Monsters and Men is set in New York, and depicts the shooting of an unarmed black man by the police, looking at the perspective of three men who were impacted by the incident. One, the man who witnessed and recorded the shooting; another, a black police officer, and finally, a neighbourhood kid torn between activism and his budding baseball career.
I would usually ask where your inspiration came from, but it is unfortunately all too easy to see in the case of this film, so, what made you decide to address the topic of police violence in Monsters and Men?
It’s something that when you turn on the TV, you see it all the time and you don’t know how to engage with it, you see something horrific, and you just go back to your regular life. There’s something sort of off about that. This film was a question to myself, how do I become actively engaged in the issues that are going on around me, beyond just being sad about it and not being able to do something about it. As a film maker I have a way to engage with material and hopefully get it to a wider audience. So I thought I could use my little platform to tell a story that hopefully will engage folks. I just wanted to find a way to get involved in things that mattered to me and that I think are important for us to talk about. This was my way of doing it, at least by starting a conversation.
What do you hope to come out of this film?
The best case scenario is for the numbers to improve. In particular in the US the number of unarmed black men and women that die at the hands of the police is alarming every year. If there is a way to improve that, even a little bit, that’s positive. So maybe for more police institutions to engage with new policies, or new training, or more community engagement. The film doesn’t necessarily set out to blame the police for all the problems, you know, America was founded on slavery so there is a deep rooted issue that is going to take a very long time to move beyond. That being said we have to recognise our past, we have to reckon with that to realise that a lot of our institutions have old practices, a lot of old rules that need to be addressed. So hopefully the film engages both sides in a way that feels progressive enough for us to find a common ground, to find a way for us to step towards each another. Can we put ourselves in a young teenager’s body for twenty minutes, can we engage with this kid? And on the other side, can we do the same thing with police officers? I’m not saying their job is easy, I think they have a very difficult job to do, but the numbers are disproportionate for the amount of black men and women that are either incarcerated or killed at the hands of the police. We have to find a way to address that, and I hope the film engages in that dialogue.
I don’t think the film is gonna end racism, you know, but hopefully what it will do is say ‘Can we find some common ground here, can we talk about it, can we stop shutting down?’ Often when we see things we don’t agree with, we just shut it down, we surround ourselves around like-minded people and create a bubble around our own thought process, and that makes sense because its safe there, but I think sometimes we are actually doing ourselves a disservice. I do think there is something about acknowledging that the other side exists, you don’t have to agree with it, but there needs to be some acknowledgement that these thoughts are around us, so that we can find ways to engage with it. That’s what the film at least tries to do, we have to find a way to move the conversation forward, so that a kid like Tamir Rice can live past 12 years old.
As it such an inflammatory topic, were you anxious about the kind of reception it would receive?
I was hoping it would be all good, but that’s just not the case. Any time you’re talking about a sensitive subject matter, you’re gonna upset some folks, that’s just the way it is. Most of the people that are upset with the movie actually haven’t seen it, which is the most interesting thing, it’s people who think they know what the movie is about, so they’ll go online and say ‘don’t even watch it, it’s left wing propaganda’ or various slurs. People that do see the film are actually pleasantly surprised by it, but the film does require you to sit still, to watch, and to be a little bit more attentive than for your typical blockbuster. It forces you to engage on a slightly different level, not everyone’s in the market for those kind of films. General audiences go to the movies for comfort. There’s a specific audience for this kind of movie who we were aiming at, but I think the film did tap into something that had the potential to break out of your typical art house audience. I think it has some commercial viability, so that a general audience can take this film and enjoy it.
