SLIFF 2016 Interview: Charles Burnett – Director of KILLER OF SHEEP

Director Charles Burnett’s KILLER OF SHEEP screens Sunday, Nov. 6 at 1:30pm at The St. Louis Public Library (1301 Olive St.). Director Burnett, a Lifetime Achievement Award honoree, and scholar Rebecca Wanzo (Washington U. associate professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and associate director of the Center for the Humanities) will be in attendance. This is a FREE event. Burnett’s TO SLEEP WITH ANGER screens Sunday, Nov. 6 at 8:00pm at The Tivoli Theater. Burnett and Ms Wanzo will be in attendance at that screening as well. It is also a FREE event.

Tom Stockman: You’re going to be here this weekend for the St. Louis international film Festival where their screening a couple of your films and giving you a lifetime achievement award, so congrats on that.

Charles Burnett: Thank you.

TS: I have it I have to confess I wasn’t very familiar with your body of work. I wanted to watch some of your films before I talked to you, but many of them are out of print. Fortunately, my local library had KILLER OF SHEEP, so I was able to watch that.

CB: I’m glad you were able to see it.

TS: Have you been to St. Louis before?

CB: I have, but it’s been a long time.

TS: Why did you want to become a filmmaker?

CB: I wanted to tell stories. I was attracted to photography and cinematography. I watched a lot of films growing up, and used to go to the movies a lot. I got interested in the camera aspect of it. Then I went to UCLA, and there you have to become a filmmaker. You have to write direct and shoot a film. So, that’s what I did. That’s how I became a filmmaker.

TS: So, KILLER OF SHEEP was your UCLA thesis project, Correct?

CB: That is right.

TS: I was listening to your commentary on the KILLER OF SHEEP DVD and you talk about rediscovering and restoring the film. Was it lost at one time?

CB: It was never lost. What happened was that when I made it at UCLA for my thesis film, I did not have to get a license for anything because it wasn’t going to be shown theatrically. Since it wasn’t going to be shown theatrically, there wasn’t any reason to get things like music rights ironed out. Many years later, when Milestone Films wanted to pick it up and release it on DVD, we had to go negotiate all of the rights at that point. It took quite a while to accomplish that.

TS: Had it been a long time since you had watched it?

CB: No, I was still attending screenings of it during those years.

TS: How did the idea for KILLER OF SHEEP come about? Was this autobiographical?

CB: No, it was not. It was based on stories about how some of the people in my community lived. I told in sort of a documentary fashion. I didn’t want to do anything with it that would remind anyone of a Hollywood film, anything that was manufactured. I just went down to the community and shot what was there.

TS: In that DVD commentary, the moderator asks you your feelings about the Blaxploitation films from earlier in the 70s. You said you’re not a fan of those. Your termed them “counterproductive”. Can you elaborate on that?

CB: A number of things had happened. Hollywood was making these awful films that distorted the reality of black life really starting with BIRTH OF A NATION. This just continued, you never saw films that dealt honestly with black people’s humanity. That’s one of the reasons I got into film. When Blaxploitation films came out, it was a time when just having a black character as a hero was enough. But these heroes were violent. It did not reflect the heroes that I had seen in the community, working class people who work hard for their families and to just survive. I thought these Blaxploitation films, with gangsters and pimps some things like that, and the violence, I just didn’t think that was necessary.

TS: Do you think those films reinforced negative stereotypes?

CB: Yes, but it was sort of ambivalent in a way. You had a need for a hero and a need for a black person to be in charge of his destiny and to be the subject of a story. And that was all positive, but just the nature of it all being involved with crime and drugs, that was what I rebelled against.

TS: Did you see those films when they were new?

CB: I saw some of them, but I just wasn’t interested in them.

TS: Were you ever approached to work on a film like those Blaxploitation films?

CB: Yes I was, but I turned that down.

TS: Who was at UCLA when you were there that I may be familiar with?

CB: There were a lot of people. Alex Cox, who went on to make REPO MAN. Julie Dash was there with me. Some of the names escape me, this was almost 40 years ago.

TS: Do you enjoy going to these film festivals in participating in Q&A’s?

CB: I do, it’s a great way to build an audience and you get to learn more and more about people and what they like to watch, and things like that.

TS: What’s your next project?

CB: I’m currently working on a new documentary about integrated housing that came along with the passing of the civil rights bill. Trying to get that finished.

TS: Well good luck with that. And I hope to see you this weekend at the St. Louis international film Festival.

CB: Thank you, I’m looking forward to it as well.