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Aaron Woolfolk: Oakland to Japan in Life and Film
by Doniphan Blair
Aaron Woolfolk on location shooting "The Harimaya Bridge" in Japan. Photo courtesy A. Woolfolk"The Harimaya Bridge” is a fascinating film straight out of Oakland – well, almost – but when it opened at the Regal Stonestown theater, in San Francisco, at the end of April, both CineSource and director/writer Aaron Woolfolk were too booked to connect.
Oakland, I say, not only because Woolfolk grew up on Carlsen, off 35th Ave, but because “The Hirimaya Bridge” is an intense story about war, death, art, love and, yes, race, and it bridges cultural divides with an artistry evidently learned early.
Woolfolk enjoyed Oakland and, went to the University of California at Berkeley, where he received degrees in ethnic studies and rhetoric. But his cross cultural chops were really challenged when he joined a teacher exchange program and found himself in rural Japan. Although that’s where dreams of “The Harimaya Bridge” started, he knew he would need much more to make them a reality.
Woolfolk returned to the US and went to Columbia University, where he got an MFA in film. Soon he was garnering a Directors Guild of America award for his short “Rage!” and awards and screenings, including on cable, for others. “Kuroi Hitsuji” – about a black ESL teacher in Japan tired of the local’s ignorance – essentially inverts some of the themes of “The Harimaya Bridge.”
Next he moved to LA and received ABC and Disney grants and fellowships. But he held tight to his story. It got a well-deserved boost when he met Danny Glover, who agreed to act, albeit in a minor role. Soon he had Ben Guillory and, shortly thereafter, a Japanese producer.
Eleven Arts is a Japanese producer/distributor with some 70 Japanese, Korean and US indie films and 200 television episodes, primarily for the Japanese market. “We met him in Los Angeles and brought him to Japan to film,” said Shun Ohara, of their LA office. “He is the first African American director who shot a feature film in Japan – completely unique and new.”
“The Harimaya Bridge” follows an African American man (Ben Guillory) who lost his father in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, and then his son (Victor Grant), years later, but again in Japan in a car accident. The son, a painter, was estranged, and the father journeys to Japan to claim his paintings as a way of reclaiming him. But they were gifts to his son’s Japanese wife and school meaning, suddenly, the black man is the insensitive one. A series of women – including his guide, a mentally disabled girl and his daughter-in-law, beautifully portrayed by well-known Japanese actresses like Saki Takaoka, Misa Shimizu, and Miho Shiraishi (who is popular with Japanese kids) – help him through his difficult emotions to the poetic conclusion.
“Aaron was very thoughtful and meticulous in every shot and scene he put together,” noted Ehren Koepf, who assistant directed the US side of the shoot. “He didn’t rush into anything. He knew what he wanted and had a quiet and calming approach to achieving his vision. He was very easy to work and very approachable when it came to creative input or other insight.” Subtitled in Japanese and English, as needed, the film was shot by Masao Nakabori, one of Japan’s better known cinematographers, and edited here by John Coniglio.
Actually, Woolfolk is one of the few non-Asians to direct a movie in Japan. “The Harimaya Bridge” was released in theaters across in Japan in 2009 to excellent reviews. It was featured in several international film festivals and was released across the US theatrically in April 2010. We caught up with Woolfolk by email.
CineSource: You have lived in Japan, but what was the story’s specific genesis?
Aaron Woolfolk: When I returned to the US and went to graduate film school at Columbia, I started to think about how I could establish a career as a filmmaker – what I could do to stand out? I really loved my experience in Japan. I thought, maybe, I could do something that combined my cinematic aspirations with Japan.
I started thinking about making a feature in Japan but I knew I had to show it wasn’t that far-fetched. For my thesis project, I wrote and directed two short films in Japan: the comedy “Eki” (“The Station”) and the drama “Kuroi Hitsuji” (“Black Sheep”). They did really well, played in top festivals, won awards, and played on cable television. That put me on the road to making “The Harimaya Bridge.”
How did you come to pitch it and get it produced in Japan, which your distributor tells me is rare?
I had written the script and gotten Danny Glover attached, to act and executive produce. I had also laid some key foundations in Japan, including in Kochi Prefecture, which is where the film was eventually shot. But things really began to take shape when producer Ko Mori came onboard.
We took several trips to Tokyo to push the project, and eventually got it to T-Joy, a specialty division of Toei, one of the main film studios there. The head of T-Joy loved the script – it’s cross-cultural themes and its message of tolerance. He really liked how the main American characters were black, which he saw as unique. He also liked my short films, and the fact that Danny Glover was attached.
Do you speak Japanese?
I’ve lost a lot of it since I don’t speak it every day. I was never 100% fluent, but I’ve never had a problem getting what I need in Japan or hanging out with people there.
How did you cast and crew up?
I spent three months living in Japan during the official preproduction phase. I had an office in Tokyo. We had a production company that got the crew together. I spent a lot of time getting to know key crew people whom I would be working intimately with, like the director of photography and the music composer. It was important that the fit be right.
I had Danny Glover and Ben Guillory from the beginning. In terms of casting in Japan, I was familiar with some actors in the Japanese entertainment industry, but of course I hadn’t lived there for years, so there were so many people I didn’t know. My staff in Tokyo would bring actors to my attention. I would look at the film and TV work of people, and if I liked them, we got in touch with their representatives. We did some auditions for some roles. Because we were going for A-list talent for the main Japanese roles, we couldn’t really audition people of that level. But I met with them and I studied their past work. Based on that we cast the roles.
What was Glover’s involvement?
As an executive producer for “The Harimaya Bridge,” Danny opened a lot of doors. He really went to bat for us when we needed it. He really believed in the story, and was very supportive of me as a filmmaker. Just having the name Danny Glover associated with the project was huge. He’s an international star, and his involvement gave the project legitimacy. The people in Japan were really excited to be working with a Hollywood movie star like him. He has so much respect there... not just from the actors and producers, but from the critics and cinema scholars who are intimately familiar with his body of work.
For me, directing Danny as an actor was a real treat, especially with “The Harimaya Bridge” being my first feature film. I learned so much from him and Ben Guillory. I mean, these guys are veterans, with decades of acting experience.
The story of a black soldier coming out of the Jim Crow era, being abused as a prisoner of war, and then the grandson reaching out to that same culture through art, love, was that what intrigued you?
When I was in graduate school at Columbia one of the class projects I did was a little documentary called “Men of Montford Point.” I interviewed several gentlemen who were in the first group of black Marines in the 1940s. Hearing their stories about the racism they had to face here, then going to fight in Europe and the Pacific, then coming back home to the same demeaning attitudes... a lot of people still don’t know that blacks were a significant part of World War II. I always try to slip in historical points like that, even if the film or play in question is about something else. The main storyline of “The Harimaya Bridge” – about a man dealing with the death of his estranged son while still scarred by the war-related death of his own father – gave me a chance to do that.
I’ve always been fascinated by guys who experience and survive war, then turn to the arts. Like Lee Marvin and Oliver Stone and so many European filmmakers. It wasn’t lost on me when writing the script how the main character Daniel’s last memory of his father was a trip to the museum, which led to both Daniel and his son to pursue a life in the arts.
Did you draw inspiration from challenging arguments or dialogues you had while living there?
When I first lived in Japan my home was in a rural town of 30,000 people, far from any big city. This was back in the early 1990’s, and for 99% of the folks there. I was the first black person they had ever seen in the flesh. I’d get comments like, ‘You must be a fantastic dancer,’ ‘You must be really good in basketball,” or “Show me your best slam dunk.’ I’d walk into a rural club with friends and the place would literally stop – just completely stop – because everyone expected me to get on the dance floor and perform a miracle. Or I’d have junior high school basketball coaches that had been coaching for years who assumed I could teach their students more about the game than they could. A lot of things I had to laugh at.
Aaron Woolfolk in Japan shooting well-known actor Ben Guillory (left) and the esteemed universally known, as well San Francisco resident, Danny Glover (right). Photo courtesy A. Woolfolk
Yet most of the people saying and doing such things didn’t mean to insult me. They had no context, they were simply going by images of blacks imported to Japan by Western media. At the same time, I went to Japan with my own stereotypes of Japanese. I’d say a lot of stupid things to them, too. So it wasn’t just them learning from me, it was me learning from them.
That experience was the inspiration for wanting to make a movie about tolerance, and about breaking down barriers that exist between people based on race, nationality, class, and generational differences.
Any thoughts about Oakland, its clash of cultures and possible development through cinema?
Good question. Well, I love Oakland, and am so happy to have been raised there. I live in Los Angeles now because of the work I do, but I’m always happiest when I come home. I think its diversity is something to be celebrated, and I see its clash of cultures as an opportunity. But then, I’m always an optimist. No matter what dire news and statistics I hear or read about my hometown, I’m always optimistic about its future. And I hope to eventually come back and be apart of that future.
I think Oakland is an ideal place to be a center of film. Actually, I’ve discovered there are already a lot of talented filmmakers in the East Bay. Beyond that, Oakland has a lot of people who would do well in film jobs. The landscape lends itself to filming. There is a diversity of architecture. There is plenty of space. It’s close to San Francisco and Berkeley, even places like Napa.
The thing is, so many movies and television productions that should be filming in California have fled the state because of tax incentives elsewhere. California has been slow to understand the shift in the needs of film and television productions, and has been slow to embrace those things that have drawn productions to other states and countries. Our lawmakers seem to be slow to understand that film production is great for our economy and can be a boon for local businesses, from hotels to corner grocery stores.
If California ever gets its act together and takes the necessary steps to reclaim its filmmaking heritage, then there should definitely be a push to make Oakland a center of filmmaking. And we should push for that high-speed rail between Northern California and LA that should have been built 45 years ago. But that’s another issue.
Yesterday, one of my Web clients told me about the tragic killing of his cousin and uncle a few blocks from our West Oakland office. Is there any thing a film could or should be doing to ameliorate that?
I’m sorry to hear about that… my condolences.Basically, I want “The Harimaya Bridge” to show people – especially young people – that there is a whole world out there beyond just their neighborhoods, and that there is a place for them in that world if they want it and pursue it. When I was at Columbia I did a lot of work with inner-city youth – elementary school to high school age – in the New York City area. I taught them about filmmaking, storytelling, working a camera, editing, etc. And it was an amazing thing to witness. When those kids saw opportunities that they didn’t see before, and when they saw a path to those opportunities, their whole perspective on life changed. All of a sudden, those things that seemed all-important and often led to violence didn’t seem so important to them anymore.
I’m happy to say that “The Harimaya Bridge” is a universal story that people of all races have embraced. Yet it was really important to me to make this film with the main characters being African American. One reason is that blacks and other groups are too often put into little boxes by the mainstream media. I wanted to have black characters that existed outside of those narrow confines.
Another reason is that I’ve always wanted to show images of blacks living international lives and having international experiences. In reality, it happens a lot! There are so many Africans and African Americans in Japan, for instance, living and working and doing interesting things, from teaching English to working in business to being a part of the music industry there. Young people in places like Oakland need to know that. They need to see, for example, that the world doesn’t begin and end in West Oakland.
I think the content of films can serve to inspire people, open up their eyes, and change their lives. But more than that, I think filmmaking itself – the act of doing it – can do the same.
Your film addresses healing from war, is there a metaphorical tie-in to our own communities?
Wow, that’s a great question. I haven’t really thought of that before. I think there might be. I read a lot, especially about what is going on in our communities. For example, no matter where I am, I read about what is happening in Oakland. And also New York, since I lived there for six years. And of course Los Angeles, which is where I am now. I read about what is happening. I read about the good stuff, but I also read about the bad stuff, particularly the violence. I often take it to heart. I think a lot about why it is happening. I think about how communities can move beyond it. I’ve always read and thought about these things and I was doing so while writing “The Harimaya Bridge.”
There are a lot of intentional metaphors in the film, though I can’t honestly say that when I was writing the script I consciously thought, ‘This will symbolize the violence and healing in our urban communities.’ But like I said, those issues are on my mind. In my work I sometimes write stuff, and it doesn’t hit me until later what I was REALLY getting at. So let me take a look at that...
What is happening with “The Harimaya Bridge” these days?
The film had a nationwide release in movie theaters in Japan last year. After that it went on the film festival circuit. Now we are in the middle of our U.S. release. In Japan we had a big studio release, and here it’s a limited release. We’ve had runs in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Detroit, Irvine, and Honolulu. We will open in more cities soon. And I’m pushing to get the film into an East Bay theater.
Great, let us know. What is your next project?
I have a film project called Summer SOULstice, which is a light comedy set in the American south. People really love the script, and I have a couple of big-name actors attached. Of course, it’s really tough getting films financed these days, so we’ll see what happens with that. Also, I co-wrote a play called Bronzeville that had a really successful run in Los Angeles last year and was nominated for some awards. That will be published later this year, and there is talk of mounting another production of it. And I continue to write.
Posted on Jun 03, 2010 - 09:46 PM
by Doniphan Blair
Aaron Woolfolk on location shooting "The Harimaya Bridge" in Japan. Photo courtesy A. WoolfolkOakland, I say, not only because Woolfolk grew up on Carlsen, off 35th Ave, but because “The Hirimaya Bridge” is an intense story about war, death, art, love and, yes, race, and it bridges cultural divides with an artistry evidently learned early.
Woolfolk enjoyed Oakland and, went to the University of California at Berkeley, where he received degrees in ethnic studies and rhetoric. But his cross cultural chops were really challenged when he joined a teacher exchange program and found himself in rural Japan. Although that’s where dreams of “The Harimaya Bridge” started, he knew he would need much more to make them a reality.
Woolfolk returned to the US and went to Columbia University, where he got an MFA in film. Soon he was garnering a Directors Guild of America award for his short “Rage!” and awards and screenings, including on cable, for others. “Kuroi Hitsuji” – about a black ESL teacher in Japan tired of the local’s ignorance – essentially inverts some of the themes of “The Harimaya Bridge.”
Next he moved to LA and received ABC and Disney grants and fellowships. But he held tight to his story. It got a well-deserved boost when he met Danny Glover, who agreed to act, albeit in a minor role. Soon he had Ben Guillory and, shortly thereafter, a Japanese producer.
Eleven Arts is a Japanese producer/distributor with some 70 Japanese, Korean and US indie films and 200 television episodes, primarily for the Japanese market. “We met him in Los Angeles and brought him to Japan to film,” said Shun Ohara, of their LA office. “He is the first African American director who shot a feature film in Japan – completely unique and new.”
“The Harimaya Bridge” follows an African American man (Ben Guillory) who lost his father in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, and then his son (Victor Grant), years later, but again in Japan in a car accident. The son, a painter, was estranged, and the father journeys to Japan to claim his paintings as a way of reclaiming him. But they were gifts to his son’s Japanese wife and school meaning, suddenly, the black man is the insensitive one. A series of women – including his guide, a mentally disabled girl and his daughter-in-law, beautifully portrayed by well-known Japanese actresses like Saki Takaoka, Misa Shimizu, and Miho Shiraishi (who is popular with Japanese kids) – help him through his difficult emotions to the poetic conclusion.
“Aaron was very thoughtful and meticulous in every shot and scene he put together,” noted Ehren Koepf, who assistant directed the US side of the shoot. “He didn’t rush into anything. He knew what he wanted and had a quiet and calming approach to achieving his vision. He was very easy to work and very approachable when it came to creative input or other insight.” Subtitled in Japanese and English, as needed, the film was shot by Masao Nakabori, one of Japan’s better known cinematographers, and edited here by John Coniglio.
Actually, Woolfolk is one of the few non-Asians to direct a movie in Japan. “The Harimaya Bridge” was released in theaters across in Japan in 2009 to excellent reviews. It was featured in several international film festivals and was released across the US theatrically in April 2010. We caught up with Woolfolk by email.
CineSource: You have lived in Japan, but what was the story’s specific genesis?
Aaron Woolfolk: When I returned to the US and went to graduate film school at Columbia, I started to think about how I could establish a career as a filmmaker – what I could do to stand out? I really loved my experience in Japan. I thought, maybe, I could do something that combined my cinematic aspirations with Japan.
I started thinking about making a feature in Japan but I knew I had to show it wasn’t that far-fetched. For my thesis project, I wrote and directed two short films in Japan: the comedy “Eki” (“The Station”) and the drama “Kuroi Hitsuji” (“Black Sheep”). They did really well, played in top festivals, won awards, and played on cable television. That put me on the road to making “The Harimaya Bridge.”
How did you come to pitch it and get it produced in Japan, which your distributor tells me is rare?
I had written the script and gotten Danny Glover attached, to act and executive produce. I had also laid some key foundations in Japan, including in Kochi Prefecture, which is where the film was eventually shot. But things really began to take shape when producer Ko Mori came onboard.
We took several trips to Tokyo to push the project, and eventually got it to T-Joy, a specialty division of Toei, one of the main film studios there. The head of T-Joy loved the script – it’s cross-cultural themes and its message of tolerance. He really liked how the main American characters were black, which he saw as unique. He also liked my short films, and the fact that Danny Glover was attached.
Do you speak Japanese?
I’ve lost a lot of it since I don’t speak it every day. I was never 100% fluent, but I’ve never had a problem getting what I need in Japan or hanging out with people there.
How did you cast and crew up?
I spent three months living in Japan during the official preproduction phase. I had an office in Tokyo. We had a production company that got the crew together. I spent a lot of time getting to know key crew people whom I would be working intimately with, like the director of photography and the music composer. It was important that the fit be right.
I had Danny Glover and Ben Guillory from the beginning. In terms of casting in Japan, I was familiar with some actors in the Japanese entertainment industry, but of course I hadn’t lived there for years, so there were so many people I didn’t know. My staff in Tokyo would bring actors to my attention. I would look at the film and TV work of people, and if I liked them, we got in touch with their representatives. We did some auditions for some roles. Because we were going for A-list talent for the main Japanese roles, we couldn’t really audition people of that level. But I met with them and I studied their past work. Based on that we cast the roles.
What was Glover’s involvement?
As an executive producer for “The Harimaya Bridge,” Danny opened a lot of doors. He really went to bat for us when we needed it. He really believed in the story, and was very supportive of me as a filmmaker. Just having the name Danny Glover associated with the project was huge. He’s an international star, and his involvement gave the project legitimacy. The people in Japan were really excited to be working with a Hollywood movie star like him. He has so much respect there... not just from the actors and producers, but from the critics and cinema scholars who are intimately familiar with his body of work.
For me, directing Danny as an actor was a real treat, especially with “The Harimaya Bridge” being my first feature film. I learned so much from him and Ben Guillory. I mean, these guys are veterans, with decades of acting experience.
The story of a black soldier coming out of the Jim Crow era, being abused as a prisoner of war, and then the grandson reaching out to that same culture through art, love, was that what intrigued you?
When I was in graduate school at Columbia one of the class projects I did was a little documentary called “Men of Montford Point.” I interviewed several gentlemen who were in the first group of black Marines in the 1940s. Hearing their stories about the racism they had to face here, then going to fight in Europe and the Pacific, then coming back home to the same demeaning attitudes... a lot of people still don’t know that blacks were a significant part of World War II. I always try to slip in historical points like that, even if the film or play in question is about something else. The main storyline of “The Harimaya Bridge” – about a man dealing with the death of his estranged son while still scarred by the war-related death of his own father – gave me a chance to do that.
I’ve always been fascinated by guys who experience and survive war, then turn to the arts. Like Lee Marvin and Oliver Stone and so many European filmmakers. It wasn’t lost on me when writing the script how the main character Daniel’s last memory of his father was a trip to the museum, which led to both Daniel and his son to pursue a life in the arts.
Did you draw inspiration from challenging arguments or dialogues you had while living there?
When I first lived in Japan my home was in a rural town of 30,000 people, far from any big city. This was back in the early 1990’s, and for 99% of the folks there. I was the first black person they had ever seen in the flesh. I’d get comments like, ‘You must be a fantastic dancer,’ ‘You must be really good in basketball,” or “Show me your best slam dunk.’ I’d walk into a rural club with friends and the place would literally stop – just completely stop – because everyone expected me to get on the dance floor and perform a miracle. Or I’d have junior high school basketball coaches that had been coaching for years who assumed I could teach their students more about the game than they could. A lot of things I had to laugh at.
Aaron Woolfolk in Japan shooting well-known actor Ben Guillory (left) and the esteemed universally known, as well San Francisco resident, Danny Glover (right). Photo courtesy A. WoolfolkYet most of the people saying and doing such things didn’t mean to insult me. They had no context, they were simply going by images of blacks imported to Japan by Western media. At the same time, I went to Japan with my own stereotypes of Japanese. I’d say a lot of stupid things to them, too. So it wasn’t just them learning from me, it was me learning from them.
That experience was the inspiration for wanting to make a movie about tolerance, and about breaking down barriers that exist between people based on race, nationality, class, and generational differences.
Any thoughts about Oakland, its clash of cultures and possible development through cinema?
Good question. Well, I love Oakland, and am so happy to have been raised there. I live in Los Angeles now because of the work I do, but I’m always happiest when I come home. I think its diversity is something to be celebrated, and I see its clash of cultures as an opportunity. But then, I’m always an optimist. No matter what dire news and statistics I hear or read about my hometown, I’m always optimistic about its future. And I hope to eventually come back and be apart of that future.
I think Oakland is an ideal place to be a center of film. Actually, I’ve discovered there are already a lot of talented filmmakers in the East Bay. Beyond that, Oakland has a lot of people who would do well in film jobs. The landscape lends itself to filming. There is a diversity of architecture. There is plenty of space. It’s close to San Francisco and Berkeley, even places like Napa.
The thing is, so many movies and television productions that should be filming in California have fled the state because of tax incentives elsewhere. California has been slow to understand the shift in the needs of film and television productions, and has been slow to embrace those things that have drawn productions to other states and countries. Our lawmakers seem to be slow to understand that film production is great for our economy and can be a boon for local businesses, from hotels to corner grocery stores.
If California ever gets its act together and takes the necessary steps to reclaim its filmmaking heritage, then there should definitely be a push to make Oakland a center of filmmaking. And we should push for that high-speed rail between Northern California and LA that should have been built 45 years ago. But that’s another issue.
Yesterday, one of my Web clients told me about the tragic killing of his cousin and uncle a few blocks from our West Oakland office. Is there any thing a film could or should be doing to ameliorate that?
I’m sorry to hear about that… my condolences.Basically, I want “The Harimaya Bridge” to show people – especially young people – that there is a whole world out there beyond just their neighborhoods, and that there is a place for them in that world if they want it and pursue it. When I was at Columbia I did a lot of work with inner-city youth – elementary school to high school age – in the New York City area. I taught them about filmmaking, storytelling, working a camera, editing, etc. And it was an amazing thing to witness. When those kids saw opportunities that they didn’t see before, and when they saw a path to those opportunities, their whole perspective on life changed. All of a sudden, those things that seemed all-important and often led to violence didn’t seem so important to them anymore.
I’m happy to say that “The Harimaya Bridge” is a universal story that people of all races have embraced. Yet it was really important to me to make this film with the main characters being African American. One reason is that blacks and other groups are too often put into little boxes by the mainstream media. I wanted to have black characters that existed outside of those narrow confines.
Another reason is that I’ve always wanted to show images of blacks living international lives and having international experiences. In reality, it happens a lot! There are so many Africans and African Americans in Japan, for instance, living and working and doing interesting things, from teaching English to working in business to being a part of the music industry there. Young people in places like Oakland need to know that. They need to see, for example, that the world doesn’t begin and end in West Oakland.
I think the content of films can serve to inspire people, open up their eyes, and change their lives. But more than that, I think filmmaking itself – the act of doing it – can do the same.
Your film addresses healing from war, is there a metaphorical tie-in to our own communities?
Wow, that’s a great question. I haven’t really thought of that before. I think there might be. I read a lot, especially about what is going on in our communities. For example, no matter where I am, I read about what is happening in Oakland. And also New York, since I lived there for six years. And of course Los Angeles, which is where I am now. I read about what is happening. I read about the good stuff, but I also read about the bad stuff, particularly the violence. I often take it to heart. I think a lot about why it is happening. I think about how communities can move beyond it. I’ve always read and thought about these things and I was doing so while writing “The Harimaya Bridge.”
There are a lot of intentional metaphors in the film, though I can’t honestly say that when I was writing the script I consciously thought, ‘This will symbolize the violence and healing in our urban communities.’ But like I said, those issues are on my mind. In my work I sometimes write stuff, and it doesn’t hit me until later what I was REALLY getting at. So let me take a look at that...
What is happening with “The Harimaya Bridge” these days?
The film had a nationwide release in movie theaters in Japan last year. After that it went on the film festival circuit. Now we are in the middle of our U.S. release. In Japan we had a big studio release, and here it’s a limited release. We’ve had runs in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Detroit, Irvine, and Honolulu. We will open in more cities soon. And I’m pushing to get the film into an East Bay theater.
Great, let us know. What is your next project?
I have a film project called Summer SOULstice, which is a light comedy set in the American south. People really love the script, and I have a couple of big-name actors attached. Of course, it’s really tough getting films financed these days, so we’ll see what happens with that. Also, I co-wrote a play called Bronzeville that had a really successful run in Los Angeles last year and was nominated for some awards. That will be published later this year, and there is talk of mounting another production of it. And I continue to write.
Posted on Jun 03, 2010 - 09:46 PM
