In Black America; The New Roots, with Thomas Carter

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America. Well, I actually majored in drama as we called it in, you know, in theater art. So we had a really good drama department as they still do at Texas State, and I worked, you know, consistently in the drama department, majored in drama minored in speech and English, did a lot of plays there. In fact, started a Black theater group with my friend Eugene Lee, who still lives down in Texas. We started a theater group called The Ebony Players within our school. We did a well-regarded production of a raisin in the sun that we were invited to do at Lyndon Johnson's Ranch, but, you know, before him and other invited guests in the theater out there. And so we performed for

him shortly before he died. I mean, he died several months later, but I think it was one of the last productions that he saw. And so my theater experience there was really great. I mean, I, you know, really got a lot of good experience. I got a teacher's degree as well. Thomas Carter, actor and film and television director. Carter still recall watching Roots almost 40 years ago. The 1977 television miniseries were destroyed in ratings and awards. Despite the network's little expectation total of the summer and horrific story of an African-American slavery, through the eyes of one particular family and slave through multiple generations. So when Carter was invited to be one of four directors to participate in a remake, which aired this past spring on the history channel and three other outlets, he felt honored and more than a little beholder. But he and the other directors also recognized it was a golden opportunity to retell an epic saga with even greater

accuracy and a contemporary visual style that would resonate with younger viewers. Carter first began his film career as an actor. His first roles included working in television shows and movies such as Smash, Lou Grant, What's Happening, The Secret of ISIS, Who Life Is It Anyway, The Blue Night, Good Times, and Hill Street Blues. I'm John L. Hanson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, the new roots with television and film director Thomas Carter in Black America. I got called in to have a meeting with Mark Wolper, the producer and real packer who was another producer who had been brought in and I hadn't met well before. And we just talked about roots, talked about what I had thought of the original and so what I thought about redoing it and what I felt would do as a director to make it more modern just to bring it more up to date stylistically. And so they offered me the first one out of the box which

as I said was turned out to be night three. So we went down to New Orleans and started prepping and shot that. Part of night one was shot in Africa and the rest of it was shot in New Orleans area. Rules follow several generations of an enslaved family as they struggled to survive their harsh circumstances. The story began with a young man Kutte Kintake who was snatched from his African village by slave traders shipped to America and sold to the highest bidder. He endured agonizing brutality and cooling chains, whippings, the syllabus chow and harsh fieldwork. Even lose as part of one foot shot off by a bonding hunter after he tries to escape. Thomas College was born July 17, 1953 in Austin, Texas after high school year 10th Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. In 1974 he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theater. College first began his film career as an actor but turned his attention directly after working on

the white shadow. College directed four episodes of the white shadow. As one of four directors to participate in the remake of Roots, College episode was the third in the series. Whether it was the first to be shot, temporary calls to script was the first one finished. In every case the script was offered to support the director's visions. Carter, for instance, wanted to emphasize the nature of sexual abuse to which the female slave was subjected by the slave masters who impregnated them and then enslaved or sold off their biracial children. Recently in black America spoke with Thomas Carter. Well, I was born in Austin, Texas and I grew up near there in a town called Smithville, Texas and grew up my whole life there in central Texas, went to Texas State University before I came out to California. What was it like living in Texas during a segregated period? Well, when I was in elementary school, I was in a segregated school. I didn't actually go to an integrated school until high school. As you can imagine in a small Texas town, the schools

were segregated even after Brown versus the Board of Education. I mean, certainly for another 10 years or more and so I was in a segregated school and elementary school and then in the ninth grade, we finally integrated all the schools and for the first time I went to school with white students. What sparked that initial interest in theater or acting? Well, I was always interested in entertainment, I think, from the time I was young. I grew up watching the It's Sullivan show and it's all various kinds of entertainment. Everything you can imagine and I liked rock and roll when I was a kid. I loved the Beatles when I was young and I wanted to be in a rock and roll band, it's not unusual, but for a long time as a kid and then it sort of gradually transitioned into and I loved movies, of course, and movies were a great escape for me. But I always loved going to the movies and I used to go to a segregated movie theater as well until I was a teenager.

And I started to like movies and those kinds of stories and then I decided that I would want to act and maybe sing in movies and have both those things happen. And of course, gradually, by high school, I was in plays and I was working seriously in the theater and I got serious about movies and at that point, I decided I really wanted to be an actor. When one goes to college to pursue a career such as acting or directing, what was some of the course where you took at Texas State? Well, I actually majored in drama as we called it, in theater arts. And so we had a really good drama department as they still do at Texas State. And I worked consistently in the drama department, majored in drama, minored in speech and English. And it did a lot of plays there. In fact, started a black theater group with my friend, Eugene Lee, who still lives down in Texas. We started a theater group called The Ebony Players within our school.

We did a well-regarded production of A Raisin in the Sun that we were invited to do at Lyndon Johnson's Ranch before him and other invited guests in the theater out there. And so we performed for him shortly before he died. I mean, I think he died several months later, but I think it was one of the last productions that he saw. And so my theater experience there was really great. I mean, I, you know, really got a lot of good experience. And I got a teacher's degree as well, or teacher certificate at Texas State. My mother was a teacher. So education was always a big part of my life and my family. My dad was uneducated, but still had a great, put a great emphasis on education. And so that was always something that was expected and was part of my upbringing. I'll understand you were awarded the distinguished alumnus. I was actually, yeah, the school invited me back, Texas State invited me back after I had been in in Hollywood

and worked as an actor and as a director. And so yeah, I was very pleased to get that distinguished alumnus award from Texas State. You know, I still, still treasure that. It's nice to be invited back to, you know, the school that you went to and be remembered and have them, you know, watch what you're doing and honor you. So yeah, it was a really nice thing. What was your first major television role? Well, my first major role, I was in a short-lived sitcom for CBS, but it was really only several episodes over the summer. It was short-lived, but that led to me being in a TV show called The White Shadow. And that's the show that most people remember. And that, you know, that was certainly as an actor. I think the thing that made the biggest impression in my career that I did and, you know, working with a number of other young black actors, Ken Howard was the star of that show. He just passed away this year. And I played a character called James Hayward. And he was a really popular character. But it was a great experience, not only because,

you know, I was acting in a weekly TV show. And I think it was a landmark TV show because it was a, one of the few shows or one of the earlier shows where you had a dramatic show that starred primarily African American actors. And, you know, we did that. And then also from that show, I started directing. That was how I began my directing career. Did you have to pay basketball? Was that part of the audition? Yeah, I had to play basketball, although not everybody on the team was a good basketball player. I hadn't played in high school, but I had really been a fan of the game playing, you know, sandlot ball and pick up ball and ball in the parks. It was really popular in the parks in LA and in Hollywood where I was living. And so I used to play all the time before I got the show, but it was on that level, you know, but some of those games we get very aggressive too. But it was a lot of fun. And it's funny now I'm an even bigger fan of basketball. It's my favorite support. I'm such a huge fan of it. And I think I understand the game so

much better. So I probably would be a lot better player knowing what I know now. What was some of the other television programs that you acted in? Well, you know, I acted in a number of things. I did a small, you know, when I was doing guest shots and doing small things. I did good times. I did a, you know, just a small guest spot on that one time. And, you know, mostly I did. My biggest role was, you know, in I think in a movie called Whose Life Is In Any Way. That was in a film that I did that Richard Dreyfist started in where I played at Jamaican character and had a lot of fun with that. But I transitioned pretty quickly from the white shadow to directing, you know, by acting became more and more limited after that. I have a good friend who played on Good Town Ernest Harden Jr. that grew up with back in Detroit. Do you know him? Yeah. Yeah. I knew him back back in the day. He was a great guy. Good. I remember he got a job in a TV movie, I think, with Betty Davis, who was a favorite of mine. And I thought, man, you're so lucky you get to work with Betty Davis. But he was, he was a great guy.

If you're just joining us, I'm Johnny O'Hanston Jr. And you listening to In Black America from KUT Radio and we're speaking with actor, television and film director Thomas Carter. Mr. Carter, what was it about directing? You said you had limited acting roles. But what was about directing if you're going to continue to act led you in that direction? Well, I initially was split between the two. I mean, I loved being an actor, but you know, it's a very competitive life and you're reading for a lot of parts and auditioning all the time and you might get it, you might not get it. So you don't really have that much control. And I was open to doing both things. Initially, my heart was more with acting than with directing. But with directing, I found that I was being judged much more on the work than I was on, you know, the color of my skin or how tall I was or how old I was or how good-looking and not good-looking I was, you know. So I began to get jobs as a director and they would lead to more jobs. And it just sort of

gradually took over. The more I did it, the more I liked it because the more I learned about the various elements of directing, the more I understood the craft. And so and clearly, I had more control as a director. I was part of the whole process of making films or making a television show. And so it began to be something that appealed to me more and more creatively the more I really understood and learned about the craft. I understand one of my favorite shows now still watching, I'm glad they brought it back on television. Hill Street Blues, you directed several episodes of that. Yeah, that was a really formative period for me. I was at a company called MTM, Mary Tyler Moore Productions and they did the white shadow as well as shows like Hill Street Blues. And so they were right next door to us on the studio lot. So I knew we got to know some of the guys who were producing it. And so I got an opportunity to direct one. And I really, it was a show that really appealed to me. Cinematically, it was a show,

the pilot was done by a guy who's a friend of mine now. It wasn't then, but a guy named Robert Butler who's a veteran director. And he had just done this amazing job with the pilot. And it was very filmic. It was very different for television. It had handheld cameras and long lenses, a lot of foreground pieces. And it was just doing things that TV wasn't really doing. So it looked like a movie that pilot and the lighting was different. And so as well as the writing, of course. And so I got a chance to do it. But I was really at home with that style and with that process. And it's something that I just kept building on. And you know, they really liked me on the show. And so that was a formative relationship for me. I really grew as a director doing those episodes of Hill Street. Tell us about your May for television movies. Well, I did a couple of movies. I did a movie called Under the Influence with Andy Griffith, which was a story about, you know, alcohol addiction within a family and what it does to not only the parents, but the children, which is a movie I'm very proud of. And something else I'm very proud of is I did a

miniseries that won an Emmy for Best Miniseries called A Year in the Life. And that was a six-hour miniseries that was written and produced by my friends Joshua Brandt and John Falsy. Guys, I had met on the white shadow. And they had written this miniseries, which was literally about a year in the life of just an upper-middle class American family and all of the things that you could go through the death of a parent, the recovery, the birth of children, the break-up of a marriage. I mean, it was just, you know, really domestic life with some really good actors in it. Sarah Jessica Parker was in it as a young actress, Adam Arkin, Richard Kylie won an Emmy for his lead role in that show as well. So it was something that I really, that I really loved doing and something, you know, I could put my stamp on and do six hours of television. So I was very proud of that. I understand. I want to get into Roots, but one question I want to ask, was it much easier being a part and a known quantity since you were at Mary Tyler Moore

production company of transcending from being an actor to directing? Well, the reason I was able to do it really was because we had an executive producer of the white shadow, a guy named Bruce Paltrow, who's father of, when it's Paltrow, people know her as an actress, but Bruce was a producer and he had created the show. He was a young guy, he was a young company and he was fairly irreverent and really, you know, sort of prided himself and wanting to be able to break some barriers and give people chances. And so that was a situation in which I was coming in on my days off just to learn. I mean, I had decided that I wanted to learn how to direct on my own and so I was just taking advantage of being on the show, talking to people who did different things, the camera operator and other directors who were coming in. And I would just come into my days off and watch the process and was just really trying to learn which led to a conversation with Bruce and he said he would let me do one in the second year. If I, you know, continue to apply myself and he

suggested I come to the editing room and spend some time in the editing room, which I did, which is so key, editing is so key to filmmaking. And so I did that and then the off season between years one and two, I actually observed on a pilot that he directed and then in the second year of the white shadow, Trudeau's word, he gave me an episode to direct, it went well, they gave me another one and then they gave me a third one. So, you know, I was sort of often running at that point. This brings us to the highlight, I believe, of this interview is that you directed part three of the Roots miniseries on a Ford Network offering. How did you come to become a part of this team? Well, yeah, you're obviously referring to the new Roots that just aired 2016. So, yes, it's the reimagining of the original Roots that we just did and people can, you know, see it on the history channel or any networks online. And I got to be, I did night three, as you said, although it was the first one that was shot, even though night three

and the story, because we shot out of sequence for production reasons. And I got called in to have a meeting with Mark Wilper, who's the producer and Will Packer, who was another producer who had been brought in and I had met Will before. And, you know, we just talked about, Roots talked about what I had thought of the original and, you know, so what I, what I thought about redoing it and, you know, what I felt would be, I would do as a director to make it more modern just to bring it more up to date stylistically. And so, they offered me the first one out of the box, which, as I said, was turned out to be night three. So, we went down to New Orleans and started prepping and, you know, and shot that, you know, part of night one was shot in Africa and the rest of it was shot in the New Orleans area. Now, part three was pretty intense. Tell us how that you envisioned that particular scene, particularly with, with Kizzi and Tom Lee.

Well, I assume you may be referring to the rape scene. Right. I, well, the first of all, what I wanted to do with night three is a, the thing to me, they're all different. These, these are, in this new roots is, some of your listeners might know, was directed by four different directors. Each night has a different director. So, it's a little bit unusual. So, each director was sort of given leeway to bring his own style to his night. I felt that the night that I was given, that that script had less overt action than many of the others, you know, didn't have all the big outdoor action of being in Africa night one. It didn't have the parts of the Civil War that were in night war. You know, it was very much more about the relationship, primarily, between three characters, played by Nikononi Rose and Jonathan Ries-Meier's and introducing reg-age on page. And so, what was important to me was that I have good actors. I was lucky enough to get really

good actors in these roles. And I wanted all of the scenes to feel really real. I mean, to have cinematic dynamism, but not feel like a made up movie scene. And so, approaching the scene with Jonathan Ries-Meier's and the Nikononi Rose, you know, we just cleared the set and took our time to rehearse it. We shot it about halfway through the schedule and just worked it out so that it felt comfortable for the actors so that, you know, the transitions within that scene would be things that they felt comfortable about. And then we shot it. I mean, you know, it just, I think, because they were really true to it and true to what they were doing. They were both so good that, you know, it just feels like a real scene. I had also fought to get a different kind of sexual assault scene in the beginning of night three, which is a simpler, quieter, less physically violent, sexual abuse scene. And I had fought to do that because the abuse of black women in slavery was,

it was habitual. I mean, it happened over and over. And it wasn't always the kind of dramatic violence rape that we see, you know, it was something people were, you know, forced into on a frequent basis and put in positions where, you know, they were threatened and the specter of their family being threatened. So they had to submit to a kind of domestic terror, really, and find a way to live through it. And I wanted to depict that, which was the most important thing to me because I think that's what people don't often think about, you know, they think about it in a different, you know, one-time violent way. And this was something that was that was habitual and was one of the most cruel parts of slavery, I think. And I also was interested in as night three deals with the kind of hypocrisy that allowed white men to father

biracial children and then denied their own children to keep their own children, their own offspring in slavery, to compartmentalize their own families that way. It's almost an inhuman idea. It's inhuman to think that you could actually do that. And yet they did this time and time again. And that's something that night three of roots deals with the chicken George character and the relationship between his mother and in fact, who is his biological father, who is, you know, the master of the farm that he lives on. I'm glad you brought up chicken George. Tell us about the cinematography of shooting the cock fight scene. Well, you know, I said earlier that I thought that I didn't have all the sort of big, you know, explicit action of other nights, but the one sort of physical action sequence or sequence of set-up sequences that I had was the cock fights. And they're very difficult to shoot, and I was concerned, how am I going to make them exciting? You know, you have two

game cocks in a ring, and they're going to be fighting each other, and yet they can't really, they can't really connect. They can't really touch each other because the rules against that, we clearly don't want to hurt the animals, but we want to give the audience the feeling that they are going to be engaged in a fight. So yeah, I put the camera on the ground inside the pit. I did some steady cam work so I could do very semi-circular moves around the animals. I did some moves where I could actually push in on the game cocks as they approached each other, and the collar feathers they have around their necks would flare up. Some of the stuff that we did was certainly special effects where we would add some blood or where with very quick cutting would make it feel like one bird had slashed the other because they have these artificial spurs that have been the sort of little metal spurs that have been put on there around what would be their ankles, I guess, where their natural spurs are to inflict damage. So they're violent scenes, but I found that they've been very

effective for people. I was very happy to be able to get away with it, and we didn't hurt any birds doing it. I mean, so people should know when to watch it. No bird dies. I think happened to any bird. It's all part of movie making, but yeah, it is some exciting film to watch, I think. How important was for you all to one, try to adapt Alex Haley's book and the story, but also include some other information that was going on during that period? Well, we had done a lot of research. It was really important. I think the producers even from the beginning and the writers felt that there was a lot more that we knew about the history of Kuntikintay and the people who were from his tribe, and there could be included in this mini series, and so they went back and wanted to to add those things. I personally went back and read the parts of his book that pertain to my story, and I spoke with historians. We had a

bank of historians on staff for us. In fact, I can't, sorry, I can't remember the name, but there was someone at the University of Texas who was a big part of our staff, and we'll try to get that name for you, but so, you know, there was a lot of attention paid to that. When you see a night one, you'll see more time spent in Africa, and in the original production, and a greater sense of the village and the country and the culture that Kuntikintay comes from, and, you know, what that's all about, and what that religion is, and what that culture is, and the training of those young men. So, yeah, it was, you know, obviously a lot of attention, you know, paid to try to bring that true history out and flesh it out. As an African-American directing a particular story such as this, what type of effect did it have on you as an African-American?

Well, I was really, I first have to say, I was really honored to be part of it. It's such a great title roots, and by title, I mean, you know, it's a historic piece of television, and modern history, the book and the many series, the attention that it had brought to the issue of slavery to the whole nation, which was shocking that we hadn't really looked at it in great detail before, either dramatically or even in schools, mostly, you know, and so, so much attention. So, to be able to bring this story again to get another generation and hopefully add something to the power of what it was originally done, was an honor for me, and to go to work on every day on it was very tough, honestly. I mean, production challenges were enormous, and just the schedule we had to do it in, and, you know, the ambitions that we had for it, you know, were very challenging, but, you know, I loved doing it. Even the tough scenes, you know, things that are tough emotionally, you know,

I enjoyed as an artist being able to work on those things and try to be able to present them to an audience in a way that would move them, that would involve them, and sort of give them a real personal experience of these characters, and knowing these, these, whether it's the slave character, the other characters, you know, as people, and really be able to be pulled into that drama. So, I loved being part of that work and working with the actors that I did. Thomas Carter, actor, and film and television director. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions after your future in Black America programs, email us at jhansfordetkut.org. Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. Remember to like us on Facebook, and to follow us on Twitter. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. You can hear previous programs online at jhansfordetkut.org. Until we have the opportunity again for technical producer David Averis,

I'm John L. Hanson Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America CDs. KUT Radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712. This has been a production of KUT Radio.