mostly from the fines and penalties that offenders pay as part of a court order. At a minimum, these programs are “last resort” funds to help victims with expenses once private health insurance, disability and worker’s compensation run out. But these benefits vary widely.

In Wyoming, for example, the maximum award is $15,000, while New York lists no maximum award for expenses related to medical and counseling care. Some state funds reimburse crime victims for services like crime-scene cleanup, relocation and rehabilitation, but others only offer the bare minimum — funeral expenses, wage loss and medical and counseling bills. And in some states, receiving a donation counts against you when applying for reimbursements.

The result is that state-funded survivor compensation and access to reimbursement for health services are highly varied and unequal.

Last year, with shots ringing out in the dark, police Officer Omar Delgado ran toward the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

“Picture tons and tons of people trying to get out as we’re trying to get in,” said Delgado, who was among the first officers to arrive on the scene that night. “Just riddled with bullets. People were bouncing off us.”

Inside, Delgado’s eyes slowly adjusted to the dim lighting. The floor was slick with blood and alcohol, and his feet slipped as he dragged injured clubgoers to safety. The gunfire continued.

When Delgado got home the next morning, he locked his bedroom door. When his kids knocked, he wouldn’t let them in. His parents called, but he didn’t want to speak to them. “I shut everybody out,” he said.

Almost a year and a half later, it’s still hard for Delgado to get out of bed in the morning. He takes temazepam to help him sleep, but only manages three or four hours a night and wakes up screaming from nightmares. He wasn’t cleared by a psychologist to go on patrol, so he had to give up the overtime shifts that used to earn him an extra $1,200 to $1,500 per month.

After cycling through a series of mental health providers, Delgado now sees a psychiatrist once or twice a month. Before he switched to a provider covered by worker’s compensation, his psychiatrist cost him $280 out of pocket for an initial visit and between $75 and $100 for follow-up sessions. The therapist he also sees once or twice a month adds another $50 to $70 per session to Delgado’s expenses.

“I’m not me,” he said. “I’m not the old Omar.” Most of all, he said, he worries about not being able to react if he finds himself in a situation like Pulse again. “If I freeze, even for a minute, how many people’s lives do I put at risk?”

Those who were inside Pulse at the onset of the shooting received $25,000 from the OneOrlando Fund, regardless of whether they were wounded or taken hostage by the shooter.

When Delgado applied for the fund, which has distributed $32 million to Pulse victims, he was denied. People who were outside the club when the shooting began were not eligible for benefits, explained Jeffrey Dion, deputy executive director of the nonprofit National Center for Victims of Crime, which helped administer the fund alongside the Feinberg firm.

“That was kind of a low blow,” Delgado said. “As first responders, we don’t get in it for the money. Obviously we do it to save people. But I was in need of help. When everybody needs help they pick up a phone and dial three numbers. They expect us to get there and solve all of their problems. But when we need help, who do we call?”

Ultimately, it was the local committee in Orlando that had the last say on who would get benefits, Dion explained. “They’re the final arbitrators of who is eligible and what the distribution plan is.” (The office of Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, a Democrat, told HuffPost that under Feinberg’s supervision, OneOrlando arrived at its parameters for distributing the funds ― including the requirement “that the victim applying for funds had to be inside of the Pulse building when the shooting began” ― after considering “feedback” from “two town hall meetings open to anyone who wanted to attend.”)

Without other options, an acquaintance set up a GoFundMe page for Delgado in July 2016. As of last week, his fund had still only raised $1,540 of its $25,000 goal.

One intriguing way to financially compensate more victims of mass shootings presents itself in the examples of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, established in 2001, and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, established in 1986.

In these cases, Congress passed laws that barred Americans from suing the airline industry and the pharmaceutical industry, respectively, for damages ― but also established a compensation pool so victims could apply to get money for their injuries. These laws shield businesses from liability, but still allow Americans who were hurt by a vaccine or by the Sept. 11 airplane hijackings to receive money for their injuries. (However, emotionally injured 9/11 victims were not eligible to apply for that money.)

When it comes to the firearm industry, though, Congress has only done one of those two things. In 2005, lawmakers passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which shields gun manufacturers from liability when people commit crimes with their products. However, the PLCAA did not establish a compensation fund for victims of gun violence.

That’s because there was simply no political appetite for holding gun manufacturers accountable for victims’ injuries, says Timothy Lytton, a law professor at Georgia State University and editor of the book Suing the Gun Industry: A Battle at the Crossroads of Gun Control and Mass Torts.

Before passage of the federal law, 32 states had already passed similar legislation shielding gun manufacturers from liability. And from the late 1990s to mid-2000s, every lawsuit failed that tried to hold firearm manufacturers responsible for gun injuries sustained in a crime, Lytton explained. In addition to lawsuits brought by individuals, more than 30 municipalities sued the firearm industry. Most of those cases were thrown out. Other municipalities lost their cases or abandoned them because of state immunity laws.

“So Congress took away the right to sue, but they took it away in a context where no one had ever actually won one of those lawsuits,” Lytton said. “As to a direct parallel to the protection of the pharmaceutical companies or the airline companies, it seemed that the pharmaceutical and airline companies did face serious prospects of liability, whereas that’s still very much uncertain with regards to the firearm industry.”

There is one glimmer of hope for those who think gun companies should be held accountable for deadly mass shootings. Five years after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, some of the survivors are attempting a novel legal approach for suing firearms manufacturers. The idea is to hold the company liable for entrusting the public with the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle, which has a high risk of criminal misuse. The case is being heard at the state Supreme Court level in Connecticut.

After a mass trauma like a shooting, countries that have a comprehensive health care plan can put that infrastructure to work for the victims. In the wake of the 2011 attack in Norway that killed 77 people and injured hundreds more, municipal crisis teams reached out to survivors and their families. Later, when researchers surveyed the survivors, more than 80 percent said they had received early, proactive mental health outreach. Seventy-three percent of survivors surveyed had seen a psychologist or psychiatrist, and only 14 percent had unmet mental health needs.

Normally, the news of another massacre sends Heather Martin, a Columbine High School shooting survivor, into a series of flashbacks and occasionally a debilitating anxiety attack.

But in 2012, after news of the Aurora theater shooting broke, Martin realized she could do something to help.

“You know what this community is in for,” Martin said of the survivors. “You know what’s coming, and it’s awful.”

With a friend, Martin founded The Rebels Project ― a support group for survivors of mass trauma events like terrorism or mass shootings. To date, the network has almost 500 members from 29 different survivor communities. Most of them are people who lived through mass shootings, but some lived through bombings, mass stabbings or even the 9/11 attacks. Lawson, who survived the Washington Navy Yard shooting, is the group’s director of development.

For the past five years, Martin’s local group has met monthly in Colorado to swap stories, offer advice and simply listen to each other. TRP also has an online support network, and once a year, survivors from around the country get together for a weekend. A survivor of the 1997 Heath High School shooting in Kentucky once told Martin that’s her weekend to feel normal.

“We basically just realized that one thing that we were missing throughout all those years was somebody to talk to that wouldn’t judge you and wouldn’t make you feel bad for what you were feeling, or feel wrong, like something that you were going through was wrong somehow,” Martin said. “We figured that we could provide that to a new community that was in just the early stages.”

That community ― the diaspora of people whose lives, following one awful day of violence, have never really returned to normal ― is growing larger all the time. As mass shootings seemingly happen one after another, Americans barely have time to mourn each tragedy before the next one erupts. Few people in 2017 are still talking about Columbine or Virginia Tech or the Washington Navy Yard. These shootings, we think, are in the past. But for some of the people who lived through them, they are in some sense still happening.

The Rebels Project has big goals for 2018. Martin hopes to begin a pilot program offering mental health services to members. She’s raising money for that effort, and is trying to take TRP’s story to the media. But she keeps running into two problems: Most of the group’s members were not physically injured, and the massacres they’re recovering from are already yesterday’s headlines.

“When we try to do a fundraiser, we’re like, ‘Hey, you are helping survivors!’” Martin said. “But it’s old news. Society has moved on.”

“Mudbound,” a sprawling, ambitious drama that debuted on Netflix and in select theaters last Friday, has earned its director, Dee Rees, a deserved crown.

Rees’ first movie, the 2011 coming-of-age jewel “Pariah,” was a festival hit that netted her an Independent Spirit Award and a small but devoted audience. She followed that with 2015′s “Bessie,” the Emmy-winning HBO movie about famed blues singer Bessie Smith. Both showcase a filmmaker with a sharp eye for the nuances of human connection, but “Mudbound” is in a class of its own, chronicling two families ― one black, one white ― on a dusty plantation in World War II–era Mississippi. Racial stratification plagues everyday existence on and off their farmstead, especially once the clans’ sons (played by Jason Mitchell and Garrett Hedlund) become friends. Rees, who adapted Hillary Jordan’s novel of the same name with “ER” writer Virgil Williams, weaves numerous characters’ perspectives together to create a searing, audacious masterwork. 

None of Netflix’s original releases have secured acting, directing or writing nominations from the Oscars, but the acclaim that has greeted “Mudbound” could help to end the streaming service’s dry spell. I talked to Rees in New York in October ― right as awards-season campaigns were first escalating ― about portraying the Jim Crow South, working with Mary J. Blige and the films she thinks are worthy of history classes.

“Mudbound” was among the toasts of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It felt very much like your moment in particular ― you were no longer just a director on the rise. Did you feel those good vibes, too?

So that’s exactly why I love doing press. My partner, Sheila, filters stuff to me, or friends will send me bits and pieces. But to me, I try to keep focused on the work and be sobered by the fact that it’s not a meritocracy, this world. If things happen, great. If they don’t, great. At the end of the day, I think, just as a maker, just as an artist, hopefully this makes my way a little bit easier. Or it makes the way of someone else a little bit easier. Or it it’ll make some film exec go watch shorts programs at festivals instead of going to the gala. To me, that would be the big thing ― for the studio system in general to do more interesting material. Go to shorts programs and find a voice there that you’re interested in and make their next film. It’s a reminder that discovery is the thing.

“Pariah” is a micro-budget indie movie that won incredible acclaim and found a second wind in streaming. Maybe the average moviegoer isn’t familiar with it, but in certain circles it’s a very big deal. Were the doors that opened to you after “Pariah” the ones you hoped would open?

I feel like they opened in that I never stopped working. Did the kind of doors open for me that would have happened if another maker made that film? Probably not. You know what I mean? But after “Pariah,” I never wasn’t working in film. Part of it was this deal for Focus Features. I wrote a script for them about a detective ― a Memphis cop ― that they didn’t produce because it wasn’t, you know, big enough. But I got a feature script, and then I got a job writing “Bessie.” It was this whole thing where someone was like, “Oh, wait, actually do you want to direct it? This is written so specifically.” It’s kind of like “Pariah” opened doors. I wrote a pilot for HBO for Viola Davis. It didn’t get produced, but I was always writing, so I was blessed in that, since January 2011, I’ve never stopped working. I’m kind of pushing along on my own. Lee Daniels gave me my first shot in TV.

Did you do an episode of “Empire”?

Yeah, in the second season. It was when it was still new. Lee, like, bullied me into the studio and was like, “Dee is doing this.” I feel like “Pariah” was a blessing. I feel like all of us from that film work. It launched Bradford Young as a DP.

That’s right. He got an Oscar nomination this year for “Arrival.”

Yeah! Exactly. And Adepero Oduye. So “Pariah” launched all of us, I think, in different ways. I’m grateful for the fact that I kept working, that I could build up street cred. It becomes this cumulative effect thing that happens.

Here we are talking on National Coming Out Day …

Yeah, but then the Mississippi religious freedom act goes into effect today, too.

That’s the way it works, I suppose. But with “Pariah,” you made a movie that’s like a warm blanket in its ability to speak to young queer people’s experiences. And now, with “Mudbound,” you’ve made something far more sweeping. It has a large ensemble, its topicality is grander. What does it mean to you to have given people movies that speak to their history?

I think I’m realizing now that, thematically, there are these ideas that I keep returning back to. Because for me, in many ways, “Mudbound” is about not being able to go back home. You have these soldiers who actually can’t go back home. They’ve been outside of this context, and they’ve seen the world, and they’re asked to step back into these family dynamics that don’t work for them. Also, I’m realizing that friendship is a theme — how friendship can shackle you or hurt you, in a way, because [Jamie, Hedlund’s character] and [Ronsel, Mitchell’s character] have this brotherhood that is unconsummated. This relationship is queer in that way — black and white guys aren’t supposed to be friends, so it’s subversive. Same with “Pariah.” They have this friendship where Alike feels limited by Laura’s idea of butchness or lesbianism or presenting masculinity. I feel like thematically there’s things I keep coming back to, maybe subconsciously.

Since “Pariah” didn’t crack $1 million at the box office, what do you hope for in terms of the legacy of “Mudbound”?

I just want to make films that last. I want “Mudbound” to last. In the same way that “Pariah” is still being discovered, I want “Mudbound” to be a film that, five years from now, is still being discovered. It’s not just a Kleenex film, where you watch it once and you’re done with it. That’s why I was glad Netflix got this film, because, for me, “Pariah” got picked up by Focus and got this small platform release ― it got kept alive because of Netflix. I was aware of that, so I had a different idea: When they got “Mudbound,” I was like, “OK, great, it’s going to be kept alive and be available.” It’ll have this simultaneous global audience, which is a different feeling. In terms of their support of the film, this is the most marketing support I’ve ever had for a film. It feels great to have them actively putting this film in front of audiences. The festival support has been amazing. It’s almost been like a reunion. All the festivals we’ve done so far are the festivals with the “Pariah” wins: Sundance, Toronto, London and then New York. In a weird way, it’s like six years later we’re making the same rounds again.

It’s just interesting for me as a filmmaker. A bigger budget can buy you more background. It can buy you more days ― which, in this case, it didn’t, really ― but it’s not going to buy you better performances. For me, the directing work is still in the performances. It’s still in the blocking, the composition. Money doesn’t buy you better frames, you know what I mean? I want to show that storytelling is storytelling. I’m always attracted to characters and relationships first, and then themes. Even though it happens to be topical, I’m never wanting to be polemic. I’m not preachy or didactic. I’m just going to tell you the story. If you’re into it, cool. To me, you can’t lead with the message because that’s a turn-off. Lead with characters that are interesting, and then people kind of won’t care what happens because they’re interested in people.

Let’s talk about Mary J. Blige, who disappears in the role of Florence. Many people have said they can’t believe it’s her.

Yeah, totally. Her manager, Shakim [Compere], also manages Queen Latifah, so I knew Shakim from “Bessie.” I called Shakim and said, “Hey, do you think there’s any way Mary would want to do this?” I had also gone to CAA, and in the first meeting I said, “I want Mary. Would she be willing?” For me, it was a long shot. It was a Hail Mary. But she said yes.

I just really wanted someone unexpected. I wanted someone for Florence who could have this very reserved exterior but have a very empathetic, alive, vulnerable inner life. With Mary’s music, if you’ve been to her concerts, it’s literally like a therapy session for thousands of people. She’s not just performing; she’s living it. Every verse, she’s reliving the heartbreak or she’s reliving the joy, and you feel it. I needed a character that can make people feel, and I knew she could bring it. She has a beautiful, tear-drop-shaped scar, and I wanted to use it, this perpetual tear. Actresses, especially with huge ones, it’s rare that they’ll will want to strip down. We do this very naturalistic makeup look on her: no lashes, no nails, no hair. Mary’s bold enough and brave enough to go there. Most actresses would be like, “Nope, I still need my wig.”

Was that part of your original pitch to Mary?

Yeah. Well, I kind of waited until a little bit later to say it to her. I remember the first day she walked into my office. I was a little bit starstruck, like, “Oh my god,” because she’s, like, Mary. She’s amazing. We just talked about it. I just wanted her to feel safe. I wanted to talk to her as an actress and let her feel comfortable in being able to be vulnerable and allow herself to be seen. She was amazing with that.

We did these little acting exercises. It was the same way with “Pariah,” in terms of the performances. I took these one-on-one pairings. I did Mary J. Blige and Carey Mulligan. We did repetition things. “Look at each other in the eyes.” For me, the core of that relationship was power, so I had them repeat it back and forth: “You have the power.” “No, you have the power.” That was a way to break the ice. It starts them looking at each other. They’re just holding eye contact, which I think is everything. It’s awkward, it’s uncomfortable, then you start laughing. It’s just being seen and seeing another person. Just looking at each other is huge.

Same thing with Mary J. Blige and Jason Mitchell. I’d seen Jason in “Straight Outta Compton,” and I loved his performance as Eazy-E. I grew up listening to the bootleg tapes because my parents wouldn’t buy it because of the parental advisory. I thought I knew the story [of N.W.A.], but through him I realized I didn’t know the story at all. I didn’t understand who this person was at all, and the fact that he’d do that, in the scene where he’s in the hospital dying of AIDS and hugging this man and showing that male vulnerability. I knew he could be Ronsel, who’s very square and stony. He’s this solid guy who, at the end of the day, is very sensitive and seeing, in a way. Anyway, I had them stand with each other, Mary saying over and over again, “You’re making a mistake”; Jason saying, “No, I’m not.” It’s just letting the actors talk to each other in character off-script. That’s what I find interesting.

At what point did you do those exercises? On the set?

No, it’s in my office, in prep, during pre-production. That’s my idea of rehearsals. I think I did it over two days, these different pairings. We’d meet in my office and close the door — it was just me and the actors. I’m not drilling them on lines, I’m not rehearsing the words. I feel like if we can get the subtext of it, then I’m trusting you’re going to know the text. So, understand the subtext, and the text will almost be — not inconsequential, but you have to know why you’re there, and you have to really believe it and feel it. Everything else is informed by that.

People have said this movie should be taught in history classes.

Yeah, if that happens, I just don’t want this to be turned into a didactic thing.

Right. “Selma” got the same attention a couple of years ago, but that was a historical drama.

Right. I think hopefully the takeaway is that history doesn’t just happen to us. We’re creating it; we’re making it. We’re not passive — we are actors in our own story, so it’s just being aware of how we’re acting and the ideas we’ve inherited. It’s instructive maybe, but it’s not didactic in that way. Understand these relationships, maybe to the extent that it makes you ask, “Hey, what was my grandpa like, or how did he get what he got? How did my parents get what they got?”

Even if your parents came over from Italy with $2 in their pocket — if that’s your story, then why did we need to own slaves? But it’s like, OK, but if the narrative of coming over with $2 in your pocket is a noble narrative, then why can’t someone come from Belize with $2 in his pocket? If that’s a noble story, then use that knowledge to say, “Wait a minute, our ideas about immigration are flawed, because we all have this immigration story, which we brag about now.” We should be welcoming other people who are coming with $2 and a dream.

It’s that kind of interrogation of our own personal histories and how we came to have what we have and be where we are. It’s being mindful of what we’re maybe unconsciously passing on to others. I think inheritance is a more expansive way to talk about it. In history classes, this is not just to me, like, “This is a picture of Jim Crow South.” It’s meant to be about all those things about how we’re actors and we can’t just stand there and watch things.

If you were to devise a syllabus of movies taught in history courses, what would would be on it?

I like “Killer of Sheep,” by Charles Burnett, because even before [the filmmaking movement] Dogme 95, it’s a way of filmmaking that was raw and honest and feeling. It was about a way of life. I like “Midnight Cowboy,” just because I like it. It feels like it’s about New York and this kind of ingenue in a package you don’t expect. He’s this big, hulking hunk of a guy. It’s about naiveté and the city. I like “Network” because of how fast it moves, and the dialogue, just the feeling of it. What else do I love? I love “A Woman Under the Influence” by John Cassavetes, because, again, I love that style where I can never hear the lines and you don’t think of the script.

It’s those movies that I love, where you can just feel something in them and it’s not this down-your-throat thing. I was also going to say “Blood Simple” or “Raising Arizona,” even. It’s a goofy Coen brothers film, but it’s fun. It was the birth of Nicolas Cage, when movies used to launch people before they were stars. It’s how cinema can be about discovery — John Goodman and those guys. I watch a lot of stuff. People ask “what are your favorite films,” and the answer is, there’s so many. In terms of a syllabus, I would just choose films that show life that you haven’t seen, or different parts of life that you haven’t seen, or people we haven’t seen.

I love that, because the temptation might be to name a slew of biopics, adaptations of historical court cases, fact-based fodder.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, like, “Network” talks about the industry and the manufacturing of news ― the spectacle. They could release that today, and it would be like, “Oh my god, this is happening now.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.