-By David Noh

Focus Features’ Pariah is a bracingly original, groundbreaking movie, the first major American feature to focus on the lives of African-American lesbians. It’s the story of Alike (Adepero Oduye), a Brooklyn teenager and aspiring writer, struggling to find her own identity in various worlds, which include high school, her tight-knit, often repressive family, and a sometimes chaotic lesbian scene which often forces labels like “butch” or “femme” on women.

First-time director/writer Dee Rees is a born filmmaker, for not only is her movie masterfully shot, cut and scored, but it is at all times informed by searing empathy brightened with real humor, as well as that rarest of cinematic virtues—surprise. Film Journal International encountered the lovely, keenly intelligent Rees at the Waldorf Astoria, a veritable universe away from her Alike’s gritty turf. Amid the holiday bustle of tourists and power-lunchers, she recounted the odyssey of this very special project.

Film Journal International: I’m dying to know how your movie, so brave and unique, has been received so far?
Dee Rees: It’s been really well-received, across both gay and straight communities. People are really responding to it in screenings and we’ve been excited because it validates what we thought. Our first screening was at Sundance, where it was developed at their Lab, and that’s more of an industry crowd, so you’re not necessarily talking to real theatergoers. From there, we screened at New Directors/New Films, which was more of an Upper West Side, East Side crowd, an older demographic, and they were really into it. From there, we did Toronto and now we’re getting into more regional screenings and screenings for queer groups.

In San Francisco, we screened for a mainly black and Latina organization and we are doing one for the Ali Forney Center here in New York tomorrow. So now, actual kids who we’re representing are seeing the film and saying that we told their story, so it’s a good feeling. If it wasn’t authentic, I knew I would hear the criticism, but everyone’s been really positive.

FJI: I live right on Christopher Street [in Manhattan’s West Village], where so many of these kids hang out, on the way to the pier where they all meet.
DR: Oh, so you see them every day. It was too expensive to film there, so we shot at a location that evoked the same feeling. Yes, every Friday and Saturday night, they take over.

FJI: I’ve lived there for years, and seen it change from a white gay male ghetto to becoming yuppified, and then all the black kids started coming. They do get wild and there’s a lot of tension in the community about it because stuff goes on, but you really put a face on these kids for a lot of people, like my neighbors and new residents, who may be unfamiliar with their stories.
DR: That’s good, because we wanted to show the unglamorous side to this lesbian life: Everybody is faux fab, have on their gear and are strutting around, but sometimes the reality is this is the only place to go home to.

FJI: You certainly did not shirk from presenting the scene from the very start of your film, with that nasty club song in the beginning [referring to cunnilingus in the most hardcore way].
DR: Yes [laughs]. I figured either the audience is either going to get up and walk out at that point or stay, so if you survive the first 30 seconds, then you’re home. A basically weeding-out song.

In that scene, I wanted to focus on these girls and their varying body stances [signifying their butch/femme status]: We’re not gonna explain it to you or hold your hand, but trust the audience to get it. Alike is disoriented and overwhelmed in an atmosphere where she’s both attracted but repulsed, and we experience this too because, like her, we’re not quite comfortable in this environment, really with her and seeing it through her eyes.

FJI: Alike is like a classic misfit character, in that she doesn’t easily fit into any category of lesbian.
DR: She’s allowed to be in between, and we wanted to show there’s a range of gender identity. Personally, that was one of the things that I really struggled with, because I used to feel that I was not really hard enough or not really soft enough, so I’m kind of like mush. I felt invisible in some ways, and here, I was taking that on: that it’s up to you to be strong in yourself and comfortable being who you are.

FJI: The language is so authentic and street, no disclaimers or subtitles, forcing you to just go with the flow.
DR: By context, you pick it up, you realize what they’re referring to in these lines. Each character has their own voice: They don’t all speak the same way. Like Laura [Alike’s best friend] doesn’t speak the way Bina [Alike’s first lover] speaks. So it’s important when writing to keep in mind that even though you have one voice, you have to imagine what the voice of your character would be and clearly delineate those worlds between middle-class family and working-class and artsy bohemian class.

FJI: How old are you, and what are your filmic influences?
DR: I’m 34, but growing up, I was more interested in books, so for me it was Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Toni Cade Bambara—those were my mainstays. I loved those stories about coming of age and identity and it was through those stories that I felt my own experience reflected. I felt like I wasn’t alone when I came out because I had read Audre Lord. As for films, I like Cassavetes because it feels so immediate and real; you don’t hear the script, you feel things are really happening. And I like Euzhan Palcy’s Sugar Cane Alley, not typical film-school tastes.

I went to NYU grad film school. I’d never touched a camera, so for me it was a good experience, a total immersion, trial by fire. The learning curve was very steep—it broke me in, who had no prior art-school experience like so many others. I realized that the place I could start was with the writing and if I could write a good story, no one could take that away from me. You can build from there. [At NYU] I met my cinematographer, Brad Young. I was gripping for him on a student film, badly, gelling windows [laughs], and I kept peeking through the camera. I ended up approaching him about shooting my thesis film, which ended up being Pariah.

Spike Lee [Pariah’s executive producer] teaches the master class there in directing and he offered internships for students, so of course I applied. Inside Man was my first onset internship in 2005. I sat two chairs away from Spike, so I got to observe how he worked with actors and crew, an amazing learning experience.

He’s seen several cuts of Pariah and he would give us advice on the cuts, feedback on the script, and the greatest thing he offered was brutal honesty. He’d be completely objective and mark up the script with a Sharpie, really taught me how to accept feedback and criticism as a filmmaker. Your intention doesn’t matter if people aren’t understanding it, and when you make a film, you can’t explain stuff like, “Oh, the truck didn’t show up that day.” None of that matters, all that matters is what’s on the screen.

FJI: What was your budget? The financing must have been quite a journey.
DR: Less than half a million. Nekisa Cooper, my producer, had that burden, like rolling a rock up the hill for five years, even though we had my short film and the pedigree of Sundance Lab. People still really saw this as being too small and specific, thought it wouldn’t be commercial or something people would be interested in. So our first investors we met at Outfest—a lesbian couple who invested in us because they wanted to see the story told. We figured private equity was the way to go, because people who invested were people who were interested in seeing the story. They didn’t care whether they made it back or not.

FJI: How did you find your lead?
DR: Adepero came in while we were shooting the short version of the film, wearing her little brother’s clothes, the first day of auditions and she killed it. We couldn’t believe we found her on the first day, so we made her come back a couple of times to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. It was clear to me that she really had that outsider experience, the memory of being someone who wasn’t included or didn’t quite fit in.

FJI: Is she gay, and are you life partners with Cooper?
DR: I don’t talk about her sexuality, but you can ask her directly. As for Nekisa, no. We used to date but, no, it’s all good. [laughs] The film is like our baby, and she will definitely be my producer in anything else I do because I know she’ll support me creatively and have my back.

We did have a cat-and-dog fight about that opening song. She was absolutely against that song and said, “Okay, leave it, but you know as soon as it gets picked up, they’re gonna change it,” but they didn’t.

FJI: Kim Wayans is just incredible as Audrey, Alike’s homophobic mother.
DR: Yes! We had seen a lot of Audreys, but nobody was hitting it, people were just giving me the angry black woman thing. Audrey’s deeper than that. Kim’s manager also manages somebody else I was looking at, and he was like, “Just see Kim,” and we said, “Oh, we loved [her in] ‘In Living Color,’ but we’re not sure she’s right.” But Kim came in and blew it away, had that loneliness and vulnerability and saw Audrey in a way that no one else could see her. She was perfect for the role and eager to do something dramatic, her first dramatic role.

FJI: If you can do comedy, you can do drama.
DR: I think so, but I don’t think it goes the other way. Comedians have more in them; comedy comes from a place of pain in the first place.

FJI: Audrey is a great character. I think many people can identify with her, although she’s not on our page. She’s real and there are tons of people out there like her.
DR: I think that’s it. She’s not coming from a place of hate and obviously thinks she’s loving her daughter in the best way. Nobody sees themselves as a villain.

FJI: Arthur, the father was also interesting. Those mysterious, upsetting phone calls at home almost made me wonder: Is he on the down-low sexually himself?
DR: No, no, no. Arthur is maybe thinking of getting into an affair, but we don’t know if he’s consummated the act yet. But the idea is that he’s emotionally cheating on Audrey and has something else going on.

With all the characters, I wanted them to be full, not too virtuous and not too flawed. So Arthur is a great dad but maybe not the best husband, how everybody has good and bad points. And he’s kind of a catch, so you can see why Audrey’s hanging on.

FJI: I love how you don’t explain everything, because people are a mystery. In my own family, everyone has their secret lives and desires.
DR: Exactly. There are things you know and don’t know, explicitly. I wanted the writing to have things in between the lines and implied without having to say it. You can get more out of a look about what they’re thinking.

FJI: Pernell Walker gave a beautiful performance as Laura, with a sexy Errol Flynn swagger, as well as heartbreaking tenderness.
DR: She was part of my short film. We cast it in pairs, as with Alike’s parents, and it was great chemistry between her and Adepero. It was important that not only the actors be good but the chemistry as well, and you could believe they’re best friends.

Talking about the comedy thing, Pernell’s done it, and I think she could be a great comedic actress. Between takes she’d have us dying with laughter, and could have a one-woman show.

FJI: Was there a lot of improvisation?
DR: Not really. I gave them plant lines, from which things would spin off. Like when Alike asks, “Did you have sex at your prom?” and the parents had to respond to that. I tried to do guided things where one actor might know something but the other doesn’t, but I actually gave them the lines so they didn’t have to come up with something.

I think sometimes the danger is when the performance is so good, people think: Oh, they must be improvising. People give more credit to the performing than the writing, but there are lines and they actually fit.

FJI: From the cleverly shot club scenes (so damned hard to do convincingly onscreen) to that final, breathtaking moment on the rooftop, your cinematography was insanely good.
DR: Brad Young actually designed and built his own lights and rigged them in such a way that the actors could move freely. He’s in Sri Lanka now with another film and actually won the cinematography award at Sundance. He’s an artist and all about helping to tell the story, not just making the prettiest images, like some cinematographers, but all about collaboration.

We really wanted to use lighting and colors to heighten the characterization, so with Alike and her pain, it’s very dark in the beginning, and then gets lighter and lighter. The shots are very tight and claustrophobic at first, and then widen out until it gets to the roof.

FJI: What’s coming up for you?
DR: I just finished another script for Focus Features called Bolo, a thriller set in the South, and I’m also working on a TV series for HBO, about a private school and corruption. I also finished another script about a 50-something insurance adjuster, recently divorced, lately incontinent, who has to redefine happiness for himself. It’s a metaphor for loss of control over your life. [laughs]

FJI: So the offers are pouring in?
DR: Yes, life is good.