AN INTERVIEW AFEMO OMILAMI

When Hounddog played at the Sundance Film Festival back in January, it was one of the most buzzed about films in Park City, mainly due to a much talked about rape scene involving 13-year-old Dakota Fanning.

Lost amongst that talk was a distinctly Southern story about a young girl's coming of age and overcoming abuse. Part of her liberation involves a mentor of sorts in Charles, the wise groundskeeper from down the street.

This important role came down on the shoulders of Afemo Omilami, an actor with many ties to Atlanta and the South.

Omilami has a prolific resume that includes roles in many Southern films such as Forrest Gump, Idlewild, Drumline, Sweet Home Alabama. Most recently, he starred in The Reaping, set in Lousiana. Omilami may split time in L.A. and Atlanta, but it seems as if his heart is South.

Not only is Omilami an established actor, but he also works as a humanitarian, serving as co-executive director of the Atlanta-based Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless, along with his wife Elizabeth Williams-Omilami, the daughter of civil rights activist Hosea Williams.

CinemATL had a chance to talk with Omilami about his career, Hounddog and the definition of Southern cinema.

CinemATL: How did you become an actor?

Afemo Omilami: Actually it started in elementary school when I was invited to be part of these school plays. So it was fun and my mom encouraged me and I don't think that I took it seriously though until I got to high school. I was fortunate enough to have a teacher who had been a professional actress herself.

I will never forget that her name was Miss Marie Manico. She had been a New York actress herself and very well schooled in the theater. We were fortunate enough because this was a small little town in Virginia, but she came to our school and that really was the beginning of me really saying, "this is fun and it's interesting."

So for the next three years or so, I was under her wing. As a matter of fact, she is the same teacher who also had a lot to do with Blair Underwood going into the craft. She taught him too when he was there for a while at the same school in Petersburg, Virginia.

I already liked [acting] but I never considered it as a profession really, even when I finished high school, so I go to Morehouse in 1970 and there I am in a pre-law program. I am not even thinking about the theater. Some friends invite me over to come audition. I end up getting some small parts so that's how I got drawn into the theater program there at Spellman/Morehouse Players in the early 1970's and met up with Samuel L. Jackson. We became good friends [as well as] his wife Latonya Richardson.

One day I invited Bill Nunn to come and have some fun and what-not. So I got him involved into acting and the theater. We became fast friends, all of us, and we ended up doing our first motion picture together in 1971. We became like our own little rat pack.

We were the crew back in those days. Michael Scholtz, who is still a fantastic director today, gave us our first break in motion pictures. It was film starring Clifton Davis called Together For Days.

CinemATL: Having evolved into film and Television. Do you still do theater today?

AO: Every now and then I have to do the theater because if you don't, you loose that edge. Everybody who comes out of theater has an edge over actors who just do acting for motion pictures and television and didn't come out of a classic training of theatrical background.

I firmly believe that so doing that is very important because it maintains your balance and your chords from being shut and flat. I see ourselves as instruments and if you don't keep it tuned up, you'll go flat when it's time to hit your note, hit your moment, you won't come up with the right musical sound.

CinemATL: Do you change your approach to acting or re-invent yourself when you are acting for film and television versus the theater?

AO: I believe you are constantly changing in terms of the look you want to have for a project. Some of my films I have a bald head, some I have an Afro or a very close-cut or a goatee or a moustache. I always try to think of the next thing I am going to do to be distinct instead of going in blind -- what can I constantly do to change in terms of what my look is so people won't keep putting you in a pigeonhole?

Right now, I am going through this thing here in L.A., every time they see my name they want to submit me for some African because they say, "he must be African," or they put me in a category like, "he is heavy so he's the big bad villain, big black heavy type."

So you are constantly fighting that, like, "You talk southern so..."

CinemATL: What are the two most challenging roles that you had to play?

AO: Actually, one of the roles I think was off the radar in terms of main-market films --this film is not part of the everyday films you see out there -- it's called Sankofa, which is a Ghanaian symbol of a bird that's looking back to get its egg. What it means is going back to get the best from your ancestors.

It's a film that I am most proud of. I made it with an Ethiopian director named Haile Karima. The film was shooting in Africa and in Jamaica. I had to play this overseer who kept all the slaves in line but eventually he became a revolutionary when he saw that this kind of life was just destroying him and his people. He surely couldn't be a slave master himself, the way he was being used by the man, so he ended being an over-thrower of the plantation system.

So that was very challenging for me and it was very physical, this particular part of it being shot in Jamaica, because of the heat of the day, and also just getting into the head of this character who was being used as an overseer. You know, we are often used to keep our own people in line, so I found that part very satisfying and challenging working with an international director.

Now, Tigerland which was a film directed by acclaimed director Joel Schumacher, and [starred] Colin Farrell -- that was his break through movie, that's when he really became the star, that was the film in 2000 that launched his career -- that was difficult because we had to undergo weeks of intensive physical training like we were going to boot camp.

I think I was the only oldest cat there. You can see me climbing these walls, crawling into this mud under these barbwires. People don't realize that when you do these war pictures, you go though hell before you even start filming. I am sure Samuel Jackson went through the same things when he did Rules Of Engagement, and the same thing with Tom Hanks for Saving Private Ryan.

That was a challenge. I played this tough sergeant and that was one of the best things I have done. It was another independent and didn't get a wide theatrical release and that's part of our business. Some of the best stuff you do may not be a big hit movie that goes though the total theater process, it might just go in a few theaters and people may never really see it but it's something that you can be proud of.

CinemATL: How did Hounddog come about and tell us a little bit about your character?

AO: I turned my life over to God at a certain point in my career years ago. I left the management up to the creator, to the universe, to open doors and guide me.

Afemo with Dakota Fanning at Sundance. (photo courtesy: AEM)

I said, "Man, I am on the next plane out of here," you know? So I get on the plane and go down there and come to find out that they have been considering people like Delroy Lindo or [Laurence] Fishburne, somebody that's a name. But fortunately all those cats were tied up in projects and I am not on anybody's A list or B list or a C list.

So I go in knowing that I am not their first, second or third choice, but I feel this character and I hit this thing. They cry and I say, "Okay I did my thing so let me go."

They told me that when I came down to make sure I bring some clothes. I figured they might want me to stay a day or two. So I come out sitting on a bench and about an hour or so later they come out and say, "Man, you've got to this. Will you do this part?"

And the rest of the people were already made people. I mean everybody knows Dakota Fanning. Everybody she's been in movies with basically is an Oscar winner or top-notch people from Tom Cruise, to Denzel [Washington] and Sean Penn. So the girl is rolling on the high end. Then, you have Robin Wright Penn and David Morse, etc...

I didn't have any intimidation whatsoever. I was like, "I belong here, I been training for this my whole life." It was a smooth flow, I won Dakota over, she fell in love with me and the rest was history.

CinemATL: What's the status on theatrical release?

AO: They're still working on a distribution deal and they're trying to hold out and get the best deal possible, which I feel they will. Either way, something good is going to come out of this.

CinemATL: What are your thoughts about the controversy surrounding the movie?

AO: You can't pay that kind of publicity. A lot of people try to create controversy for their movies to generate a buzz, however it has to come out from something that's organic and real. This movie even had buzz about it before it even come out at Sundance.

During Sundance it was the highest ticket in town because people had bought tickets long before, so when they saw it they were like "Wait a minute, it wasn't as bad as described to be."

It was tasteful and it was also creatively and artistically done that it made nothing but perfect sense for it to be there, and be a part of the story. It wasn't gratuitous. Dakota's family is very protective of her so it wasn't going be some kind of sleazy, cheesy type stuff. It was made very artistically, very creatively and everybody responded to it.

So I think that kind of buzz has only created what can be good and the film has found its own audience. Hopefully when it comes out in October or sometime later this year, it'll have that same audience waiting on it. I am still hearing buzz about it even here in LA when I meet people who can't wait to see this so it's been working in my favor and I am very happy about it.

CinemATL: So what's next for you and your career?

AO: The thing I liked about Hounddog is that, I had a chance to play a guy who was very positive and to be the grounding force in the whole film and often time we don't get those kind of roles as black men and women in this industry.

The Omilamis meet up with Antonio Banderas in Park City. (photo courtesy: AEM)

So right after that I end up doing another film called The List where I play a black Lawyer. I fell right into that, it was good, this man [the character] was positive, he was about, not only dealing with people in the legal system, but also with the whole person. It was a wonderful character. Now, I am pursuing major roles out here in LA.

What [Hounddog] afforded me, was chance to be able to go through doors that I previously wouldn't even have been called in. But because all this stuff is on my demo and I am getting it out there to some of these people, now it's a plus. So I have been getting with the studios and the major networks and have an opportunity to go for things that are really on the next level of my career.

However, I am not abandoning my position as of co-executive director of Hosea Feed the Hungry and the Homeless because that's who I am and that's still part of me. So I am still splitting my time up to go back to Atlanta from September to December and part of January to help and give to the organizations that serve the hungry and homeless. It's part of my mission and I love that.

CinemATL: What does Southern cinema mean to you? If there is a Southern cinema, whether it be in relation to subjects or topics relevant to Southern reality, history, or the "New South?"

AO: Matter of fact Hounddog is a great example of Southern cinema. I believe that it will fall right in that category meaning that... the history of the south is so particular and so peculiar that it demands its own type of cinema in a sense that the issues have to be addressed historically.

The issues between blacks and whites and Native Americans in the south, issues concerning classicism between races and within races, issues of dialect and cultures. I mean, how many other places in the country do you cultures like the gechi culture down there in South Carolina, in St. Simon Island for instance, in New Orleans with the Black Indians, with the Creole, etc... We have a wonderful mixture that only we can tell those stories and I think Southern cinema is the outgrowth of historical reality that demands its own storytellers who have to have a tie to that history.

Many people in Hollywood and in New York when they try to tell our story, they come out distorted in a lot of ways, because they are it basing on what they think it is, not having come from living it. My people lived that and I have been in the South my whole life, born and raised in Virginia and lived in Georgia many years, so I do have a deeper understanding.

Then you have to look at the Civil Rights movement, which is a Southern reality even though it affected the whole country and the world. And so, yes, that's what Southern cinema is: dealing with that energy that originated out of the south due to the "Jim Crow," the segregation, the lynching, the racism, the Klan and the historic and heroic stands of my people. So yes, that's what you will call Southern cinema.

Anything that comes out of that with that flavor, with that fire, with the demand for justice that is what you are going to call Southern cinema and I believe we've only just touched the surface, the tip of the iceberg of what Southern cinema will bring to the movie industry as a whole.

Not these stereotypical characters they always want to draw back to, with having the typical redneck in every scene or the brother acting the fool. No, that's not Southern cinema, that's somebody's greedy moneymaking schemes to try to exploit the false images of Southern cinema.

That's not it, though. It's far deeper than that and we have yet to see what these new filmmakers are going to bring to Southern cinema. Julie Dashes' wonderful film Daughters of the Dust to me is Southern cinema. Tyler Perry captures some of that Southern cinema thing. In The Heat Of The Night burns with that same fire and that same truth. Banished [the documentary that played at Sundance] about the people who were expelled from the different towns... "Southern cinema! Count me in any day, bro!"

Eric Bomba-Ire is the founder of CinemATL.