Lee Daniels and Gabourey Sidibe were in Toronto this week for the Toronto Film Festival to talk about their 2009 hit, ‘Precious.’ During this talk, Lee Daniels noted that 20 days into his shoot, he had to fire “everybody” because he was consistently unhappy with the dailies.
“I had a white line producer, a white AD, they also read [reviews that said my last film] ‘Shadowboxer’ was the worst film ever made, and they had zero respect for me, my vision, or what it was,” Daniels said. “They were New Yorkers that looked at this as a job. I kept coming home like, this doesn’t feel right, [Gabourey] doesn’t look right, the set looks weird. I felt like I was giving birth to an alien, literally, so I did something that I now don’t even know whether I’d have the courage to do, but I fired everybody. I shut it down.”
“I was so nervous about making sure that she was lit beautifully. It didn’t feel right,” Daniels continued. “Whether we were going to take a financial hit because of it, I just blindly shut it down.”
Gabourey Sidibe went on to further illustrate at least part of the issue by saying that the original cinematographer did not know how to properly light someone of her complexion.
Gabourey Sidibe - ‘Precious’ 2009
“One time we were shooting under a bridge in a literal gutter — not a ‘set’ gutter, like, gutter — with actual green slime on the ground,” the actress said. “I had to lay so they could light me on the ground, and I swear to you, I was on the ground for over an hour while they were trying to light me. Every now and then, I might run into a DP that doesn’t know how to light the variance of Black and brown skin, and that was one of the major problems with him.”
Makes sense to me that Lee Daniels would want to replace anyone who could not grasp his vision and was ill prepared to execute on what was needed of them.
And once again we’re provided with ample evidence that proper representation is critical in all aspects of the moviemaking process. Representation and the lack thereof have a deep impact on movies. If there were more diversity in the writer's room, behind the cameras, in the director's chair & in front of the cameras, then there would be no disparity. Cinematographers across the board would just know how to light black actors because they would have worked with enough of them to have gained the experience. Plus, there would be more black cinematographers to begin with. It’s a win-win.
Here’s to hoping that diversity within the film industry continues to grow.
