Grit and Magic: Vondie Curtis-Hall and Kasi Lemmons

By Monice Mitchell

Kasi Lemmons and Vondie Curtis-Hall

Grit and Magic: the two opposite words not only describe the films of husband-and-wife directors, Vondie Curtis-Hall and Kasi Lemmons, but they're also two of the main ingredients that continually strengthen their nearly 20-year relationship.

Together for 19 years and married for four, Curtis-Hall and Lemmons have each been successful in front of and behind the camera. In 1997 Curtis-Hall made his feature directing and screenwriting debut with the semi-autobiographical $4 million film Gridlock'd. The gritty picture, which starred slain rapper Tupac Shakur and Tim Roth, was a day-in-the-life of two heroin-addicted musicians struggling to get into detox.

That same year, Lemmons' Eve's Bayou - a magical and haunting tale of family love and deception that was shot on location for 37 days in the Louisiana bayou - also hit the screen. Starring Lynn Whitfield and Samuel L. Jackson, Bayou was budgeted at $4 million and opened on 659 screens. It became the highest-grossing independent film of 1997 and won that year's Independent Spirit Award for 'Best First Feature.'

Now three years later, Curtis-Hall and Lemmons are on the verge of releasing their respective sophomore efforts, Hall's All That Glitters (A Star Is Born genre film starring Mariah Carey) and Lemmons' The Caveman's Valentine (a murder-mystery-drama with Jackson as the homeless, schizophrenic lead). Both are studio films on which each director joined the DGA.

Not surprisingly, the couple said that none of their success would be possible without each other.

'Our relationship has lasted, because A) It's love B) It's a really cool friendship and C) I respect her. I like what she's got to say,' Curtis-Hall said, adding that Lemmons' writing Eve's Bayou inspired him to write Gridlock'd. 'She pushes me. I wouldn't be who or where I am if it wasn't for her.'

Box-office numbers do not drive their relationship. 'There's no competition between us. Only support and love,' Lemmons said. 'He's a safe haven for me. I couldn't have done what I have in my life without him.'

In fact, it was Curtis-Hall who convinced Lemmons to take Eve's Bayou out of the drawer after she first wrote it in 1992. Unfulfilled as an actress in films such as Silence of the Lambs and Candyman, Lemmons had taken TV pilot season off that year to write the personal, fictional story. At her husband's urging, she sent it out cold to studios and producers and took at least 200 meetings until Trimark Pictures bit.

But before Trimark made a financial commitment to the film, producer Cotty Chubb encouraged Lemmons to make a short based on Eve's Bayou. Her 30-minute film, Dr. Hugo, sealed the deal. Then, the search for a director began and that's when things got scary.

'Dr. Hugo allowed me to really think of myself as a filmmaker, as opposed to an actress trying to become a filmmaker. That was a big change in me,' recounts Lemmons, who got her start writing scenes for her actor friends while studying documentary filmmaking at The New School for Social Research in New York City. 'So when we would take meetings with some of these directors and the ideas they had ... I was afraid someone would mess it up. I decided on my birthday that I would direct it.'

At the time, she was pregnant with her son, Henry. She was also relentless. Lemmons said she is still shocked that anyone took a 'dreadlocked eight-month pregnant woman that wanted to direct something wild' seriously.

Her husband, though, isn't surprised that his wife fought to get what she wanted. After all, Lemmons is the same woman who has always motivated him.

During the '80s when he was performing in Broadway musicals, Curtis-Hall began feeling stifled as an actor. After viewing Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It, he joined Lemmons to study filmmaking. Once they moved to Los Angeles, both of their acting careers picked up speed with Curtis-Hall playing memorable roles in Passion Fish, Crooklyn and William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. On the smaller screen, he earned an Emmy nomination on NBC's ER for his portrayal of a suicidal transsexual and he landed the steady gig of Dr. Hancock on CBS' Chicago Hope.

Despite making a good living at his 'day job,' the Julliard-trained Curtis-Hall said he never lost the dream to direct.

'Kasi showed me that it could be done. Eve's Bayou was such a personal story for her. And Gridlock'd was a personal story for me. It was a world that I knew,' said Curtis-Hall, who wrote the screenplay while studying at the American Film Institute in 1993. 'I showed it to a producer friend and he gave me some very good advice - Don't use your own money and find a star to attach.'

The stars were Roth and the controversial Shakur, who was just out of prison. Once he met the now-deceased rapper, Curtis-Hall knew no one else could do the role. Gridlock'd, which was in production for 32 days, was Shakur's final performance.

Interestingly enough, that experience with a high-profile artist may have prepared Curtis-Hall for his present project, All That Glitters. Produced for Sony Pictures Entertainment, the $25 million picture stars Mariah Carey as a gifted young singer who fights to find her own voice in the music world.

'I thought it would be interesting to take the classic paradigm and make a cool movie out of it. I wanted to strike a chord emotionally. Nothing is as immediate as music,' he said. 'It's amazing how quickly I can cry listening to good music. So my decision to choose All That Glitters as my next project was also amazingly simple.

'Unlike Kasi, I was not the second-coming. She had much more pressure on her to choose her next project. People aren't sitting around waiting for the next Vondie Curtis-Hall movie.'

An exhausted Lemmons, on the other hand, fell headfirst into the 'sophomore slump.' And worst yet, she wasn't even sure if she wanted to direct again.

'Eve's Bayou was such a deep, artistic experience for me. Directing just wasn't calling me after that. I felt fulfilled. I had unleashed something and gotten it off of my chest,' she recalled. 'I knew that if I was going to direct another film, it had to be a situation where if I didn't do it, it won't see the light of day.'

After months of reading uninspired scripts, Lemmons was ready to concentrate solely on writing. Then, she received a valentine from a caveman.

'My agent kept pressing me to read this really weird, wild script. After Eve's Bayou, I knew my next project had to go there. There was no point in playing it safe. I needed black angels.'

The Caveman's Valentine had black angels and more. Adapted from the unconventional mystery novel by George Dawes Green, the film is about a mentally ill former Julliard music student who now lives in a cave in a New York park. When a corpse is found on his 'doorstep' on Valentine's Day, the caveman decides to solve the murder.

'I got involved with the project in 1996. Sam Jackson was already attached. I didn't know if he was going to go for me again. When he said he wanted to work with me, we were off and running.' Lemmons shares screenplay credit on The Caveman's Valentine with Green and writer Scott Frank. 'It was a very hard movie to sell. A schizophrenic homeless detective? It was tricky.'

After years of meetings, numerous rewrites and false starts, Universal Focus and Danny Devito's Jersey Films finally picked up the film. The Caveman's Valentine - budgeted for $13 million - shot for 49 winter days in New York. It opens in New York and Los Angeles on March 2, 2001, and goes wide in April.

Ironically, Lemmons got the green light for The Caveman's Valentine when she was eight months pregnant with her second child, Zora.

'I should have a motto: Have baby. Will travel,' jokes Lemmons, adding that her son Henry spent his early months on her Eve's Bayou film set. 'I think it was purely a coincidence that both of my films were green lit when I was eight months pregnant. In the case of The Caveman's Valentine, I believe it was the story and the vividly drawn characters. That's what attracted me. I got into the character of Romulus. He's an artist and as artists, we always stand the risk of being misunderstood.'

After reading the dense book repeatedly, Lemmons made sure that she understood how the complicated material translated into a film.

'With Eve's Bayou - even now - if I want to call up the characters, I can access them very easily. But The Caveman's Valentine is an intricate, difficult mystery,' she said. 'I kind of lived and breathed it until it became mine. Then it became very much me. It was like an inhaling process.'

This process - which she had four years to perfect - included director of photography Amy Vincent. Vincent worked on Eve's Bayou and Lemmons tapped her to bring the vivid images of the caveman to life.

'We talked about the visual plan for the movie years before we started pre-production and we storyboarded most of the movie. That's the way we work. It keeps me from going insane. I also used the process of magical realism,' said Lemmons. 'For me, magical realism helps you to set rules for yourself that are very solid. You have a way through the movie.'

Lemmons' production map outlined how flashbacks and Romulus' hallucinations were shot and when to use different film or black-and-white stocks. She was also able to pull a few magic tricks out of her sleeve.

'Jersey Films was great. They knew what I was trying to do and told me to go as far as I could go. It was very liberating.' Curtis-Hall's directing experience with a major studio, however, wasn't the free-flowing experience he was used to.

'I'm not used to being questioned and I had to deal with people telling me their opinions on the script. I worked really hard at communicating my story as succinctly and clearly as possible, so we could all see the same movie. Now we're pretty much in sync,' said Curtis-Hall, who was in the fifth week of a 24-week post-production schedule at the time of this interview. The film is scheduled for a summer run.

'All That Glitters really taught me about compromise. It was about knowing when is the appropriate time to fight your battle and where you are going to draw your line in the sand. For me, it's always about 'is this going to hurt the movie?''

Shot on a 'pretty aggressive, very tight 50-day schedule,' the film also gave him an opportunity to use the skills he observed from years of acting for great directors.

'Working with directors like Spike - who likes to improvise - and John Sayles - whose words are so wonderful you are able to say them just as they are - has helped me develop my own style,' said Curtis-Hall, who also did rewrites on All That Glitters. 'I use the word gritty to describe what I do, but it's not grit just for the sake of grit. It's reality. I like shooting things that look like they are happening. It's there. It's credible. It's real.'

And there's no more real experience than directing a story that you've written, added Lemmons, who is currently adapting a novel into a screenplay for Miramax.

'The next film I direct, I will write. There's a freedom when it's something completely from you,' said Lemmons. 'You're always ahead of the game.'

In a perfect world, Lemmons and Curtis-Hall both like to work out their game plan with their actors during rehearsal. But for The Caveman's Valentine, Lemmons instead had conversations with Jackson about every single moment in the film. And Curtis-Hall had to wait until the first day of production to see his actors perform.

'The studios didn't cast an English actor until three days before production. And because he didn't have his work permit, he couldn't work. So, we didn't have rehearsal. On Gridlock'd, we had two weeks of intense rehearsal. We got a chance to go through the script and make it work,' said Curtis-Hall. 'That's how I prefer to work. Then I can really create an environment where the actor feels totally safe.'

Safety, for Lemmons right now, is found within the secure walls of her home with her two children and husband. 'Do I want to direct again? There was a time during the middle of The Caveman's Valentine when I wasn't so sure,' she laughed. 'There are a couple of more movies I want to do and I definitely want a body of work that people can reference. But I don't need to do a movie a year. Definitely, not.'

Her husband, on the other hand, plans to keep the ball rolling.

'I think if you can tread both worlds - make a good studio movie that you've written and bounce back and do a good, cheap independent film - that's the best of both worlds,' said Curtis-Hall, whose production company - Motor City Films - has a first look deal with Fox 2000 and Fox Searchlight Films. 'I want to keep writing. Keep acting. Keep directing.'

And at the moment, the happy couple won't be writing or producing features together. While attending film school in New York, they co-produced a documentary and a few years ago, they co-wrote a screenplay for Touchstone.

'We're very different and we're interested in completely different things. But there is an area of agreement and I do feel we could work together,' said Lemmons, mentioning that The Caveman's Valentine landed on Curtis-Hall's desk before it was submitted to her. 'People tell us that would break us up.

I tell them that they don't know us. Vondie and I have been through too much together. We've known each other for too long.'

Monice Mitchell is a frequent contributor to DGA Magazine.

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