Sam Pollard Transcript “If I said the name August Wilson, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? A Storyteller. He was always looking and listening. It was about these otherwise undocumented lives and otherwise unheard voices. He finds the poetry in everyday life and sings to it. Prophet. Truth teller. An amazing visionary. He was a distiller of the black experience.” Jo Reed: That was an excerpt from August Wilson: The Ground On Which I Stand, a documentary directed by Sam Pollard as part of the PBS Series American Masters and this is Art Works the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I'm Josephine Reed. Tony and Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright August Wilson has been called America's Shakespeare.  His monumental achievement is his century or Pittsburgh cycle of ten plays, one set in each decade of the 20th century.  Nine of the plays are set in Pittsburgh's Hill District, the African American neighborhood where Wilson was raised. Individually the plays, like  Fences, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, are powerful pieces of theater that give voice to ordinary African-Americans in their struggles and their joys, but the plays together are an extraordinary theatrical and cultural event:  Wilson gave us the arc of  black life in the Pittsburg through the 20th Century.  By hearing the poetry in the language of people at the barber shop on the street corner, in the diner, and bringing it to the stage, Wilson showed us a people rarely seen, let alone celebrated. Excerpt: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: White folks don’t understand about the blues. They hear it come out, but they don’t know how it got there. They don’t understand its life’s way of talking. You don’t sing to feel better, you sing because that’s a way of understanding life. The blues help you get out of bed in the morning: you get up knowing you ain’t alone. There’s something else in the world. Something’s been added by that song. This be an empty world without the blues. I take that emptiness and I try to fill it up with something. Jo Reed: It is our good fortune that Sam Pollard has directed the documentary of Wilson's life and work, The Ground On Which I Stand. An accomplished filmmaker, Pollard has won numerous Emmy, Peabody, and Polk Awards. And, just as significantly, for the last forty years, he's been editing, producing, and directing films about the African American experience. He's worked as an editor, most notably with Spike Lee on films like Mo Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Four Little Girls, and When the Levees Broke.  As a director, his films have included: Eyes on the Prize 2, Slavery by Another Name, and Marvin Gaye: What's Going On.   When I spoke with Sam Pollard, I was curious about the profound impact that August Wilson's Pittsburgh neighborhood had on his work. Sam Pollard:  You know, it’s amazing how every creative artist sort of the wellspring of their artistic work comes from where they come from. And for August, growing up in Pittsburgh in the Hill District in the forties and the fifties and the sixties it really was the fuel for his work, you know. So I had an opportunity to go back to Pittsburgh into the Hill District two or three times before we started shooting. I was given a tour of the Hill District by a historian who’s in the film and he gave me a sense of all of the different places that August used to hang out at: the diner, the Jitney Station and, you know, he would tell us the stories about how August would spend his days sitting in the diner or sitting in the Jitney Station just writing, just writing. I was talking to the husband of Darryl Ford Williams who is one of the co-executive producers from WQED a week-and-a-half ago, and he grew up in the Hall District and he knew August slightly and his recollection said he remembered that a lot of people thought August was an odd duck, you know. He didn’t seem like one of the regular guys, you know, because he was always sitting in some booth in a dinner, in Eddie’s Diner writing, writing, writing, writing and they didn’t know what to make of him. But what he was doing was he was gathering the tools, he was gathering the stories that were going to help him shape the plays that he wanted to tell. And so the Hill District and growing up with his community, growing up with his mother and his siblings was very impactful, you know, in nurturing August’s work. And so we knew that it was important that people understood the wellspring from which he came. Jo Reed:  And you certainly succeeded in that. August Wilson began as a poet, but what do you think inspired him to pick up a pen in the first place? Sam Pollard:  I think, I think, you know, he was a poet and he wrote some wonderful poetry. He even continued to write poetry even after he became successful playwright and this widow Constanza at some point wants to have a collection published of his poetry. But, I think, that because he was also informed by the black arts movement and the Black Panther Party and, you know, what was going on in the sixties, he wanted to be able to have people hear what he had to say. And I think he understood that he wasn’t just going to be able to do it through poetry. He needed to do it through the plays. And so he started directing and he started writing little one acts and stuff in Pittsburgh, as he began this sort of journey to go from poetry to playwright. And he really didn’t really, sort of find his voice or find his direction until he left Pittsburgh and went to St. Paul and then got involved with the Penumbra Theater there and that’s where he really started to flower because then he was able to take everything he had inside of him, all of the stuff he had heard, all of the language he had heard from the people in the community in the Hill District and then was able to sort of put it down on paper and shape the plays that eventually would become this large body of work. Jo Reed:  Part of that learning, for him, was really learning to trust the authentic voices and not trying to reshape them or make them into something else. Sam Pollard:  That’s exactly right. He had to learn to trust the voices that he heard in the community. He had to learn to trust the fact that what those people were saying, when you really pay attention to it, it’s vital, it’s got depth, it’s got deeper meaning than what you think it might have when you first hear it.And he learned to hear that and understand that and he says, as you heard in the film, he says that he really started, as some of the critics said he’s really started to understand and hear the voices when he left Pittsburgh and was in St. Paul. So he needed a little distance to be able to say “aah, now I think I found the language. I hear the language. I’ll use that phrase. I hear the language and I can use it effectively now in the shaping of our plays”. Jo Reed:  And it was his great good fortune and our good fortune that he met Lloyd Richards. Can you just give us a little bit of background about Lloyd Richards and then the profundity of that relationship?  Sam Pollard:  Well, you know, it was a tremendous great fortunate, good fortunate for August to meet Lloyd. And Lloyd, you know, as we all know, those who know history, black history, black arts history, Lloyd made a real name for himself in 1958, ’59 when he did Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun. And he was considered the premiere African-American playwright director of his time. And originally Ma Rainey was two one acts. August sent his two one acts to the Yale Repertory Company and they looked at it and Lloyd looked at it and as Lloyd says in the film, he knew those people. He knew those people who talked in the barbershop. He knew those people. He knew that he had found, he was reading an original voice and he helped and shaped and guided August through his first six plays in helping to edit and refine his work and get it out there and give it shape and give it an arc. And as a lot of the actors say in the film, Lloyd Richards was someone they just felt great esteem for. As Steve McKinley Anderson says, he had a Socratic method. He never told them what to do. He listened to what they were doing and he let them find a way, which it was a sign of a really wonderfully creative director who knew how to get the best out of the actors who worked in those plays and how to make sure they understood the language, August’s language. I mean as Dutton says in the film, “If it wasn’t for Lloyd Richards there would not have been an August Wilson or a Charles Dutton because he really made those two guys shine when Ma Rainey came out.” Jo Reed:  Well, I think the thing with Lloyd Richards that’s so remarkable aside from what a fantastic director he was, he was also such a nurturer of talent. Sam Pollard:  Oh, he absolutely was. In my experience, in my long career, I’ve had a few people who were really strong nurturers of my latent talent and if it wasn’t for them nurturing me and pushing me, I wouldn’t be talking to you today and Lloyd was the same way. He could see that there was something there on the page in August’s work that needed nurturing, that needed refining, that needed someone who could mentor him and he was the person. Jo Reed:  You structured the documentary around August Wilson’s spectacular ten play cycle. Sam Pollard:  Yeah, you know, we felt when we structured this play that it wasn’t so much just to give you a biography of his life but also give you some insight into every play that he did and where they were coming from. And since he at some point around the fourth play decided he wanted to create a play for every decade, we felt we needed to honor that also, that every one of these plays was going to look at every decade in America and the African-American experience. So, even though the order is different than actually how the plays were produced and delivered, he did, he covered every decade. But what we were trying to do with every play say this is an element here in this play that you need to look at. For example, in Joe Turner, we wanted to look at that sense of spirituality and community. In Fences, you know, we wanted to look at the tension between a generation of African-Americans who were already in the north and those who were coming from the south looking to make their lives better. In Two Trains Running, we were looking at the fact that the impact of the people like Malcolm X was having on the community, in some ways, dividing the African-American community in terms of where they wanted to be, either going towards Malcolm X or going towards Dr. King. You know, in King Hedley, we’re looking at the impact of a black man who is struggling with being someone who just came out of prison who is trying to figure out how to make a living and have family. So every one of these plays deals with different aspects of the community, but they also deal with the aspects of mother and daughter relationships, husband and wives relationships, father and son relationships. Excerpt: Fences: “As long as you live in my house, you put a sir on the end of it when you talk to me.” “Yes, sir.”  “You eat everyday?” “ Yes, sir.” “ You got a roof over your head?” “ Yes, sir.”  “And clothes on your back?”  “Yes, sir.”  “Why you think that is?”  “Because of you.”  “Yeah, I know it’s because of me. Why do you think that is?”  “‘Cuz you like me?” “ Like you? I go outta here every morning and bust my butt, putting up with them crackers all day long because I like you? You is da biggest fool I ever saw. It is my job. It is my responsibility. You understand that? A man gotta take care of his family. You live in my house, you sleep your behind in my bedclothes, you put my food in your belly because you are my son, you are my flesh and blood, not because I like you. It is my duty to take care of you. I owe a responsibility to you, wait now. Don’t go along any further. I ain’t got to like you. Mister Ren don’t give me my money come pay day cause he like me, he give me because he owe me. Now I didn’t give you everything I had to give you, I gave you your life, your momma and me worked it out between us. And liking your black ass was not part of the bargain and don’t you try and go through life worried if somebody like you or not. You best make sure they are doing right by you. You understand me, boy?” “Yes, sir.” Sam Pollard: And a lot of these plays, even though they focus on the African-American community, they have a universal perspective. Jo Reed:  They most certainly do. Well, that’s the beauty of art. It’s almost as though, the more specific you are about a particular place, particular people, the more universal that message can become. Sam Pollard:  Absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s what August was about. His plays were not only looking at the African-American experience, but looking at the human condition, the human condition. And it’s an amazing kind of thing to think that a man could see that and document that and create characters and situations that speak to that. Jo Reed:  And characters that are so different. Sam Pollard:  Every one. Every one. And he wasn’t making characters that were even good or bad. He was creating characters from King Hedley to Charles Dutton’s character in Ma Rainey to Phylicia Rashad in Gem of the Ocean. He’s creating characters who have sort of a complex, like all of us do, has a complex relationship with everyday life. Jo Reed:  I think it was in part of that achievement and I think it was Laurence Fishbourne in your documentary who said what Wilson was doing was really showing the frustration and the glory of every day African-American life. Sam Pollard:  He’s absolutely right. Jo Reed:  There was a real celebratory aspect to his work but at the same time, no one could ever in a million years say he was blind to what the challenges were. Sam Pollard:  Absolutely right. He wasn’t. This man, his eyes were open. He could see. He was in tune with the world around him. He was always in tune. When I recorded Wynton Marsalis doing the performance of “Danny Boy” that he played at August’s funeral, before we started recording he was telling me a story about how him and August sometimes would walk from 59th street all the way up to Harlem and just talk about the social and political aspects of what was going on at the time. So this guy was in tune, he was in tune, with what was happening in the world, what was happening in America, what’s happening to black people. Jo Reed:  And he was pretty fierce about protecting African-American culture, wanting African-American theaters to thrive. He really was very pointed about that, wanting a director, an African-American director for the film of Fences, for example. Sam Pollard:  Well, when he had all of this clout being a very successful Broadway playwright, he knew it gave him an opportunity to speak up and speak out about the disenfranchisement of other African-American playwrights and plays and African-American theaters and that needed to be addressed. He said that he wanted an African-American director but, you know, he also knew that if that could happen he could also live with the fact that there were some productions of some of his plays in other countries with white directors or Asian directors. But he wanted to make sure that, first and foremost, if one of his plays was going to be done or documented or Fences was to be made into a film, it should be done by an African-American because they would be able to understand and speak to the experience that you would see in a play. Jo Reed:  When you reached out to actors like Viola Davis or Charles Dutton, Laurence Fishbourne, I mean I can go on, James Earl Jones, their emotional appreciation of Wilson as well as their intellectual appreciation of Wilson was very striking to me. They were all so clear about the history, the history that he was a part of and that he was pushing forward and the legacy that he left and the gifts that he gave actors with those plays and those characters. Sam Pollard:  Yeah, you know, that’s what, I think that’s one of the most striking things about doing this particular project that in sitting with all of these wonderful actors they, as you just said so concisely, were able to articulate from both an intellectual and an emotional perspective, how important it was to be in an August Wilson play, how important it was to interact with August, how important it was to see always the big picture that August’s plays were delving into and dealing with. And it made them feel that the work they were doing, it was important and gratifying and challenging. You know, Phylicia Rashad said every time she did Aunt Esther she was challenged to see where she could find the other nuances every time she read those same lines. Excerpt: Gem of the Ocean: I know about the water. The water has its secrets the way the land has its secrets. They’re some that know about the land, and some that know about the water, but there are some that know about the land and the water. They got both sides of it. Take a look at this map here, you see that right there? That’s a city. It’s only half a mile by half a mile, but that’s a city. It’s made of bones, pearly white bones. All the building and everything made of bones. I seen it. I been there, Mister Citizen. My mother lived there. I got an aunt and three uncles live down there in that city made of bones. You wanna go there, Mister Citizen, I’ll take you there if you wanna go. That is the center of the world. In time, it will all come to light that people made a kingdom out of nothing. They were the people that didn’t make it across the ocean. Sam Pollard: So she understood you were reading the same lines all of the time but every time she went out on stage and she delivered those lines there was other ways to create the emotions and the nuances that were deeply imbedded in that language. There was not one actor who didn’t feel that working in an August Wilson play was one of the highest honors in their career. Jo Reed:  What attracted you to filmmaking? Sam Pollard:  You know, I was attracted to filmmaking as a young man, when I was a young fourteen, twelve-year-old, I just liked watching movies. I loved watching films. I just enjoyed watching movies all of the time. It was at the time just traditional Hollywood films, never thinking that I would get into the film business but I just liked watching movies. And then in my early twenties when I was given an opportunity to get involved in the film and television workshop that had been started in 1968 by WNET, the public television station, they had this one year workshop to get more people of color behind the camera and the editing room. I was persuaded to join this program and initially reluctant but in retrospect it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Jo Reed:  And you began as an editor, why editing? Sam Pollard:  Well, I began as an apprentice editor and wanted to be an editor because in all honesty everything else about filmmaking frightened me. I was very uncomfortable with being on location. I was uncomfortable at being given a task of being an assistant camera man. I didn’t talk a lot in those early years. I was very shy. And I felt the most comfortable when I was in that secluded dark room editing, making mistakes that nobody could see that I could remedy by just changing the splice, so I felt comfortable there. So that was like the goal. Let me be an editor because I can work in isolation. I can create and nobody will ever see me until I want them to see what I’ve done. Jo Reed:  Were there films that you saw when you were younger that had a great impact on you? Sam Pollard:  The film, and I say this quite readily, the film that has had the most impact on me from when I was a young man to today is Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. And the impact is many fold. It’s the way it sounds. It’s the way it’s edited. It’s the way it’s acted. It’s the way it’s shot. It’s the structure of it starting with Charles Foster Kane dying, his last breath being Rosebud. That film probably touched me more than any film I’ve ever seen. And many of the films when I, even when I was an editor and I edited a film about Langston Hughes, I’ve been so influenced by Citizen Kane, I did start the film with Langston Hughes dying. And I’ve tried to do that any time I do a biography film, kill them off at the beginning and then bring them back like Welles did. Jo Reed:  You’ve been a director, a writer, an editor and film is such a collaborative process. Can you just help me a little bit in differentiating those roles and is it easy to move from one into the other since you’ve been a director when you’re an editor, do you find that you want to direct a little bit?  Or is it just somebody else’s issue to deal with? Sam Pollard:  I’ve been very fortunate since 1988 when I was a producer/director on Eyes on the Prize 2. And that initial transition from editor to director was a frightening one and I was afraid that I was going to fail, and I almost did fail, but I then succeeded. So since that time I have embraced the idea that every year I’ll edit a film and maybe the next year I’ll direct a film and maybe the next year I’ll edit a film. I like the going back and forth. I like the idea of being able to still edit for someone else and not feel like, oh, I should have really directed this. No, when I edit, I edit. And when I direct, I direct. So when I have an opportunity to direct and there’s a budget, I never edit those films. I always hire someone else. And the important thing to remember about filmmaking is, you mentioned this, it’s a collaborative process. And no man is an island when you make a film. Everybody needs a group of collaborators to make this film happen. And if you’re fortunate enough to get the right collaborators and you get the right material and you work hard enough maybe you can make a film that’s pretty respectable. You need everybody to make a film. You need people who are dedicated to the project and to the idea that we’re trying to do good work. Jo Reed:  Now, you move between documentary films and feature films. You mostly are an editor, I think, with feature films. Sam Pollard:  Yes. Jo Reed:  And you’ve worked a lot with Spike Lee. How did you and Spike Lee first hook up? Sam Pollard:  It was 1988. I was in the middle of editing on Eyes on the Prize. I was living in Boston and one day, Spike called my apartment and my ten year old son Jason Pollard answered the phone and he said, “Dad, Spike Lee is on the phone.” And I initially said Jason you must be pulling my leg because I had just seen Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. But he said, “No, dad, it’s Spike Lee.” So I got on the phone and it was Spike and he offered me a job to edit his film that became, that was originally called A Love Supreme and it became Mo’ Better Blues with Denzel Washington and Wesley Snipes and that was our first collaboration. And then I went on and edited, as you know, Jungle Fever and Clockers and Bamboozled and worked on Inside Man and then we did the documentary Four Little Girls and When the Levees Broke. And, you know, it was a long collaboration over twenty years. Jo Reed:  Now, let me ask you this, when you’re editing a documentary it would like there’s a different set of challenges on you than when you’re editing a feature film. Sam Pollard:  There is. The big challenge, this is the major challenge: the major challenge with editing a documentary is that you have no script, there’s no actors, and there’s no sense of sometimes where the story is going to begin and where it’s going to end. With a feature film, you have a script, you have actors, you have scenes, you have a script that usually, unless it’s a really rushed production, you know where it starts and you hopefully know where it’s going to end. Now, it doesn’t mean it won’t change after you’ve edited the first cut of the film and you screen it in a screening room with the director and some producers, but you do have a template there. So the challenge with the documentary is to take usually lots of footage, sometimes the interviews, sometimes vérité footage and to give it rhyme or reason in the structure. And people always ask me the question whether I prefer editing features or documentaries? And I can always say, unequivocally, documentaries and the reason is because I began as a documentary editor being trained by this gentleman Victor Kinesky.  I found it was an exhilarating, frustrating, exciting, scary challenge to be able to take footage that may not have had rhyme or reason and make a story out of it. I love that challenge. Sometimes I was successful at it. Sometimes I failed at it. But I always loved the challenge. I love coming back to it. So, that’s why I love editing docs so much but that’s that difference between editing a documentary and editing a feature. Jo Reed:  Always, it’s all about story, isn’t it? It always comes back to story. Sam Pollard:  Always about story, storytelling is the component for all of these approaches to filmmaking. Jo Reed:  You know, you’ve spent a long time with August Wilson, I have a two part question, first is it hard to let go and put it to bed? Sam Pollard:  No. No, it’s never hard for me because for me every project, every time you create something you reach a point of no return of where you get to the point where you say, I think I’ve done everything I can do with it. Now, it’s time to give it birth and let it go and let people respond to it. So for me every film there’s a point where I know that it’s over. So, it wasn’t hard for me let go at all. Jo Reed:  And the second question is you came in obviously knowing about August Wilson but you also, I’m sure, learned a lot more. Was there anything that was unexpected in what you found out about him? Sam Pollard:  I think the biggest thing that I didn’t know which I really got to know was the very complicated relationship between August and Lloyd. That was one thing learned. The second thing I think came away with understanding the deeper way than I might have thought I knew about was that even though August wasn’t a religious man, he’s a very spiritual man and he infused all of his work particularly Joe Turner and Gem of the Ocean with a level of spirituality that you can’t walk away from. It just grabs you. It grabs you by the throat. So those two things are the things are the things that I think I came away with feeling that wow this is another way of looking at this phenomenal playwright. Jo Reed: That was Sam Pollard. He directed the documentary August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand. It is part of the series American Masters and premiers on February 20^th at 9pm on PBS. You’ve been listening to Artworks, produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out how art works in communities across the country, keep checking the art works blog or follow us at @NEAARTS on twitter. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening. Transcrip will be available shortly.