Charles Burnett: Interviews

A Conversation with Charles Burnett

161 A Conversation with Charles Burnett David Lowery/2007 From www.road-dog-productions.com, June 2, 2007. Reprinted by permission. Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep was one of those films I’d always heard mentioned here and there during my cinematic matriculation; most of what I knew about it was that I couldn’t see it, due to soundtrack rights issues that had kept it unreleased ever since it was made in 1977. But then, earlier this year, a trailer for the film began to show up in theaters . UCLA had restored the film, the soundtrack had been cleared and Milestone was going to put it out into theaters for the very first time. Killer of Sheep is, suffice to say, more than deserving of its enduring legacy. It’s a great film, and an important one—not just as a piece of film history, not just as a document of social unrest, but as an example of cinematic form so strong and assured that it’s difficult to believe that it was Burnett’s first picture, or that he made it under the circumstances it was (a ten thousand dollar budget and shooting schedule made up of a year of weekends). I was lucky enough to have the chance to sit down and discuss the film with Burnett last week. This is what he had to say. David Lowery: I finally saw Killer of Sheep for the first time the other day. I loved it, and was also struck by how familiar certain elements were; you can see the influence the film had on everything from early Jim Jarmusch to Barbershop. Do you ever go to the movies and see your own influence up on the screen? Charles Burnett: Sometimes. Sometimes people call me and say “I want you to see my film because I was impacted by your film, and I want to see what you think of it.” I’ve had that on occasion. DL: Did David Gordon Green call you when he made George Washington ? 162 charles burnett: inter views CB: Yes, everyone brings that up! He sent me a tape of it. He’s doing very well now. DL: You started this film when you were at UCLA. Was it actually a student film, or was it produced outside the curriculum? CB: No, it was a student film. It was my thesis film, and it was a part of an ongoing discussion and debate about how film can aid in changing society. A lot of people were very much interested in that, and were making films about the working class, but they had no relationship with the working class. They were making the same film over and over again, with the same solution over and over again, about the factories being exploited by management, getting the unions started and everything . Where I came from, people were in totally different situations. I said I wanted to make a film, without imposing my values, and say, “Look, here’s a situation. How can we help Stan [the central character in the film]? How can we help the community? What can we do to change it?” And that was the point of the film. To create a debate and not just say here’s a solution, here’s a filmmaker’s point of view. So that was the idea behind the film, and also to make it so anti-Hollywood that it appeared to be something captured in the moment. To form the narrative by having these events that, in the way they’re tied together, lead to insight and story. DL: Did you go to film school with the goal of making this sort of film, or was it something that evolved over the course of your studies and making short films and such? CB: No, I wanted to tell a story, I wanted to tell what happened to people in the community. When I was in high school, I saw how the system was crippling the kids. The whole idea of encouraging kids to go to prison, like it was a rite of passage. Our school did nothing to help. I mentioned in some other interviews that when I was in class, one of our teachers just went down the aisle, pointing and going, “You’re not going to be anything, you’re not going to be anything.” There was always this antagonism between teacher and student. Most of these kids, no one in...