Movie review and filmmaker interviews: American Violet

by John P. Meyer

I suppose I've been burned once (or twice, or thrice) too often when I see those portentious words scrolling across the cinema screen: "based on a true story." So when I saw those words appearing during the opening credits of American Violet, I found myself withdrawing a bit, purely from reflex.

But my concerns proved mostly unfounded, as American Violet turns out to be a satisfying and well-constructed tale of true-life courage in the face of long odds, populated not by cliched stock heroes and villains but by actual flawed human beings (as portrayed onscreen, that is: the actors are, by and large, pretty much flawless in their roles).

The story is based on the case of a young woman from Hearne, Texas named Regina Kelly who was arrested on hearsay drug charges. Her character in the movie is named Dee Roberts, and she's portrayed by luminous acting newcomer Nicole Beharie, whose only other film role thusfar was as a supporting player in The Express.

Here, Ms. Beharie gets a chance to carry the picture as the starring lead, and she rises to the occasion. As Dee, she steps into the shoes of a young working mother caught up in the implacably grinding gears of a legal system (and a crusading local D.A.) to whom justice proves less important than expediency.

(Ms. Beharie, as you'll discover in the interview notes, is Julliard-trained and had to employ a dialog coach to help with her portrayal of a low-income single mom of limited means and education.)

Also starring is Will Patton as local attorney Sam Conroy, who is just starting out in private practice after having served on the same police force whose paramilitary-style drug raid we witness in the first frames of the movie. Patton plays Conroy as an ordinary guy with a typical "minding my own business" world view who unexpectedly finds himself supporting the risky endeavor to clear Dee Roberts of wrongdoing. It's the kind of nuanced role any actor worth his salt would love to take on, and Patton has salt to spare.

Hiring Conroy in order to benefit from his local insight (and connections) is an ACLU attorney from back east named David Cohen (Tim Blake Nelson, almost unrecognizable behind thick-framed specs and a mild east coast accent). Cohen wants to turn Dee's case into a cause célèbre to serve as a means of overturning the ill-considered Texas law which holds that a single informant is sufficient for criminal indictment. (In Dee's case, the informant - we later discover - is induced to rat her out by someone with a vested interest in having her behind bars.)

We mentioned a crusading D.A., and that character - Calvin Beckett in the film - is portrayed by Michael O'Keefe with the requisite morally-superior nastiness. Beckett and his minions have a vested interest (i.e., their jobs) in maintaining the status quo by rounding up the usual suspects (i.e., low-income African Americans) and more or less railroading them into accepting plea bargains that result in both their rapid release from the system and their loss of governmental benefits (such as public housing).

Dee has much to consider before accepting her lawyers' proposal to buck the odds and put her case before a judge and jury: not only does she risk extended prison time, but a conviction would ensure that her four children are turned over to the custody of her recidivist ex-husband and his child-abusing girlfriend. Acting against her mother's advice (Alfre Woodard, as Alma) and her own misgivings, Dee makes the courageous decision to fight it out. After all, she's done nothing wrong - the charges against her are without basis. But will right prove sufficient to overcome might?

The eventual outcome will surprise no one by this point, though the getting there proves sufficiently entertaining to make the 103-minute journey well worthwhile. If the moralizing comes across a little heavy-handed at times, cut the filmmakers some slack: scripter Haney in particular was so moved by the true events behind the case (as heard on an NPR radio broadcast) that he was forced to stop his car on the freeway so he could weep without worrying about crashing into an abutment.

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As you'll read in the interview transcripts which follow, the filmmakers (director Tim Disney and writer Bill Haney) worked from a veritable library of depositions and audio recordings of the principals involved in the case as they prepared to shoot the film. The primary actors also watched video of the people they were lined up to portray in the movie.

Our interviews were conducted in the courtesy suite of a hotel in Austin during the SXSW Film Festival, and unfortunately the acoustics proved so challenging (given that multiple interviews were being conducted simultaneously separated only by a drapery) that I was forced to abandon all hopes of a podcast.

Joining me on the press side of the table was Todd Jorgenson of the Denton Record Chronicle. We first teamed up on Bill Haney and Will Patton, and then directed a set of questions at Nicole Beharie and Tim Disney.

INTERVIEW: Will Patton (actor) and Bill Haney (writer)

Pegasus News: How did you learn about the woman upon whom the story of Dee Roberts is based?:

Haney: I heard an NPR story. This extraordinary, powerful piece of journalism described this really courageous woman, torn between her principles and her children... she just wasn't going to give in. And as time went on, the stakes got bigger and bigger.

Pegasus News: What about her story made you think it would be a good movie?

Haney: It was a very rich environment. I think frankly it was my emotional reaction. A young, deprived African American mother; I'm a white kid from Boston listening to this story on NPR, and I'm crying so much I can't drive. I think that was what really made me decide.

Then I came down to Texas - I'm a documentary filmmaker also - and I went with a little crew and we filmed in the town, and we filmed interviews with almost all the (people) that inspired (characters) in the movie. And the more I listened, the richer and richer the material became. The material started to unravel in a beautiful way.

Pegasus News: You mentioned that you're a documentarist. Was there any thought of doing this as a documentary to begin with?

Haney: Yeah. Even though I'm a big fan of documentaries, and I make them, and I'm fortunate enough to have them well-received some of the time, the way in which we as audience members connect to really gifted actors, who can portray the nuances of a character in a moment, at a level of sophistication and subtlety - even, weirdly enough, provide a level of authenticity that even the real characters can't quite provide, because there's a certain depth that a really good actor can bring to it. We just thought it would have a bigger footprint in society with great actors. And we had our fingers crossed that we'd get some.

And we're really, really glad we did.

Denton Record Chronicle: How much research were you able to do into the real life case?

Patton: What was great was that because we had these tapes - hours and hours of him interviewing my character - so I could take these tapes, and watch every little thing that this guy did, and hear everything he said, the way he felt - and I used to watch those things every day.

It's really fun to play a real person, because real people don't have as many cliches as you would think. There's always something surprising about a real person. You're sitting there - I may be making a judgment about you without really knowing. You're thinking "He's this type of guy," and having a real person to study, you can't say "He's this type of guy." I break stereotypes to have a real person to study. And it raises the stakes, because if anyone was playing me, I'd be "man, you'd better take care of me." You know?

So I feel the same way if I'm playing somebody. I want to make sure that I don't cheat on them. Or in any way make them less - and hopefully not more than they are. I guess I'd want to err on the romanticizing a little bit, just because they're a fellow human being. So it raises the stakes. You want to take care of them. There's an obligation.

Pegasus News: So your character, Will - Sam Conway - he's kind of a moral crusader, and he has almost an Atticus Finch vibe going for him.

Patton: Oh, really?

Pegasus News: I thought so.

Patton: Well, good. The main thing that's interesting about me - and I think Bill's writing, too - it's interesting, because I was just realizing - just now, because Bill's told the story about NPR and about how it made him feel emotional. And I realized that through his writing I felt that.

Because there's a point where Nicole's character is in the deposition room. And she's saying that thing about "I think it's different when your whole life is changed, and you're locked away for no reason." And I think that every time she did that, and because of Bill's writing and what he felt, I would like break down and I'd have to go in the bathroom and sob.

So I felt that there was some kind of empathy that he created, which probably came from that moment. That was genuinely an important thing to feel this for these people, and helpful for all of us as human beings. There's something about the metaphor of prison that I think we can all relate to in some way: being trapped, being unable to get out of a situation, and having someone not treat you like a human being. Again,.making a judgment about you before they understand who you are.

I don't know if it answers the Atticus Finch thing, but I think one of the things that was interesting about the character to me was that he had, in the past, maybe, tried to remain comfortable with situations where he maybe should have stood up.

Pegasus News: Right.

Patton: And there's something more interesting to me about a person who doesn't speak up when they know what is true than a person who may be (pause) you know, way on the other side. I think we can relate more to: "maybe there's a little bit of courage somewhere that I'm not having." I don't know if that's the Atticus Finch thing, but...

Haney: One thing that's really nice, though - both the real character and the way Will portrayed him is that he's a reluctant advocate for change. He's not a crusader in the sense that he just feels - probably like we feel, probably like you guys - you know, we look at our country or our town or society and we read our newspapers, and we just go: "how the Hell is this going on?" And what can we really do about it?

And we get choices. And some of the choices are very subtle. We need, for our little movie, we need to see a lot of people. We need you guys to care.

And sometimes there's a moment when you're really called. Like "I need you. I need you now. I need you a lot." It's a different thing. There's a kind of courage to these two people because they had a real choice.

She had a choice: she could plead guilty like almost everybody does. He had a real choice, and he had a real out: my wife is sick, I'm just starting my practice. "I'd love to, but I can't." He had a real out. (And she did to.) "I'm gonna plead guilty because of my kids. They need me." Then it hits you in a different place.

Patton: He really put himself on the line even more than you see in the movie. I think there was a danger - more than just the cop car that you see... I get the feeling that he really put his life and career in jeopardy. I think there were some serious threats.

Haney: Yes, there were.

Denton Record Chronicle: So, you heard the NPR story and then you went down to Texas. When you first heard the story, was there maybe a bit of disbelief, like "this kind of stuff can't go on in this day and age..." When you went down to Texas did you sort of feel a little bit of discovery at that point? "Wow, it's even worse than I thought," or something like that?

Haney: I guess there were two parts to it. By the time I got to Hearn, I had gone to the ACLU and gotten all the court records. And so I had 50,000 pages of affidavits, and read them. I just was astonished.

And then I went, "O.K., is this just this one screwed up situation, one screwed up town?" And they started sending me records from towns all across America.

Now of course there's different aspects, all right? The race issue is not as central in Boston - but drug war - the random carnage of drug war is happening everywhere. The predatory system on people who are vulnerable, the ill-funded public defenders, the industrial justice system: this is America all over the place.

Pegasus News: So the case that you portrayed - the Dee Roberts person - was kind of a microcosm of what's happening on a large scale?

Haney: I feel that way.

Pegasus News: And the result of her case, right, changed the Texas judicial system?

Haney: And in fact... I'm doing a screening for 100 Texas legislators in the Capitol Wednesday (March 18). And we're screening in Hearne tomorrow. And you wouldn't believe what we're being told. I mean, I don't know the truth because I'm not there. But we're being told that police are doing bad stuff and the KKK may be coming, and there's a lot of chaos going on. So that was what we knew before we got down there.

When I got there, I thought that this is an America that I hadn't seen before. This girl was pregnant at 13 years old and that isn't uncommon. She had four kids before she was 20. Not uncommon. When we went to the police station and pulled the police records of her boyfriend - I don't know exactly what was going on, but he was beating her three times a day and it would say "release per D.A." Maybe there was a good legal reason, I don't know.

There was a kind of a depth and the kind of power - almost sort of a feudal power - was astonishing to me. And that these guys run for office and that people contribute to these people who are running - and by the way putting people into for-profit prisons that are contributing to the (campaigns). So I kept finding more and more things, and Tim (Disney) started going through them with us - and frankly Will (got to the point where) he knew the tapes of his character better than I did, and I think we found more.

Pegasus News: So whose idea was it - I presume it was yours since you wrote it - to use the (2000) presidential election TV coverage in the background?

Haney: Well, it was inherent in the story - and obviously wildly ironic, and painfully so. That then-governor Bush as set up a fairly unique (way of) financing the drug task forces in the state of Texas, and using quotas - that while he's running for president he's declaring he's wildly against quotas - so that the money's being allocated in a quota system and that he's against for affirmative action but for drug recidivists is kind of an odd irony.

It obviously gives us a sort of national connection in the way that you were referring to earlier. The way that it was sort of visually connected: frankly, Tim and I have been partners for such a long time I don't honestly remember whose idea it was. It says my name on the script but Tim...

Pegasus News: He works closely with you.

Will, you've played a lot of sinister characters...

Patton: I have?

Pegasus News: ... and you've played a lot of good guys. So I guess the question is, which type of role to you prefer?

Patton: I don't know, I (pause) I have to find something I can hold on to. And sometimes you can find that in sinister, or (pause) there's gotta be some kind of secret I can hold onto in whoever I'm playing. Something that relates to something in my life that I can bring to it. And that can be sinister or heroic. Or both at the same time.

Pegasus News: There you go.

Are you a shooter in real life, because I wanted to tell you that - at the firing line, at the range, you were (standing) a little too far back.

Patton: (Laughter) True, I was, I was. And I'm not (a shooter). Although, my guy was there that day.

Pegasus News: He should have pointed that out to you.

Haney: Will carried a gun in his boot, throughout the entire film.

Patton: I forgot about that.

Haney: That's his sinister secret.

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INTERVIEW: Nicole Beharie (actress) and Tim Disney (director)

Denton Record Chronicle: You guys are doing the "Texas Tour" now, which is sort of the real test, isn't it? To see how it plays here?

Tim Disney: Yeah, I think so. There was a good response from the Texas audience. I can fairly say it was "rootin' tootin'."

(General laughter)

At the end there are some postscript, "where are they now" kind of things, and one of them that the law in Texas has changed, in part from what happened in this case, and in other cases - the Tulia cases and others. The character that Nicole plays - Dee Roberts in the movie - testified before the legislature as part of the lead-up to that. That always gets a little bit of applause from the audience, but that got thunderous applause from the audience yesterday.

Denton Record Chronicle: It is a film that sort of infuriates you in a way, gets you a little riled up, and the fact that this takes place in 2000 and stuff like this is still going on is pretty aggravating and infuriating...

Tim Disney: Not just in Texas, though.

Pegasus News: So the movie was filmed in New Orleans, right? How did you decide on using New Orleans as a stand-in for Texas?

Tim Disney: Louisiana offers very generous tax credits. Believe me, we wanted to film in Texas - I would have preferred to film in Texas. But financially, it was just an offer we couldn't refuse.

Plus they have fantastic food there.

Interestingly, a lot of the crew came from Austin. Because there isn't as much work here as there has been, people go to New Orleans to get work.

Nicole Beharie: But there's something really cool about us shooting in New Orleans. The post-Katrina thing was permeating. Even some of the local hires - the actors - you felt like they could get behind feeling disenfranchised. Feeling like there was something strange about their city. And in our story, because of what they had experienced.

Tim Disney: New Orleans is like a unique little island, I guess in the sort of way that Austin is in Texas. We filmed on the west bank, across the river from New Orleans proper, and it feels very much like East Texas. And I think you feel that. It's a pretty gritty, real-looking movie.

Pegasus News: Oh, yeah, it is.

Nicole, you're like Julliard-trained, right, so what sort of inspiration do you draw on for a role such as the one of Dee Roberts in the story?

Nicole Beharie: I think that the huge thing that I was given, was A: that I had a response to the script, had a response to the story, the material, and that there was footage of the actual people (that I could use) for my process, my preparation. Tim had built at ACLU this documentary thing, so there was tons of footage of the town. So I had all these DVDs, and I think that was the beginning of me creating a world for myself. And creating this woman, or turning it into more than just an idea.

Pegasus News: Where did you grow up?

Nicole Beharie: Me? Oh, my goodness, that story.

(General laughter)

Um, I just moved around a great deal. I spent a lot of time in the south, in South Carolina. In Georgia, in Florida...

Pegasus News: So you didn't have any trouble doing a Texas accent.

Nicole Beharie: Well, I hope you think so! I hope it works!

Tim Disney: Yeah, I was a little worried about that, no not just for her but for the entire cast, because the Texas accent - and then there are different kinds of Texas accents - is not a generic southern accent. Although you could probably do a generic southern accent and that would satisfy much of the country, we knew we had to do better than that and we brought in accent coaches to help out.

Nicole Beharie: But actually, there's one lady - a local hire - in the courtroom, and she says "I'm (indistinguishable, though heavily accented) - and you can hear New Orleans.

Tim Disney: And there's another guy another guy, too, the store owner - who's about to hire you? - he's New Orleans all the way.

Nicole Beharie: Yeah.

Denton Record Chronicle: How did you go about getting this character? How did you get in the film?

Nicole Beharie: I got involved through auditioning. Getting a script from my agency, and reading it and - like I said - just right away being moved by it and wanting the part. I loved it so much that - after meeting them (ref. Tim and Haney) - I decided that whether or not I got to play Dee, I just wanted to be a part of it. And I was willing to play Claudia - the creepy girlfriend who's smoking the cigarettes and abusing children. I was like, "I care about this story being told so I really want to be a part of it."

Tim Disney: The sad truth is that the roster of young African American leading ladies is very short, because there are so few leading parts written for African American women. It's just a sad, sad fact. So we were able to meet and talk to most of the people who you would put on your list as candidates for that. And lovely, fantastic actresses, all of them. And I think we could have made a very successful movie with any one of those people.

In the end we cast Nicole for two reasons: one is because she was the best person that we saw. She just blew us away in the auditions. And we really put her through it, too, because we had her back three times. And secondly, because of her age. Something very significant about her character is that she had her first child at 14 and she's 23 years old and already has four children. So she's both a mother and a child at the same time, and there's a vulnerability to that, and it places her in between, in these two sets of parental relationships. That was really significant. If we'd had someone a little more mature, you know mid-thirties, that would be successful too, but that would not have this very crucial quality.

Denton Record Chronicle: Just as an aside, I thought Alfre Woodard was fabulous.

Tim Disney: She was excellent.

Nicole Beharie: So was Will (Patton), Michael O'Keefe...

Denton Record Chronicle: The cast was really strong, but I thought her in particular. We don't get to see as much of her as I think we need to, or maybe deserve to, but she really stood out in this.

Tim Disney: She's one of the best, she really is. She's just a joy to work with

Nicole Beharie: Yeah. And a laugh riot

Tim Disney: She's very funny.

Pegasus News: So, did you buddy up with her? Did you buddy up with anybody?

Nicole Beharie: I buddied up with everybody! I feel like the cast took care of me, because it was my first thing - it was like my first time being on set every day, and quite a bit to do - and they watched out for me and gave me pointers, you know...

Pegasus News: Did you get pointers from Will?

Nicole Beharie: I got pointers from Will. And Michael. I got pointers from Will and Michael and Alfre...

Tim Disney: Tim Nelson is a Julliare graduate himself and he took a little - semi-paternal relationship to Nicole.

Nicole Beharie: He did, he did. And Anthony Mackie as well. Even when they weren't actually seeking me out and telling me things, just being there and watching me work. The special way that they do what they do. It was so priceless.

Pegasus News: So was this filmed before The Express, or after?

Nicole Beharie: After.

Pegasus News: Tim, tell us about the logistics of the big police raid scene. You had a helicopter...

Tim Disney: I called my kids and said "This is the day! We get to work with guns and helicopters! Awesome! We're doing an action movie!" I'd never filmed a scene like that before, so that was new for me. It was something we planned very carefully. This is a small budget movie, so we didn't have a lot of resources to do this kind of stuff. Ideally, you'd have days to film something like that. We did it all in one day. And you know it's pretty powerful. It came out pretty well.

Nicole Beharie: Yeah.

Tim Disney: I learned a lot from that - about how to plan these things. But it's scary to know as a director - you know like that day the meter was running in a big way. There's an old saying - I think Billy Wilder said "Making movies is like laying track from a steaming locomotive. You have to do it quickly, but you have to do it right." And that was one of the days when I really thought that.

Pegasus News: Was that a real apartment complex?

Tim Disney: That's a real apartment complex. It was evacuated the day of the storm (Katrina), and it has been abandoned since then. And it was creepy. The people left it when they got the call. There was food on the tables, and laundry in the machines, it was really, really a creepy (place). On and off squatters had been living there, and it had been kind of plundered - but it was great, 'cause we could control our area, but we had to do a lot of cleanup on it. But it had that "lived in" look, to say the least.

Denton Record Chronicle: When you guys did the research for this, did you run into any resistance from some of the people involved in this, since it ... obviously paint a lot of people in the best light.

T: Not really. The town where the events took place is a small town, and so everybody knew what was going on. And we did a recon trip before the filming, and we went to Franklin, where the county seat is and went in the courthouse just to look inside the courthouse, and the district attorney was there, in the courtroom, and there was a trial going on, and the accused, and the accuser, were both people who had been involved in the original events. And I knew that because I'd read the transcripts from the trials and the depositions, and that was eight years on.

And two parts to that: one is "oh my God, it's the same people, churning through again and again, that's what this world is like," and there was this unspoken moment with the district attorney - he must have guessed who we were - as much as we try not to look like film types, I'm sure we look like film types - and to see him in this small Texas town - it was awkward, it was awkward. I didn't feel good about that, honestly. We have a responsibility to treat everyone fairly, including him. I didn't want to go in and invade his world. But it's our job to tell the truth the best that we can.

Denton Record Chronicle: One thing that struck me as I was watching it was that these characters, including the Dee character, are all very flawed characters. They're not - just as she's not a straight hero, maybe he's just doing what he's been taught to do. So I did think there was kind of an extra dimension to the characters that I thought...

Tim Disney: Some people have suggested to me that he's too simple a villain. In truth, we (pause) we softened him. Based on the pages of transcripts we read, the character that came out on the film was softened from the man we read about.

And secondly I would say that it would be interesting to make a movie from the mindset of a racist. This isn't that movie. This is a movie about a heroic young woman. We didn't feel like we could make both those movies at the same time. So we didn't focus on him. He wasn't our central character.

Denton Record Chronicle: There's a fundamental crowd-pleasing element to the movie, but at the same time are you able to tell whether audiences are really connecting to it emotionally? And whether the characters are resonating with them on another level beyond that?

Tim Disney: Well you know the film premiered at the Telluride festival, and then it was at the Mill Valley festival about a month later where it won the audience prize, and then this is the only other screening since then, so it's only been in front of a few audiences, and so far the reaction has been tremendous.

It's being released nationally on April 17, and everybody should go and see it and buy a ticket and tell all their friends. I'd also like to shamelessly pitch our website, americanviolet.com, if you're interested in the movie - and if you're interested in the issues, there's some information there about how you can become involved.