Charles Burnett: Interviews

Life Drawings: Charles Burnett’s Realism

10 Life Drawings: Charles Burnett’s Realism Monona Wali/1988 Published in the Independent 11, no. 8 (October 1988): 16–22. Reprinted by permission . Charles Burnett, forty-four years old, is a fiercely independent Black filmmaker living in Los Angeles. His first feature film, Killer of Sheep, made while he was a student at UCLA in 1978 for ten thousand dollars , is a masterpiece of American neo-realism, a painfully humorous and tragic account of the daily life of a slaughterhouse worker in South Central L.A. Killer of Sheep won the Critics Prize at the Berlin Film Festival and received other awards in the U.S. and abroad. My Brother’s Wedding , his second feature, made for eighty thousand dollars in 1983 and financed by the West German public television channel ZDF, tells the story of a young man caught in a morality play that opposes his loyalties to his family to those to his best friend. It is ironic that Burnett’s films employing subtle realism are better known in Europe than in the United States. Since the completion of My Brother’s Wedding, Burnett has been developing new projects and struggling to find financing for his next film. This July, he was awarded a prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, popularly known as the “Genius Grant,” which will pay him an annual stipend for five years. The following interview took place in the fall of 1987. Burnett and I discussed his background, his experiences in South Central L.A., and how this influenced his work and his career, as well as some themes and directions in his filmmaking. Monona Wali: When you were growing up, what did you think you were going to do? Charles Burnett: I didn’t know really. I thought I’d join the service, because my friend Bobby and other guys were going into the service. monona wali / 1988 11 MW: Why didn’t you? CB: We were forced to take a position against the war. Before I got out of high school, a recruiting officer came around. When I turned eighteen, I didn’t go down and register immediately, even though they stress how if you don’t do that you can get arrested. I didn’t take it seriously . When I did go down to register, they gave me the third degree, and I was really angry. A lot of things began to gel. I was aware of institutionalized racism, because in school I became very aware of it—the way they wanted to shove us into shop class—the whole attitude of “well, you’re not going to do anything anyway . . .” When I did go to register at the draft board, there was this lady who noted every mark, like scars, for identification purposes. She was very rude, and I’m thinking I’m doing them a favor, right? She acted like they owned me. I was in school at the time they wanted to draft me, so I got a school deferment, but I had to go down to the draft board anyway . There were long lines—zigzagging up the stairs and in twos and fours. It was like a dream. And there were these guys hollering at you like you’re already in the service. There was this blonde kid, typically collegiate American guy, walking up and down and cheering us on: “We’ve got to go fight for this country.” And we were looking at him, thinking, “What is the matter with this guy?” It was one of the first times that someone pointed and said, “You’re an American, and you have obligations.” He was saying that you were supposed to support his way of life—freedom. I’m saying, “What? Freedom?” At the same time the police would call you “nigger” in a minute. You would walk down the street, and they would pull you over. It was rumored that the L.A. police recruited southern whites to dominate the Black community. MW: Did you get your deferment? CB: I got a deferment. But the whole Army business was a joke, because they would only take kids who didn’t have any prison record or police record. They took the core—the potential—of the Black community. All these guys who were fighting each other and wanted to prove themselves physically went to jail. It was a double whammy. I was in line at the store not too long ago behind this...