Malcolm & John David Washington Break Down a Scene From 'The Piano Lesson'

I'm John David Washington.

I'm Malcolm Washington.

And this is

Snakes on a Plane. Notes on a Scene.

Notes on a Scene. Oh.

[both laugh]

[feet slam]

♪ Might not want you when ♪

[feet slam]

♪ I go free, well ♪

[feet slam]

♪ Oh Lord Berta ♪ Hey, Doak.

Come on, Doak. You know this.

♪ Oh Lord gal, oh-a ♪

[feet slam]

♪ Oh Lord Berta ♪

[feet slam]

♪ Oh Lord gal, well ♪

This scene is a sequence where the gentleman

sing a work song called Berta.

This, like many elements in the movie,

have been carried over through different productions.

So Berta originated on stage.

It was a real work song.

The song also represents a time

and experience that a lot of African American men

in the country had on Parchman Farm, a real place,

and a lot of pain and suffering for crimes that,

most likely, a lot of 'em didn't commit.

They treat you like you let them treat you.

They mistreat me, I mistreat them.

[Malcolm] So here, we have our gentlemen here,

John David Washington, Samuel Jackson,

Ray Fisher, and Michael Potts.

I'm noticing how still the camera is-

Yeah. And how eventually

it starts the movement.

You'll see in this whole sequence,

this is something that works so well on stage

and we wanted to make sure that it would fit

the medium of film and honor the medium at the same time.

It starts here very still, kind of static camera work,

and then it'll go into kind of slower, more languid

camera movements and longer takes

and it builds to very quick cuts on action,

very dynamic cuts and we'll see that play out

throughout the sequence.

And everybody got mad at him, 'cause he was lazy.

That water was heavy.

[gentlemen laugh]

And Lymon down there singing it,

talking about, talking about

♪ Oh Lord Berta ♪

We have our three gentlemen here.

You couldn't wait to do that.

I couldn't wait.

I could not wait. [John David laughs]

Could not fucking wait. Look at that.

You know, what the? Yeah, look at that.

This is, look, look, look.

We got one, two,

three. Okay, John Madden.

Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Drop the play.

Cannot, cannot- Boom, boom.

♪ Hold on gal, oh-a ♪

♪ Oh Lord Berta ♪

So throughout the story, we play with point of view a lot

and we'll kind of highlight one person's experience

of the moment to guide our audience through it.

So in this moment, we're doing that with Doaker, right?

He carries a lot of the weight of the family

and he's somebody that carries a lot of secrets

and a lot of pain and pushes that down

and this sequence also highlights a phenomena

in our uncles, of our culture where

we don't always discuss trauma,

we don't always discuss

the problems that we're going through.

We can sometimes just push it down and fight through

and grin and bear it just to get through the day

or just to get through the moment,

and then you have these breaks in that, right,

where it bursts through the seams and

you can't it push down any longer.

This sequence represents that feeling.

[feet slam]

♪ Go ahead and marry ♪

♪ Don't you ♪

[feet slam]

♪ Wait on me, oh ♪

I love that, right, how, like, at first,

it starts with the focus was Unc, right?

I'm going to go ahead and-

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[John David] And then you pull, is it pull a rack?

I don't know. Rack, yeah.

Rack, and you rack to,

and to me, what that represents too

is the generational trauma we're talking about

and, like, this whole rites of passage thing of, like,

his experience with Parchman Farm is different

in ways, because it was a different time,

however it's the same trauma

and there's a language being said here

as they're, like, singing and harmonizing together-

Right, right. From him, his era

to his era.

Like, past, present

And Parchman Farm is a colloquial term

for the Mississippi State Penitentiary.

If you're especially a black man in Mississippi

in this time and place, you or somebody you knew

probably spent time on this farm.

So this song is kind of a harrowing connection

to all of that, where, if you start singing it,

other people join in, because they share that trauma,

they share that experience

and how we try to depict it in the scene is

it starts with almost like a joy in connectivity,

and then it kind of devolves into something else

that's, like, much more internal, much more interior

and heavy.

♪ Go ahead and marry ♪

♪ Don't you ♪

[feet slam]

♪ Wait on me, well ♪

[feet slam]

[Malcolm] You've got this kind of nice silhouette

shot of him-

[John David] It's beautiful.

Thinking about, contemplating the history

and trauma that goes into the song.

Do I wanna participate with it? Do I wanna engage with it?

Do I wanna start to process these feelings

or do I continue to push 'em down?

Light and shadow's a motif throughout the movie.

Okay.

From the opening to the end, throughout,

there's always lightness and darkness

of truth and hidden truths-

Yes. And that was always,

like, a conceptual thing.

So we want to play with shadows in the corners of the room,

the corners of the frame, in the corners of your mind.

Like, all of this stuff was kind of things that

we were trying to braid into the DNA of the movie

without outwardly giving up our intentions.

So here, obviously you have dark and light here

playing on that theme.

[feet slam]

♪ I go free, oh-a ♪

[feet slam]

♪ Might not want you when ♪

[feet slam]

♪ I go free, well ♪

♪ Oh Lord Berta ♪ Hey, Doak,

come on, Doak. You know this.

[feet slam]

♪ Oh Lord gal, oh-a ♪

[feet slam]

♪ Oh Lord Berta ♪

[feet slam]

♪ Oh Lord gal, well ♪

[feet slam]

♪ Raise them up higher ♪

♪ Let them ♪

Can't overstate Samuel L. Jackson

and just the talent that he brought.

And for all of you, this is a scene that

we shot this in one night.

All the singing is live.

Everything's recorded on the day.

All the emotion and the tones,

everything was real in the moment.

There was no ADR later.

There was no clean up this, clean up that.

It was just their voices as instrument

and that, I think, really is the emotion of the scene here.

♪ Raise them up higher ♪

♪ Let them ♪

[table slams]

♪ Drop on down, oh-a ♪

[table slams]

♪ Raise them up higher ♪

♪ Let them ♪

[table slams]

♪ Drop on down, well ♪

[table slams]

♪ Don't know the difference when the ♪

[table slams]

I give so much credit to the actors here.

They were so generous with their time and their voices.

We'd burned everybody's voices out by the next day.

For the story though, it could also mean,

because there's a lot of drinking going on.

You know, I mean, they're pouring up,

so some of that liquid courage or alcohol

maybe breaks the seal of what they're trying to privatize.

You know, and I think that's an important,

and as it's depicted here, I think

it's a subtle thing though, what you're doing

and how it's working.

It's just not, like, hey, they're drinking.

Now they're singing.

It's more gradual and I think you see that in the energy

and the voices and the enthusiasm,

and then it becomes something darker.

I think Michael Potts is, like, a brilliant,

he nailed it how he does it.

All that's, I think, working together here,

beautifully.

We had a brilliant music editor called Del Spiva,

who I think is a HBCU alum.

No kidding. So, yeah, yeah,

so Del was, like, super, we talked a lot.

When talking about this scene,

we talked a lot about, like, step team, like homecoming.

We talked a lot about the experience of, like,

if you're at a cookout and somebody,

at the end of the night, when everybody's drunk,

and somebody starts singing like Weak by SWV

or something like that and everybody starts joining in with-

♪ Weak in the knees I get ♪ Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know if y'all can clear that.

That was, sorry.

But we wanted that kind of really raw feeling to it.

Yeah. So Del would

scrub through all the takes, 'cause we did quite a few,

and we just muddied everything up.

We tried to put in as much of the grunting-

Yeah. And much of the just,

like, guttural, emotional experience of it

and just dirty it all up- That's great.

Because that's where all the feeling comes from.

Yeah.

And Michael Potts gave us so much of that too.

And he's gearing up for his solo.

♪ Well ♪ [table slams]

♪ Don't know the difference when the ♪

[table slams]

I love that.

This is one of my favorite parts.

♪ Don't know the difference when the ♪

[Malcolm] So we're starting to pull him out, right?

He's starting to get isolated here

as he kind of has his first moment.

We get Ray here,

but he has, like, three quarters of the frame.

He's starting to take this whole thing on.

I think too what it's displaying here is, you know,

he's the performer in the family.

He's traveled all over performing

and he has a love-hate relationship with that

and here he is with his family,

who he came down here for, or up here for.

He's expressing that in a natural way.

It's almost like saying, if you see, like, a performer

in your family just go off on a monologue.

Yeah. Like, and, like,

he has this love hate relationship here.

She has a love-hate relationship with the arts,

but yet he's like here, she's at full display

of, like, their joyous part moment

and I think that's great.

♪ Don't know the difference when the ♪

[table slams]

♪ Sun goes down, oh-a ♪

[table slams]

Think about, like, how the generation processes

trauma or mental health.

I think the newer, younger generations are more willing

to engage in that sooner and they put a premium on it,

where the older generations are still kind of, like,

it's still cast it aside or they'll overlook it

or say, you know, you just have to

toughen up or whatever that is.

But it's, like, okay, you toughen up

and this is what you get.

You know, you've compacted all of these things

that you won't deal with yet.

[table slams]

♪ Don't know the difference when the ♪

[table slams]

♪ Sun goes down, well ♪

[table slams]

Move it, boy. Yeah.

I love this solo.

♪ Living at ease, oh-a ♪

[table slams]

Yo, we were rocking this night.

I was at the monitor like-

Ah! So you see these cuts

starting to pick up, right?

♪ Living at ease, oh-a ♪ Right, yeah.

We're in singles now. ♪ I'm on old Parchman ♪

♪ Got to work or leave, well ♪

[table slams]

♪ Oh Lord Berta ♪

[table slams]

♪ Oh Lord gal, oh-a ♪ You and your dad.

[table slams]

♪ Oh Lord Berta ♪

[table slams]

[Malcolm] And Del brought this rhythm in,

which I thought was really good.

We started going double time.

♪ When you marry, marry a railroad man, oh-a ♪

♪ When you marry, marry a railroad man, well ♪

♪ When you marry, marry a ♪

When you look at the rhythm of Sam's hands,

we're doing double that, but we just think,

we assume the audiences will kind of just go with it,

'cause it feels good,

'cause it's a different rhythm than what he was doing,

and so far it's been good.

[table slams]

♪ Put it in your hand, well ♪

[table slams]

♪ Put it in your hand, oh-a ♪

[table slams]

♪ Put it in your hand ♪

[table slams]

♪ And every day Sunday dollar ♪

[table slams]

♪ Put it in your hand, well ♪

[table slams]

Leslie, our editor, is such a master of movement.

The way that she cuts on these actions here,

I absolutely love.

♪ Oh gal, oh-a ♪

[table slams]

♪ Oh Lord Berta ♪

[table slams]

♪ Oh Lord gal ♪

We bring a flare in at the end.

Just a little beauty for Sam's last moment

and this should kind of rhyme with the first moment

that we saw him in, where the first beat

of this sequence is about getting him

to engage in this stuff and now he has

and we'll end with him,

because this was kind of his story and his moment

and now, as we settle down, we'll settle with him.

♪ Well oh-a ♪

[table smacks]

And then we strip all that away now

and we pull the rug out

and you'll start to hear the creaks of the house

come back in, which suggests a certain silence, right?

You start to hear the sounds of the wood

and the chairs shaking and moving

as they sit back in and settle down

and it just suggests this deafening silence, right,

of thought that everybody's lost in,

of their own experience of it.

[footsteps thud]

Everybody settles back in.

We're like, no, it's not a musical.

This was a real thing that happened.

[Willie] You like that railroad part?

And our visual language is kind of

mirroring the beginning, right?

So now we're doing these transitions again

from John David to Ray with the rack.

Doaker sound like Tangleye. He can't even sing a lick.

Finding the poetry in the stillness.

What comes to mind for me is Eds Zwick's Glory

and the oh my Lord sequence

and how they're each giving their testimony

before the evening, before they're, you know,

facing their imminent death

and there's something about, like, an exorcism of spirit

and trauma that happens here

and you're seeing the culmination of that.

So instead of necessarily talking about their feelings,

you also said that, like, the new generation talking about,

they sung, they got to sing it

and that sort of outlet and that experience

that they just had together,

even though they were at the Parchman Farm

at different times, in the communal sense,

has been exorcized and, I think, what you're seeing is

a great deal of relief

and maybe, in a way, at least for me,

I can say, like, maybe a hope for, like,

what can happen, like, from now on.

I love this silence at the end too,

because I don't know if you remember

when we were shooting it, it was, like,

we would do the song over and over,

and then, towards the end, we started doing takes

and we just didn't cut

and I kept telling you, I was like,

don't say your line, just sit in it.

We'll just sit in it and sit in it

and I think where you got,

where Michael Potts got that night,

where Ray got of just sitting in that

and finding that feeling and dealing with that themselves,

it was like gold watching that on the monitor.

Which was a nice note, because in the play,

you gotta keep it moving, but in this,

there's a storytelling that's happening simultaneously

with what we're giving, which we're breaking down now,

which you knew that we would be able to capture that.

[Malcolm] Look at his face.

Michael Potts is a legend, man.

I'm grateful for the experience,

knowing that I was there when Malcolm, you know,

did his first film and, like, what we were gonna come to

love and see for the future.

I was there for that.

[shot glass rattles]

This particular scene is interesting,

because it's been in so many productions,

passing that down to us.

This symbolizes a little bit of that moment to me.

Yeah, and our take on it.

Exactly.