Do the rest of you agree?
Or are there certain subjects that
would be better left to white or
black filmmakers?
JENKINS I have an interesting per-
spective on this now having made
Moonlight. I debated if I should
even make that film because I’m
not gay.
DANIELS And yet he was able to
tap into the human condition that
transcended sexuality.What was that process of getting
to a “yes,” Barry?
JENKINS What’s interesting in
the question for me is to be aware
that the question exists at all.
And then to do the work and to be
responsible about it. I don’t have
[author Tarell Alvin McCraney’s]
experience; what do I have that’s
relatable to his experience? Let
me go knock on somebody’s door.
Let me go to a friend or a loved
one who has that experience and
go, “Will you share with me? And
if you share with me, I promise
to take the things you share and
try to translate them in a way
that is responsible and respectful
and meaningful.” And that was
what I did with Moonlight. I sat
down with Tarell because Tarell
lived that experience. And as an
artist, I had to really have a come-
to-Jesus and go, “OK, I don’t know
this better than him, so I have
to really inject the things he tells
me.” And then from that point,
we’re artists, you take author-
ship over the piece and you go out
and you create. I do remember the
scene where the two kids meet
on the beach. It was so difficult
because as a director, especially
as a writer-director, you know
everything. And I was like, “I don’t
know this shit.” I had to be really
open about what I didn’t know. But
I agree with Lee, it’s not black and
white. It can’t be.
SINGLETON There are two sides of
this coin. The Last Emperor was
a huge hit when it came out, and
Bernardo Bertolucci is Italian,
not Chinese. But he did his home-
work. Steven Spielberg did The
Color Purple. Black people assailed
against that when it came out,
but it’s a classic among African-
Americans now. But for every one
of those films that was made by
someone who was from another
culture exploring something thatI’ve never been as distraught as I was at the
Vanity Fair party after the Oscars. It’s not the kind of
thing where you go running off with pompoms.
I wasn’t sure that thing was mine or who it belonged
to because of how everything happened.”
JENKINS147
OSCARS: EDDY CHEN/ABC VIA GETTY IMAGES.