The Color Purple (1985) (w/ Christian Robertson)

Eli Price (00:02.493)
Hello and welcome to the Establishing Shot, a podcast where we do deep dives into directors and their filmographies. I am your host Eli Price and we are here on episode 52 of the podcast in our early Spielberg series covering his movies from the 70s and 80s. And yeah, we are getting closer and closer to the end of this series.

getting into 1985's The Color Purple today. So this will be a fun and interesting discussion to say the least, just with some controversy maybe around this movie that we'll get into later on. But I have a first time guest on the show with me today. He's a friend of mine and yeah, here in...

in Lafayette, Louisiana with me. Joining us is Christian Robertson. Christian, glad to have you on. How are you doing?

Christian Robertson (01:10.772)
doing very well. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Eli Price (01:14.333)
Yeah. Yeah. So, it is a stormy night here in Lafayette. So, we'll try to make sure most of the rain noise is out and, in post, but, but we, yeah, you'll, if, if you hear some rain over the podcast, you know, that's just the way it goes with podcasting. So, but yeah, Christian is, joining me. He,

Christian Robertson (01:25.236)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:43.101)
Christian, why don't you tell a little bit about who you are, what you do, just fill people in on the world of Christian.

Christian Robertson (01:53.172)
Yeah, the world of Christian. I would say it's expensive a bit, but yeah, so I live here in Lafayette. I went to UL here in Lafayette as a sports medicine major. So for about 10 years before COVID, I was full -time doing sports medicine, taking care of athletes, when they get hurt and...

covering a lot of high school games, some college stuff. Did that in Denver as well. Did my master's in health administration. So now since COVID, I've been working as an analyst for a hospital system here in Louisiana. I have two kids, one kid on the way, which is crazy. Three kids, it's crazy. But we're going for it.

Eli Price (02:42.781)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:48.381)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:48.532)
I've been married to Blair for almost 11 years. We're making 11 years this summer, which that's crazy too. It's a big blessing though.

Eli Price (02:55.229)
Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I have, you know, I have the two kids and I'm like, I don't know. I don't know about three, you know.

Christian Robertson (03:07.668)
It's something and the baby's not even here yet.

Eli Price (03:13.989)
Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, Christian also has done a little bit of dabbling in the acting world. If you want to share a little, we're going to actually do next episode, a deeper dive into Christian's acting and just his experience with that. But yeah, do you want to give a little tease of

Christian Robertson (03:26.996)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:43.773)
of your experience as far as that goes.

Christian Robertson (03:47.156)
Yeah, so it's always been a dream for a very long time. And thankfully, I've had the opportunity to dabble in it for sure. And you know, it's so fun. It's something about doing your dream, you know? So it's crazy. You go on set, you do the job, you're having a ton of fun. But then I got to go back to, quote unquote, real life, you know, because...

Eli Price (03:56.765)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (04:13.341)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (04:16.436)
You know, this is more of a hobby at this point, but if someone comes calling and knocking on my door, you know, I'm definitely going to answer it. But it's, I'm living the dream when I get to be on set, so.

Eli Price (04:19.855)
Right.

Eli Price (04:29.405)
Yeah, yeah. Well, maybe when this podcast, you know, blows up in the future, you know, which is kind of like the cross my fingers kind of thing. Someone will be like, there's that Christian guy that was on that one episode. You got to get, need to get him on in my movie, you know.

Christian Robertson (04:50.772)
Absolutely, my DMs are always open, so hit me up.

Eli Price (04:56.573)
yeah, slide on in. Well yeah, so we are obviously covering Spielberg in this series. Do you remember your first experience with a Spielberg movie?

Christian Robertson (05:12.244)
You know, it is a hard question because I was so young watching this particular movie. I didn't know what a director was per se at this point, but it was definitely Jaws. And Jaws was one of those movies that always played on TBS. You know, it was one of those movies that was always on, you know, and you remembered a little, you know, that little.

Eli Price (05:12.861)
It's always a hard question.

Eli Price (05:25.021)
Right, exactly. Yeah.

Okay.

Eli Price (05:34.941)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (05:40.829)
yeah.

Christian Robertson (05:42.324)
that little part of it. And I just thought it was crazy. So much so, I don't even really swim at the beach because, you know, obviously there are sharks in the water. So I'm going to stay away from that. But Jaws was definitely my first one.

Eli Price (05:52.893)
Right. Yeah.

Eli Price (05:58.589)
That's awesome. I don't, I don't know that I've gotten that, that answer yet. So that's really cool to hear. Jaws is my favorite Spielberg movie. So, it, nothing's dethroned it yet. I've been filling in some, some blind spots in this series. but yeah, nothing, nothing has come and dethroned, the, the great beast of Jaws quite yet. So, yeah. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (06:11.988)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (06:23.892)
That shows how great of a movie it is because he has a lot of great movies and for none of them to be thrown out for you, that's saying something.

Eli Price (06:31.389)
Yeah, and it's funny because it's his only second theatrical released movie, which is wild. But yeah. Anyway, today we are going to be covering the color purple. This is, I'm trying to think. This would be Spielberg's, let me count it out.

Eli Price (07:01.213)
I don't have it open in front of me so I can't count it out. I want to say this is like eight, somewhere around there, his eighth film maybe.

Eli Price (07:14.749)
Something like that. I should have looked that up before, before we started recording. That would have been the smart podcasting move, but alas, here we are. yeah, this is, that's a guess. And so, you know, if you're listening and you're like, that's wrong, you can just write me an email and be like, Hey, it's not his eighth movie. And I'll be like, I know. Cause I looked it up as soon as I stopped recording and saw how wrong I was.

Christian Robertson (07:16.916)
Mm.

Christian Robertson (07:24.084)
I trust you guessed on that.

Christian Robertson (07:35.988)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (07:39.924)
You're right.

Eli Price (07:43.741)
But anyways, yeah, it's deeper into his career. He is like Steven Spielberg at this point. Like Steven Spielberg in like neon next to the Hollywood sign at this point, basically. So that's where we are in the series. We're at mid 80s at this point. So we started off in the...

Christian Robertson (08:00.468)
Sure. Yeah.

Eli Price (08:12.925)
kind of the early six, late sixties, early seventies, talking about his TV career that he started off with. And, and so, yeah, we're a good, good 15 years into his career at this point. but yeah, the color purple itself does not begin with Steven Spielberg though, obviously. it would be really strange if Steven Spielberg, wrote this material himself.

Christian Robertson (08:17.62)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (08:38.196)
Yeah

Christian Robertson (08:41.844)
I would agree to that.

Eli Price (08:42.941)
But yeah, before we dig into that, I was curious. So I always give my guests like, hey, here's some movies open. What are you interested in? And you chose the color purple. Have you seen the color purple before doing this? Or do you have a history with it? Or did you just choose it because you're like, I've never seen that. I want to watch that.

Christian Robertson (09:10.804)
So it's a few things. So number one, I've never seen it prior to this, well, preparing for this episode. And I saved it specifically for this, but it was such a quoted movie in my family. I felt like I saw it, you know, because I kind of knew what was going on. And as I'm watching it and the lines, they would say, I'm like, my nanny would say this, like, my.

Eli Price (09:20.445)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (09:28.061)
Gotcha, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (09:39.476)
my teenage would say this all the time. I'm like, that's where that comes from. Okay. And it just kind of connected the dots for me. But another reason I chose it was because the new remake, the musical form of the color purple was released a couple of months ago. So I figured this would be a good time to go back and actually watch the original and then go ahead and watch the remake with Fantasia and Taraji P. Henson and that whole group.

Eli Price (09:41.081)
Yeah. huh. Yeah.

Eli Price (09:51.997)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (09:56.893)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (10:02.333)
yeah.

Eli Price (10:06.045)
Yeah. Yeah. So you, did you watch both of them? Okay. Yeah. I, I thought it was, I enjoyed it. we can talk a little bit about it later. but yeah, I thought it was pretty good. yeah, that's cool. Yeah. This is my first time watching it too. I, it was one of my blind spots that I was excited to fill in during this series. So, but I did,

Christian Robertson (10:10.708)
I didn't see the new one yet, but I heard it was pretty good.

Christian Robertson (10:29.588)
Okay.

Eli Price (10:34.941)
I did realize, it's funny cause we like, we've been, on, on social media back and forth about the whole, like Kendrick Drake, beef. And, and, when I was, I just happened to be thinking about the song, all right, by Kendrick. And I realized that it's a, it's a color purple reference that he starts the song song with. He, you know, he starts the song with all my life I had to fight. And I was like, it just like clicked. I was like,

Christian Robertson (10:45.716)
Yeah, right.

Christian Robertson (10:53.684)
Hehehe

Christian Robertson (11:01.012)
yeah yeah yeah yeah!

Eli Price (11:03.869)
Wait a second, that's a color purple reference. I know that Oprah delivers with such strength and power. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (11:04.788)
Right. That's the most iconic line probably.

Christian Robertson (11:17.748)
And there was a cool thing about Oprah doing that scene too that we probably would get into, but I thought it was incredible.

Eli Price (11:23.565)
yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But yeah, let's, let's jump back to the beginning, with Alice Walker, who wrote the book, the novel, the color purple that the movie is adapted from. She, was born in 1944, just two years before Spielberg. but she was born in Eatonton, Georgia, to sharecropper parents. now I know.

I'm from, I'm from Georgia originally, and I know you have at least family in Georgia, right? Have you spent any time in Georgia?

Christian Robertson (12:02.1)
I have spent a little bit, not very much, and it's more distant family. I'm more tied to Atlanta or Georgia because of the Atlanta Falcons, you know, and that's my whole connection, and Chick -fil -A and Coca -Cola. So.

Eli Price (12:06.845)
Yeah. Okay.

Eli Price (12:14.653)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's some great things from Atlanta for sure. Chick -fil -A and Coca -Cola alone is enough to, to get excited about, about the ATL. but yeah, so yeah, so she's from Georgia from a group in Eaton, which is, you know, very rural Georgia.

Christian Robertson (12:29.044)
Exactly.

Eli Price (12:41.661)
she was involved in the civil rights movement in the sixties. And then, she, I think I want to say this was like her third novel and maybe her 10th book overall is what I remember reading. and yeah, so she wrote this book in 1982. and it is an epistolary novel, which is a big word for saying it's a collection of like letters, like.

fictional letters that the main character Sealy is writing to God. They all start with dear God and it's a letter. So yeah, it's very interesting. I listened to the book on audiobook in the past month, kind of on and off riding the car and whatnot.

And, yeah, so I actually finished the book before I watched the movie. which I don't do a very, I don't do all that often to be honest. but, you know, I was like, well, this is like kind of a classic book. I was like, so yeah, I should, I should like read it. And it just so happened that I had access to the audio book through the library. So I was like, it'll be easier to listen to it. So.

Christian Robertson (13:47.412)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (14:06.356)
You're right.

Eli Price (14:06.685)
but yeah, so, I really enjoyed, the book a lot. I thought it was like an incredibly written book. like kind of one of those like, yeah, this is, it makes sense why this is such a classic, you know, when you read it sort of book.

Christian Robertson (14:27.764)
You know, I had no idea it was a book until, you know, kind of doing a little bit of research. I'm like, okay.

Eli Price (14:30.237)
Yeah.

Eli Price (14:34.877)
Yeah. Yeah. So she wrote it. She, she wrote it a little bit out of her own experience. And also like kind of her family's background a little bit. She wanted it to focus not on white people dominating over black people, obviously, but kind of more she was drawing from kind of stories of her own family of.

black men that dominated over a black woman. And so, just, she had, she had a couple of grandfathers that, she heard stories about and very like misogynistic. and, but when she knew them, they were like, very like mellowed out, not really that way anymore. And so it was just like this question in her mind of like, how do people change? that like was.

Christian Robertson (15:07.892)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (15:34.205)
part of the inspiration, I guess, behind the book. It also, like, she talks about in interviews how it was kind of like a challenge, like she wanted to challenge traditional theology as well. So that's kind of like baked into the book a little bit. I found it pretty interesting the way she explores that and talks about it. I also, I wrote down this, she...

Christian Robertson (15:49.876)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (16:03.709)
In the interview that was on the Blu -ray disc with her, she's, I thought this was super interesting. She said, you cannot possibly be free until you have a personal connection to whatever God is. I was like, that's really interesting. and you can kind of see that you can kind of see that idea kind of in the movie. it's a little bit more vague in the movie than it is in the book. but yeah, but yeah, the book had some controversy.

Christian Robertson (16:18.9)
Hmm.

Eli Price (16:33.917)
around it. And it was kind of, I think it was more amplified when the movie came out than the book. Which makes sense. More people see movies than probably in pop culture than necessarily are like reading all the same books. So that makes sense. But it did win the Pulitzer Prize for non -fiction, for

Christian Robertson (16:43.828)
Right.

Christian Robertson (16:55.668)
Right.

Eli Price (17:01.533)
fiction in 1983, which is crazy. And I'm pretty sure she was the first black woman to win a Pulitzer prize. so yeah, so, yeah, so this is a really like prestigious work. it's not like, it's not like just some like little novel that someone thought was interesting is like, I'm going to adapt this. It's like, no, this is a Pulitzer prize winning novel. from.

Christian Robertson (17:05.62)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (17:09.852)
wow, okay. That's a big deal.

Christian Robertson (17:22.292)
Thank you.

Right.

Eli Price (17:30.461)
the first black woman to win a Pulitzer prize. So really big deal. and she didn't really at first want to give up the rights to the book to become a film. she was very wary about that. a couple of producers approached her, Peter Goober or Guber. I don't know exactly how to say his last name. and John Peters, I'm just going to say Goober G U B R.

Christian Robertson (17:33.588)
Yeah.

Eli Price (18:00.221)
Sounds right to me. but yeah, it's one of those last names where it's like, you might start pronouncing it different. So it's harder to make fun of. but yeah, so I don't know how he pronounces it, but I'm going to pronounce it goober. but yeah, they wanted, to make a film from the book. And like, honestly, like it makes sense. Like when you read the book, you're like, yeah, this would make a really good movie.

Christian Robertson (18:01.748)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (18:09.78)
Right.

Christian Robertson (18:28.756)
Okay.

Eli Price (18:29.277)
because it's, it is in letter form, but it's her telling stories and like episodes. So it's even like structured in a way that's like very, like it's episodic and it covers a lot of time. So it's like, it's just like prime for this letter is a scene. This letter is a scene and you can kind of like take the meat and like the most important ones and like constructed together to make a film. So.

Christian Robertson (18:43.22)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (18:49.78)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (18:57.428)
Right.

Eli Price (18:59.133)
Yeah, when I was listening to the book, I was like, okay, that it makes sense why they wanted to make a movie from this. even though typically like a novel made out of letters doesn't like necessarily set itself up great for to become a film, but, but yeah, this one definitely did. yeah, so she consulted with some friends and decided, that.

Christian Robertson (19:06.644)
Right.

Christian Robertson (19:16.244)
You're right.

Eli Price (19:26.909)
Working with Hollywood was necessary for improving black representation, which makes sense because it's the mid eighties and there just wasn't a lot of representation. Unfortunately, there was like a bigger boom of like black actors in the seventies starting to be in movies. And that was kind of like.

Christian Robertson (19:34.068)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (19:50.868)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (19:54.557)
the boom of like black exploitation films. And so it was kind of a growing thing, but yeah, it wasn't great in the mid 80s. It's better now. It still has room for improvement, but definitely much better.

Christian Robertson (20:07.956)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (20:11.892)
I think.

Right. Right. I think this was one of the first ones that was so big as in regards to the cast, you know, like there was so many African American people part of this movie and not really any anybody else, you know, so I could see how that was a big deal to happen. But I can also see how.

Eli Price (20:22.973)
Yeah.

Eli Price (20:33.625)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (20:39.357)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (20:44.18)
it may have been hard to make that happen in Hollywood at that time. So it was kind of like a lot riding on this movie and we saw some of the fallout from that too.

Eli Price (20:47.197)
Yeah. Yes.

Yeah.

Eli Price (20:57.405)
Yes. Yeah. And we'll definitely like touch on all that, but yeah, it, it was, it was one of the first, if not like, I don't want to say one, I don't want to say it was the first cause I'm sure there might've been some others, but it's definitely like one of the first like big Hollywood productions. Cause this is a, I mean, it's a Spielberg film. It's, a pretty decent sized budget for, you know,

Christian Robertson (21:19.732)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (21:27.645)
period drama like this. Like it's a big Hollywood prestige film. Like it's not just, you know, some indie film, you know, it's, it's a, it's a big thing. You've got Steven Spielberg on the, you know, on the poster. So it's a, it's a big deal. And it was probably one of the first that had an all black cast for a movie like that, which is a big deal.

Christian Robertson (21:30.036)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (21:38.324)
Right.

Christian Robertson (21:45.94)
You're right.

Christian Robertson (21:52.564)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (21:56.285)
and that's partly, I would say because of Alice Walker, and, and her involvement, she, she did end up ceding the rights, but she had stipulations. some of those included, a guaranteed consulting role on the film, the right to review casting decisions. So that was a big part. she was also adamant that the actors not be major stars, but talents in the making.

which we do see. and then, her other big stipulation was that half of the production team. So that's not the actors. That's, that's just ca that's just like crew. so half the production team had to be people of color, women, or people from third ward pop third world populations. and so, so all of this really honestly is just like sort of revolutionary for a Hollywood film.

Christian Robertson (22:27.316)
I appreciate that.

Christian Robertson (22:38.836)
Yeah.

Eli Price (22:55.453)
So, you know, this was a big deal for, first of all, for this novel to be made into a movie and then also like what stipulations Walker put on it to make it, you know, to help, to start like taking steps toward helping representation, you know.

Christian Robertson (22:59.06)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (23:17.844)
Right. And also, you know, it's a reflection of her work, you know, so I would imagine she would want to have as much of a hand in it as she can, you know.

Eli Price (23:23.165)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (23:28.221)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you don't want your, you don't want your, hard work, and like, you know, as a writer, I'm sure she's like pouring her soul into this book and you don't want that ruined by the movie. but yeah. So even with all that, she remained very skeptical. Spielberg was also concerned.

Christian Robertson (23:47.828)
Exactly.

Eli Price (23:58.045)
to sign on, you know, he kind of, he had, he had gotten the book from Kathleen Kennedy, who was a producer. They, she was a co -founder of his production company with him. So she had given him the book and he really connected to the characters. I loved the characters and knew that they were going to be making a movie about it.

Quincy Jones was brought on early early on and he

Yeah. Quincy Jones was brought on to do the music early on. So like, Guber and Peters had asked him pretty early on to be part of the movie. He was a composer. He already had like 15 Grammys. one of them was actually for an audio book version of ET, which is, which is cool. he loved ET, and,

Christian Robertson (24:44.148)
Mm.

Christian Robertson (24:54.26)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (24:59.22)
Ha ha.

Christian Robertson (25:04.692)
I didn't know audio books were around back then.

Eli Price (25:06.877)
Yep. I guess. I mean, they were like, I'm sure like on, I don't know what, what was it? Yeah. I guess cassette tapes were around in the mid eighties. or, there was, there's another like thing to, I don't, I don't remember, but, but yeah, I'm sure it was maybe. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I have, I have seen like audio books in cassette form. So I guess it was something like that. but yeah, he,

Christian Robertson (25:12.404)
that tape.

Christian Robertson (25:23.572)
8 tracks maybe.

Eli Price (25:36.669)
He also, so they brought him on to do the music, but he became the like main producer for the movie early on. So Guber and Peters were ended up just being like executive producers. so, he, he, I have this quote from him. He said, Alice Walker wanted me involved in the production. She trusted my creative input. So I asked Guber to let me run the whole thing and I ran straight to Spielberg. Everybody thought I was nuts.

Christian Robertson (25:43.7)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (26:06.324)
Hahaha.

Eli Price (26:06.685)
and so he, yeah, basically he's like, well, I'm doing the music. Alice Walker wants me more involved. So just let me produce it basically. And so he became the producer and, and like really wanted Spielberg. Like he, he only wanted Spielberg, to make this movie. And yeah, Spielberg was concerned. He was like, I don't know. Like, I don't know a whole lot about the conditions of black people in the U S.

Christian Robertson (26:16.404)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (26:29.94)
Right.

Eli Price (26:36.349)
You know, I love these characters and everything. And what's funny to me is, so in the interviews, Spielberg and, and Quincy both talk about how, when he was like, not sure about it, Quincy Jones basically told him, well, you didn't have to be an alien to make ET. and, and then that was like, that was like what.

Christian Robertson (26:36.372)
Right.

Christian Robertson (26:55.668)
Yeah.

Eli Price (27:02.077)
In the interviews, it seems like spillworks like, and I was like, okay, yeah, I'll, I'll do it. and I was just thinking, wait, that's not the same thing at all, but okay. Yeah. it worked for, for spillberg, I guess, but yeah, almost like, I mean, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but Hey, whatever works, you know? but.

Christian Robertson (27:10.508)
Right. It got him in the door at least.

Eli Price (27:30.237)
Also, Alice Walker, like wanted to interview whoever they had directed. So, Spielberg actually had to go interview with Walker and like sell himself, for the movie, which he talked about, like, I hadn't done that in like a decade. which must've been strange for him. Like she, she like held all the power in that situation, which is flipping like.

Christian Robertson (27:41.908)
Yeah, right.

Christian Robertson (27:47.38)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (27:53.716)
Mm -hmm, yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (27:58.109)
Flipping the script for Spielberg who, like we said, was like at the top of his game at this point. Yeah, so I think that says a lot too. What I thought was really cool was that when Spielberg did finally accept the directing position, he reduced his salary to the Directors Guild of America minimum, which was $40 ,000. Yeah, so he like took the minimum that he could take.

Christian Robertson (28:03.924)
right.

Christian Robertson (28:23.732)
Really? Wow.

Eli Price (28:28.029)
Cause obviously like the DGA, like they have stipulate, like when you're a member, they have stipulations that like kind of, it's, it's kind of like a union in a way. Like you have like protections as a director, from the industry. so that's one of like the minimum for a member of the DGA is $40 ,000. So he took the absolute minimum he could, which I thought was really cool. I think, I think, I had seen somewhere his like typical salary was like 15 million or something.

Christian Robertson (28:37.588)
Right.

Eli Price (28:58.077)
so that's a big difference. Yeah. huh. Yeah. So now like Steven Spielberg was not hurting for money. so, you know, we, it, it's probably not as big of a deal as like, you know, me taking that pay cut. but yeah, he, it is like, it is very like.

Christian Robertson (28:58.9)
Wow, at that time, wow. Yeah, that's a big difference. And he had a kid on the way, so.

Christian Robertson (29:09.844)
Right, right.

Christian Robertson (29:21.78)
Right.

Eli Price (29:27.005)
A sign of respect for sure, like at the least to do that for sure. Yeah, he wanted Alice Walker to write a script. She wasn't that enthusiastic about it. She said she doesn't like to like return to her work once she's done with it, which makes sense, but she did write an early script. She actually called her script, Watch for Me in the Sunset, which I thought was a cool sort of different.

Christian Robertson (29:30.388)
Absolutely.

Christian Robertson (29:42.708)
Mm.

Eli Price (29:55.581)
I think it's a line in the book or the movie. that line watch for me in the sunset. I think it's like maybe something Nettie says to. Yeah. to Celie and her letters. but yeah, so, she wrote it. She didn't think it was that great. Spielberg really loved like parts of it. He said, but in the end she was like, she wouldn't let him use her script. She was like, no, you need to bring on like a writer and I don't want you.

Christian Robertson (30:04.212)
I think Maddie did say something like that. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (30:24.532)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (30:24.957)
My script.

And so he ends up bringing on a guy named Mino Meyes who had done some writing for him on his amazing stories project which was a TV series that he produced and Mino wrote a couple of episodes that he directed himself and I think he wrote some other episodes for other directors too.

Christian Robertson (30:56.148)
Okay.

Eli Price (30:56.861)
So this was his first, he had worked on that TV series, but this was his first feature film screenplay. So yeah, so no pressure. And then on top of that, you're adapting like this Pulitzer Prize winning novel. And I think, I think Meyers is like, he was maybe Dutch or something like that. So, but yeah, still like.

Christian Robertson (31:05.364)
No pressure.

Eli Price (31:24.893)
a European white guy adapting a script of a black woman about the black rural South in the early 1900s. So he was concerned like understandably about getting Walker's approval on it. And, and I read that he actually got like ill when she okayed the first draft. Like, I guess he had been so stressed about it that when, when he finally had the relief of like her okaying it, he like, I don't know.

Christian Robertson (31:32.468)
Right?

Christian Robertson (31:38.164)
Yeah, that's fair.

Christian Robertson (31:47.356)
Yeah.

Eli Price (31:53.821)
It's, it just said he got ill. I don't know what that means, but, I don't even know if that means like he got a bad cold or if he puked or what, but, but yeah, so he was very relieved obviously. And she did, go, go in and work with him on like the dialogue and vocabulary and stuff, for the script. So she did give some like pretty strong input on, on the final product.

Christian Robertson (32:02.836)
Hahaha.

Christian Robertson (32:22.036)
Yeah.

Eli Price (32:24.093)
but yeah, they did. Spielberg thought audiences weren't ready for some of the more like explicit erotic moments, which are in the book. and then he also just thought like he wasn't the right person to direct those and like took a more poetic right routes in the way they wrote those and filmed them. and I think honestly, like,

Christian Robertson (32:33.876)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (32:41.044)
Yeah.

Eli Price (32:50.973)
well, we'll talk more about that stuff later on, but honestly, like the, him saying like, he's not the right person to direct it is probably pretty true. Like that's just not like Spielberg's O. and so yeah, that makes sense to me. It's like, I'm not really the guy. If I'm the director, like, that's not really my, my thing. I don't really do those. so that makes sense. And it's probably also like, to avoid.

Christian Robertson (33:03.924)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (33:15.412)
Yeah.

Eli Price (33:20.605)
He was afraid of it, like getting an R rating if you have too much of that stuff. and he generally tried to avoid that in those days. I don't think he had put out an R movie yet. even though some of his stuff like Jaws probably would have been if that rating was actually like he did avoid the R rating by taking out, a little bit of,

Christian Robertson (33:25.94)
Right.

Christian Robertson (33:30.611)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (33:39.796)
You're right.

Eli Price (33:49.949)
like detached a leg bouncing around on the bottom of the sea. that's like, yeah. Yeah. It's so funny. Cause like in jaws, there's there that's that is still in the movie, but apparently it was a longer, like, like staying on that, like detached leg bouncing around and they were like, well, if you shorten this, then you can get the PG rating. And so he just shortened it.

Christian Robertson (33:53.796)
I'm always curious as to what the limit is. Like, what's the threshold?

Christian Robertson (34:12.532)
Hehehehe

Wow.

Eli Price (34:19.485)
but yeah, so yeah, that's probably part of it too is like, obviously like you're going to get a wider audience with a PG 13 than with our, so, but yeah, he, some of the final stuff with, with getting the film going, they, he had to get a cinematographer obviously. so he called in the director of, photography, Gordon Willis, who had done work on the Godfather part one and two.

so obviously had a kind of a specialty for creating rich atmospheres with those movies. and so he was a part of it early on. They, they actually did some test, shooting in black and white cause Spielberg was considering shooting this in black and white. and then decided that it would be really strange for a movie called the color purple to be filmed in black and white. And so kind of scrap that idea.

Christian Robertson (34:56.5)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (35:07.028)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (35:15.124)
Down.

Good call to scrap that because if I'm going to the movies at that point in time, that's going to be the first thing I'm saying. Like, why is it in black and white and it's called the color purple? Like, what is this?

Eli Price (35:19.164)
Yeah.

Eli Price (35:23.165)
Yeah.

Yes, exactly. It would have been ironic, I guess. But yeah, good call. Yeah, good call on Spielberg to kind of scrap that idea. He, yeah, yeah. But Gordon Willis actually didn't end up being the DP for it. He brought on Alan Daviau.

who had worked with him on ET and had also done his very early short film Amblin, which kind of helped him break into the filmmaking, like break into Hollywood basically. Yeah, and then Ruben Cannon did the casting for this movie, which hats off to Mr. Cannon, great job. He actually had written a letter to Quincy Jones.

wanting to be part of the production, but got a call asking him to be the casting director before he even sent the letter. So I loved when he was telling that story, I was like, that's awesome. Yeah. But yeah, so just a quick, we've talked a little bit about the crew. Quincy Jones produced it. Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall who were

Christian Robertson (36:31.668)
Yeah, yeah, that's crazy.

Christian Robertson (36:37.94)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (36:51.933)
And Spielberg's kind of, they, they're co -producers with him on a lot of stuff in this time period with Amblin, Amblin Entertainment, his production company. So they were producers also, but I'm pretty sure Quincy Jones was like the head honcho as far as producing goes. Obviously Alice Walker has the original story with the screenplay by Mino Maes that we talked about. He would, Maes went on to.

Christian Robertson (37:10.676)
Yeah.

Eli Price (37:20.605)
work on Empire of the Sun with them too, which was his next movie. So, some extra collaboration. Frank Marshall also did some second unit directing in Kenya. So we have some location shots from Africa that Frank Marshall directed. We talked about Alan Daviao, who was, we talked about he was ET. He also was his,

cinematographer for the Twilight Zone movie for his segment. And then he, he too went on to work with him in Empire of the Sun. So, yeah.

Christian Robertson (37:57.748)
It's crazy because on set, you know, you get close to all these people you're working with, like the actors, the crew, and after it's done, you're like, okay, what can we work on together next? You know, you have this bond and you're like, let's keep this whole thing going.

Eli Price (38:05.789)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (38:09.853)
Yes. Yeah. yeah. And doing this series, like I've seen a lot of that with, with the directors I've covered is like, they're like very strong collaborations, with, with, with different, like members of their crews. with a, with a career as long as Spielberg's, you kind of have like, I guess, like seasons of collaborations with people for the most part.

Christian Robertson (38:23.508)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (38:35.7)
Yeah.

Eli Price (38:39.709)
But but so this is kind of I guess a season of minnow mayas and Alan Davial But yeah, Michael Kahn who's his editor actually is Was his editor on every movie and his career starting with I Don't remember who what he first edited. I think it was Close Encounters But everything other than ET and the fabled men's

Christian Robertson (38:45.748)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (39:03.444)
Okay.

Eli Price (39:08.445)
Michael Kahn has been Spielberg's editor. So, yeah, Quincy Jones obviously did the music and Ruben Cannon directed. I did want to point out some of the other crew we haven't really talked about. J. Michael Riva did the kind of production design art direction. Really great stuff, I think, that he did that will probably...

touch on in just a bit. He had worked on The Goonies, which was a Steven Spielberg story and production as well. There's a few Goonies people here. Willie Burton, the sound guy also from Goonies and then Richard L Anderson on sound also worked with Goonies and Gremlins, which Spielberg produced and Raiders of the Lost Ark too. So yeah. Yep.

Christian Robertson (39:54.036)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (40:04.084)
When you have your people you have your people

Eli Price (40:06.429)
Matt Sweeney was the other guy from Goonies, the special effects guy. And then Robert Welsh was the set decorator, which yeah, I think the production design and set decoration for this is really good. Yeah. And so, and then Aggie Gerard Rogers on costumes. Costumes I think are great too. You always get some recognition when you do a period piece, you know, for costumes.

Christian Robertson (40:22.356)
Yeah, I agree.

Christian Robertson (40:37.3)
cool about this. So she was not a person of color for this. So that listening to her, she was mentioning how she felt like she was in a weird spot, you know? But it was very cool because I didn't realize for these period pieces what they have to do, you know? So they would go ahead to museums and rent old clothes and stuff and just make a

Eli Price (40:42.941)
Right.

Eli Price (40:52.349)
Yeah.

Eli Price (41:03.837)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (41:07.22)
copy of it. And she was explaining how what those people wore in that day, how men and women's body has changed so much like Danny Glover couldn't wear any of what they would wear at that point in time. So I thought that was really cool. And then how they had to adjust throughout the time of the movie.

Eli Price (41:07.805)
Yeah.

Eli Price (41:22.877)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, it's.

Eli Price (41:28.029)
Yeah, it's wild. Like how, yeah, she was, she talked about like how body structures change over generations. And so yeah, like those early 1900s, like those clothes just wouldn't fit us. Like even if they were the right, like quote unquote size, like the body structure was just different. and I guess like today we wear like looser stuff, looser fitting stuff a lot. So that might be different, like for the future.

Christian Robertson (41:34.676)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (41:47.796)
Right.

Christian Robertson (41:57.684)
Yeah.

Eli Price (41:58.237)
But yeah, definitely back then everything was a lot more like fitted. I think that's part of it too. Like if you think about like clothes back then were most like a lot of clothes were made, I guess you would say made to order, but like, you know, your mom or your grandma or your wife or, you know, whoever was making a lot of the clothes you wear. So it was like made for your specific size.

Christian Robertson (42:13.748)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (42:23.764)
Yeah.

Eli Price (42:26.589)
and body type. So that might have something to do with it too. I don't know. Yeah, that was like super, I had never heard that before. So that was definitely interesting. But yeah, I think it's cool that they get like closed for museums and like just kind of like make copies of them basically. Really cool.

Christian Robertson (42:27.092)
Right.

Christian Robertson (42:35.284)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (42:49.268)
And just also dealing with the array of skin tones on that set, dealing with African -American people, but different shades, so fine and close that would, yeah, to compliment their skin tone and everything. So I think that's...

Eli Price (42:56.381)
Yes.

Eli Price (43:00.413)
Yeah, different shades, a few white people, you know.

Eli Price (43:08.669)
Yeah. I mean, you really like have like a full range of skin tones in this movie, which is really cool. And yeah, that's, that's a big thing. And we'll, we'll definitely hit on and just a bit, the, like the work, the cinematography team did, too, which I thought was really awesome. yeah, before we get into that, let's, let's talk a little through the cast. we've talked about it's the vast majority of actors are, black actors.

Christian Robertson (43:13.684)
Right. Yeah.

Eli Price (43:38.685)
which was, and kind of still is for a Hollywood film, a big Hollywood film. I mean, we have more of those now than we used to, but it's still like not super often. and so yeah, it's, it's a big deal. but yeah, so, we, we mentioned earlier how like a lot of these are really all of these people are not major stars. They're kind of like.

up and coming talents. And so whoopie, whoopie Goldberg plays Sealy. and this was really her first like film. when you, you see the opening credits and it says introducing whoopie Goldberg. I think she was in, yeah. Yeah. I mean, she was doing comedy. I want to say she was in another movie the same year, but it was like,

Christian Robertson (44:10.42)
Yeah.

Mm.

Christian Robertson (44:23.476)
Yeah, because she was just doing stand up at that point. Yeah.

Eli Price (44:36.541)
It's one of those things where it's like, okay, but like this even have like a release. Like this was this and people see this movie. It was one of those kinds of things. And so I was like, that doesn't really count. I'm like, you know, you're in a small movie that nobody sees. This is really your first movie, you know? but yeah, she, she got her big start with, like you were saying, doing comedy. She had a one woman show called the spook show 1983 that kind of blew up and,

Christian Robertson (44:42.644)
You're right.

Yeah.

Christian Robertson (44:53.556)
Right, right.

Eli Price (45:06.461)
It actually got adapted for Broadway later on. Yeah, she discovered the color purple after hearing Alice Walker read it on the radio. That was cool. And she heard it and she actually mailed her resume to Alice Walker asking for a role in the movie. And Walker got her letter and actually wrote her back. And she had actually seen her perform.

Christian Robertson (45:10.356)
Mm.

Christian Robertson (45:19.572)
Nice.

Eli Price (45:35.453)
before, so she, she wrote her back and told her that and pass her name, her name on to, Spielberg and, kind of was like, Hey, she might be like perfect for Sealy. And so, yes. Yeah. So take notes, Christian. Like if you, if you hear about a movie being made and you're like, I'd love to be in that, just like write someone a letter. Yep. pull a whoopee and just write a personal letter to.

Christian Robertson (45:47.636)
That's incredible.

Yeah.

Christian Robertson (45:56.692)
Yeah, I'm starting writing letters, yeah. Bring that back.

Eli Price (46:04.989)
to a big person in the production. yeah. So Spielberg brings her in for an audition and he actually had her for her audition, perform some of her show. I don't, or at least some of it, it might've been all of it. I don't know how long it was, but, but yeah, so she thought she was just going to be like doing some of her show for like, you know, a few people, but there was like 40 people there when she showed up and including, cause so Quincy Jones.

Christian Robertson (46:16.5)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (46:28.596)
Yeah.

Eli Price (46:34.589)
had, you know, he had done a lot of like music work and he had worked with Michael Jackson. They were good friends. And so Michael Jackson was actually there. Alice Walker herself and Spielberg and Quincy. So, I mean, you've got like a bunch of people and some big names that you're performing in front of, but so yeah, she does that for her audition, which is wild. like, can you imagine like, this is really your first big film and you're going to be the.

Christian Robertson (46:40.596)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah!

Christian Robertson (46:57.364)
Yeah.

Eli Price (47:03.453)
like auditioning for the lead role and like Michael Jackson is there like watching you. Yes. I heard somewhere that she had a bit about ET where instead of landing in like suburbia, he lands like in the hood and ends up being like a pimp and stuff and, and, and like someone got her to do that bit.

Christian Robertson (47:07.86)
Yeah, yeah, it's like, hey, tell us some jokes that have nothing to do with this role.

Christian Robertson (47:25.396)
No, really.

Hahaha!

Eli Price (47:33.213)
for that for that audition i don't know if there's any truth to that but but she did have that bit at some point which i think is really funny

Christian Robertson (47:37.876)
That's fine.

Christian Robertson (47:45.172)
That is funny. And I'm imagining her as Celie doing that bit. And it's hard to connect.

Eli Price (47:48.893)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it is. but yeah, Spielberg really loved her. She, she wanted to be Sophia. but Spielberg told her that he like, since the strength and fighting spirit of Sealy in her. and then, and I actually, at one point he, in one of the interviews, he said she was the only Sealy, which you see a lot with Spielberg. Like he'll like have someone audition or he'll have like,

Christian Robertson (48:00.852)
Hmm.

Christian Robertson (48:13.364)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (48:18.237)
Sometimes he'll have like a bunch of people audition, but there will be one standout and he'll be like, no, this is the one. This is the only person that can do it. which is always cool. but yeah, that is, I mean, that's, that's whoopee at which, I mean, just like incredible job with this movie. Like it's your first movie, like just really, really good. yeah.

Christian Robertson (48:24.092)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (48:38.58)
Yeah, she was... knocked it out the park. It was a very captivating performance, just watching her. Because, you know, I've seen her in, you know, more comedic role like Sister Act, you know, which I love that movie. But seeing her in this one was like, wow.

Eli Price (48:46.301)
Yeah.

Eli Price (48:52.092)
Mm -hmm. Right.

Eli Price (48:58.429)
Yeah. Yeah. Like some range. cause I mean, she's for one, like it's a period piece. So like you, your dialogue is like not natural. so like how you would speak today to like how she was speaking in 1985, like is very different than the way these act, these characters are speaking in the early 1900s. And so that's, that's one obstacle. And then it's just like, it's your first movie.

Like you're working with like the Hollywood director. I did, see, I did kind of read about how like Spielberg like really, really coached her up and like, and she, she even said like, in one interview that like, she hasn't worked with any director of his caliber since that movie. like she, she was just so very appreciative of like the,

Christian Robertson (49:33.716)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (49:51.156)
Mmm, wow.

Eli Price (49:57.949)
attention she gave him like that he gave her and And we're working with her. So that was cool to hear her just like appreciation of him and I mean like what a way to kick off your career to be like the star of a Spielberg movie

Christian Robertson (50:01.78)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (50:14.1)
Yeah, yeah. Feel like you can conquer the world.

Eli Price (50:16.477)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're like, I mean, basically you're, you're good to go at that point, right? Like you don't even have to do anything else. I guess, unless you want to like make a living, but, but yeah, I, I thought she was incredible. I think, I think it's it, we'll talk about the tone of the movie a little later. I think she is a little different than.

Christian Robertson (50:21.108)
Yeah, yeah, right. Exactly.

Christian Robertson (50:29.492)
Hahaha!

Eli Price (50:45.437)
She comes across a little bit differently than she did when I listened to the book. but that's not really like on whoopee. That's more just like in the way she was like written and directed, I think. but yeah, she's in the book, the CA the Sealy character, like has a very slow transformation, which is true of the character in the movie too. Like there's kind of a slow like change.

Christian Robertson (50:50.292)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (51:12.916)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (51:14.493)
over time of her character, but in the book she's way more like... she's just seen... obviously like this is the way I imagined her. She just seemed way more like passive and kind of... I just imagined her much more blank -faced and like just like very few like emotions experienced.

Christian Robertson (51:36.468)
Okay.

Eli Price (51:43.453)
and then like slowly over time, like starting to actually like experience real emotions and stuff. And in the movie, she comes across more like bashful, and like shy, I guess. and like kind of just grows more confident out of like bashfulness, which is cool. It's just like different than how I felt about the book, how, how she was in the book.

Christian Robertson (51:57.812)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (52:07.348)
Yeah.

given what she went through as a teenager.

Eli Price (52:12.925)
Yeah, it's kind of like in the book you kind of feel like she's just she you start off with her and she's like already defeated. Whereas in the movie she feels more just kind of like shy and bashful and she doesn't really feel like defeated like if that makes sense. Yeah, but again that's just kind of like my personal like feel of the

Christian Robertson (52:21.748)
Right.

Christian Robertson (52:27.476)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (52:31.572)
Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'm tracking with you.

Eli Price (52:42.045)
way the book seemed and it's kind of, I guess it's kind of like a creative like interpretation of like, okay, how do you portray this on screen? so maybe that is the best way to portray that on screen. I don't know. but yeah, that, but again, like, that's not really like on a whoopee. Like she's, she like, not like you said, like knocks it out of the park. so, but yeah, Oprah.

Christian Robertson (53:05.076)
Right.

Eli Price (53:09.597)
Is so the next cast member we should talk about playing sophia. and it's I mean, so she's obviously like In the movie less often than sealy. It's it's sealy's movie but I don't know like I almost want to say like oprah like outperforms This whoopie s. Sealy. I mean she's like

Christian Robertson (53:13.396)
Yeah

Christian Robertson (53:24.468)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (53:37.716)
The scene stealer. She was my favorite character.

Eli Price (53:38.749)
She is a s - Yeah. I mean, she like, every time she's on screen, it's like, whoa, you know? Yeah. and which, you know, talking about the, the new musical adaptation, the, it's kind of the same thing with, with the actress for, that plays Sophia and that, no, Taraji plays Shug, Daniel Brooks.

Christian Robertson (53:45.396)
What's about to happen? Yeah.

Christian Robertson (54:02.292)
Was Taraji the Sofia character?

Eli Price (54:08.061)
Is the one who plays sophia and she is like incredible. she got she did get a nomination for supporting actress and I was like, okay. Yeah, that's well deserved. but yeah, so Oprah at this time was not the oprah we know now she was she was just doing a morning show in chicago called am chicago. So, she wasn't like,

Christian Robertson (54:18.516)
Okay.

Yeah.

Christian Robertson (54:35.188)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (54:38.237)
It's obviously like she's on TV, like people probably like in Chicago know who she is. but like, she's not like a nationally recognized, like TV personality at this point. so that's, that's one thing that's like, when you're watching this in hindsight, you kind of have to like, remind yourself of, because when we hear Oprah, like it's one of those like,

Christian Robertson (54:44.884)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (54:53.236)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (55:03.06)
Yeah.

Eli Price (55:06.685)
You don't need a last name. She's Oprah. Like you don't need to hear Beyonce Knowles. She's Beyonce. You don't need to hear Oprah Winfrey. She's Oprah, you know? so, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So yeah, she's not a big name at this point. but she was a huge fan of the book, the color purple. She had read it and she had heard like a movie was in the works.

Christian Robertson (55:09.332)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (55:19.508)
this point, a lot of people like, who is this?

Christian Robertson (55:32.212)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (55:36.349)
the quote that I pulled from her, interview was I've never wanted anything more in life before or after than to be in the color purple. So this is like, this is like the peak of her life is being in this, being in this movie. So Quincy Jones is in Chicago and he sees her on TV. he happens to like, I think in his hotel or something just happens to see her on the TV and he's like, man, this woman needs to be Sophia in our movie.

Christian Robertson (55:42.388)
Hehehe.

Christian Robertson (55:48.02)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (56:02.58)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (56:06.205)
And yeah. so yeah, she gets a call for audition for a movie called moon song, which was the working title of the movie. And she knows that the color purple is like in production. but there's like this for this movie and moon song. She's like, it's not for the color purple. And they're like, no, no, it's for this movie called moon song and, very secretive, I guess. And so, but then she reads the audition script and she's like, this is the color.

Christian Robertson (56:06.772)
This is crazy.

Christian Robertson (56:15.508)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (56:29.94)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (56:35.636)
Yeah, because she knew the book. Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (56:36.285)
Right, right. And so she auditions. And then it's like, I want to say, I remember her and her when she was telling the story, it was like, maybe a month. I had been like a month or maybe even more than that. I can't remember. But.

Christian Robertson (56:56.756)
Yeah, I heard it was, she mentioned it was about two months and she was at this health form, which I never even heard of a health form. Yeah, and she's like getting used to the fact that, hey, I probably didn't get it. Then she gets this call. Yeah, it's like, hey, Steven Spielberg's office is calling you. And they're like, what did he say? Like you had better not.

Eli Price (57:00.541)
Okay, two months. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I didn't know what that was either.

Eli Price (57:12.189)
Yeah, she's finally coming to terms with it.

Eli Price (57:20.541)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (57:26.676)
lose like one pound.

Eli Price (57:27.773)
Yeah. Yeah. They called her. Well, they, I guess, so it's like 1985. So like, there's not, people aren't like walking around really with cell phones. And so I get to, I guess at this point, it's like they called her office. She wasn't there. They're like, she's at this health farm or whatever. And so they call there and the, the staff members are like, Hey, you have a phone call kind of thing. And so they knew she was at this health place and they basically were like, Hey, you know, what are you doing? Like,

Christian Robertson (57:36.756)
Right.

Christian Robertson (57:46.58)
Yeah.

Eli Price (57:58.173)
at this health place, they were like, if you lose one pound, like you could lose the part. cause you know, Sophia is supposed to be a heavier set woman. and so she, she was like, so I immediately left and went straight to dairy queen and I was like, I was like, that's epic.

Christian Robertson (57:58.356)
Hahaha!

Christian Robertson (58:03.284)
Yeah.

Right.

Christian Robertson (58:12.852)
Yeah!

Yeah, I love her character because she starts off with a bang like her first scene, you know, it's just like you see her walking with, with, you know, authority, you know, she burst into the room, you know, and just boom right off the bat.

Eli Price (58:24.189)
Yes.

Eli Price (58:27.933)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (58:33.021)
Yes.

Yep, she's rolling her eyes at mister and like mean mugging him. It's like Drinking his lemonade

Christian Robertson (58:43.06)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Eli Price (58:49.501)
man. But yeah, she's, she's a firecracker in the movie. really incredible. And what's crazy is when you hear her talk about it, she was like terrified of like not being up to the task. and, but like she just, again and again, just like not like destroys her scenes. the, yeah. So you, you, I guess you probably heard in the interview how.

Christian Robertson (59:01.3)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (59:11.828)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (59:18.749)
On the day that she did the monologue in the cornfield, the whole like the, the, all my life I had had a fight, you know, where she's like ripping into Sealy for telling Harpo to beat her. you know, so she showed up early and she was just like ready to do it. And she just, she did it. She did that monologue against nothing. Like there wasn't an actor like, whoopie wasn't there or anything. She just did that monologue.

Christian Robertson (59:24.628)
All my life I had to fight.

Christian Robertson (59:30.996)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (59:36.596)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (59:40.852)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (59:47.508)
Yeah.

Eli Price (59:48.573)
which is incredible.

Christian Robertson (59:51.284)
That's how dialed in she had to be, you know, and she probably knew like, hey, this is my moment of the movie. And so she came ready and like, hey, I don't even need anybody. And...

Eli Price (59:54.237)
Yes.

Eli Price (59:59.293)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:00:04.125)
Yeah. She must've showed up just like, I better get it out now. Like, man.

Christian Robertson (01:00:09.076)
Yeah, yeah. Those are the types of scenes you, it's hard to sleep at night because you're like, hey, this is it, I have to bring it. And I've been part of situations to where, you know, the actor or actress, you know, is really in that moment. And the person they're talking to, you're not going to see that person, but...

Eli Price (01:00:16.861)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:00:33.405)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:00:38.964)
just to kind of help them, that person on the other side stands there just to kind of give them something, you know? And the fact that she didn't need that, she was just so like in it to where like, hey, I don't need anybody. It's remarkable, yeah.

Eli Price (01:00:46.845)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. Cause I, yeah. And I guess like, there's not a whole lot of like, Celie talking back to her. Celie's just has to take it, in that scene. And so, I guess like they had to go back and film some shots of Celie to intercut with it. But, but yeah, I mean, like just really incredible. The other like crazy thing.

Christian Robertson (01:01:01.524)
Alright, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:01:13.46)
You're right.

Eli Price (01:01:19.101)
is that the dinner table scene, the, like the dinner table monologue she gives, towards the end of the movie was really just kind of improv. she, and she, she kind of says that's where she finally like kind of feels like she came into her own acting. she had been like acting kind of out of like fear and being scared of not, not knowing if she was like capable.

Christian Robertson (01:01:46.004)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:01:48.285)
up to that point. And, in that Spielberg kind of talks about how he had, he kind of saw that she had more in her. She just like had something, there was something she just wasn't giving them. And so he just kind of, they were all there getting ready to shoot and he was just like, tell them how you really feel. And so she just improvs that, that whole thing, which, which I thought was like super well delivered.

Christian Robertson (01:01:58.74)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:02:09.236)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:02:17.492)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:02:18.141)
And Spielberg even told her later on that he knew she was scared, but he just let her stay scared because she was using that emotion, I guess, in her acting. So yeah, that's really cool. I guess that's like, you could say that's kind of rude, but you know, it's acting. I guess you got to use what you can.

Christian Robertson (01:02:26.996)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:02:39.444)
Right, right. It's like the director is the, you know, like the coach, you know, whatever they have to do to get you to perform or whatever.

Eli Price (01:02:44.061)
Right.

Eli Price (01:02:48.925)
Yeah, yeah, and at this point Spielberg like has become really good at like being able to work with different actors and even kids. So like he was very used to, at this point, like he's directed enough different kind of people where he knows like what different people need. You know, as a director, you've got to be like a...

Christian Robertson (01:02:58.388)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:03:09.876)
Right.

Eli Price (01:03:17.788)
a student of people kind of you have to like learn like, okay, how do I work with this person? You have to pick up on kind of like their personality and all that and, and try to like gauge like, okay, like I can't like be as like, assertive with this person. I've got to do this or this person needs me to be like assertive and tell them exactly what to do. You know? Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure like you've kind of like experienced some of that, like,

Christian Robertson (01:03:20.82)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:03:27.316)
Right, right.

Christian Robertson (01:03:41.46)
Right, right.

Eli Price (01:03:48.029)
being on set and seeing like what you need and what different act like this actor needs something different than I do kind of thing.

Christian Robertson (01:03:56.82)
Right, right. So there's times where I heard this one acting coach say, and he directed a TV show. And he said his favorite actors to work with are the ones that are are coachable, you know, who come in and are just like willing to do whatever, say whatever, however you want it, you know, who don't come in and say like, Hey,

Eli Price (01:04:23.197)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:04:26.58)
I'm gonna do it like this, this, this, you know, I think my character is this. And he's like, no, I want your character to be this. And he said, those are the easier actors to work with because, you know, it's a little more moldable. So his advice was to just be coachable, you know, and if it comes off and it sucks, everyone's gonna know it. And they're like, okay, let's go with your idea, how you wanna do it, you know.

Eli Price (01:04:28.349)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (01:04:33.085)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Eli Price (01:04:41.309)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:04:48.253)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:04:52.157)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. And one, well, one thing with this movie in particular is that Spielberg kind of tossed out the storyboarding, early on and like rehearsals too, they had been doing rehearsals and it just like, wasn't working. It was kind of like stressing everybody out doing the rehearsals. And so he just like scrapped the rehearsals. And so basically like they're not.

Christian Robertson (01:05:05.396)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:05:19.348)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:05:21.885)
they're not really working off of storyboards. They're not working off of a bunch of rehearsal rehearsing. They're just kind of like jumping into these scenes and shooting it. And it's probably partly like, I want to say like a little bit of that was probably like Spielberg feeling a little out of his element with both the material and also like just like the culture he was like trying to direct.

Christian Robertson (01:05:32.692)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:05:51.229)
within like, you know, you've got, and then, you know, you've got a, a cast of people like that are not like you, you know, like, so it's just like, it is probably like a really smart thing to just be like, Hey, let's, let's cut out the rehearsing. He was relying on the input of the actors for this movie. And so, one of the things that like, I'm really starting to appreciate,

Christian Robertson (01:05:51.7)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:06:01.492)
You're right.

Christian Robertson (01:06:16.308)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:06:20.637)
appreciate about Spielberg is like if something isn't working then he just like does a 180 and like and changes it. You like you kind of start seeing that more and more like in his films is like like when because a lot of directors some I don't know about a lot but there are like a good bit of directors that it's like hey this is how we're gonna do it and

Christian Robertson (01:06:27.956)
Right. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:06:45.94)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:06:46.109)
Maybe it's not working and you should change it, but you're just like, so like set in like, this is how I want to do it. That you don't change it when you should. And Spielberg's not like that. Like he changes something when it's not working. And so.

Christian Robertson (01:06:50.9)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah, right.

Christian Robertson (01:07:00.628)
which I think is a great approach.

Eli Price (01:07:02.941)
Yes, yeah. And especially for this movie, like when you're relying so much on the input of people that are like closer to the material than you are. It just like, it just makes sense. Like it's just kind of the common sense smart thing to do really. But yeah, going for like more in the cast,

Christian Robertson (01:07:17.78)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:07:24.564)
Right, right.

Eli Price (01:07:32.477)
I guess I should mention Willard E. Pugh, who played Harpo, got the job kind of together with Oprah. I'm sure they kind of auditioned together since they would be obviously doing a lot of scenes together. You got to kind of figure like, are they going to have chemistry? They're going to be able to act well together. So Spielberg gave them the job at the same time. The story.

Christian Robertson (01:07:43.636)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:07:51.348)
Right.

Eli Price (01:07:57.437)
As the story goes, he cried when he told them that they both got the job and Oprah screamed and apparently like jumped up and like knocked over a space shuttle model Spielberg had in his office and broke it. That was like great. and I could like picture Oprah doing it too. Cause I've seen her do, I've seen her jump up with excitement on TV, plenty of times.

Christian Robertson (01:08:00.964)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:08:07.956)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:08:15.668)
Right, yeah.

Yeah, and there's that famous, that jiff of her, you know, just like kicking and stuff, so.

Eli Price (01:08:22.653)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. I forgot about that. but yeah, Willardy Pugh plays Harpo. I don't really look like, you don't really hear a lot about him in the movie or like in interviews or stuff. So, but, Danny Glover on the other hand, you do hear a good bit about in the interviews, Danny Glover.

playing Mr. What's crazy is like he even wasn't like a major star at this point. When they were filming this Silverado, which was a big movie Western that he was in Lawrence Casden, I think directed that who was like a who was a big Hollywood director. That movie had not yet come out when they were filming this. So that it came out earlier in 85 than the color purple.

Christian Robertson (01:09:07.668)
Okay.

Eli Price (01:09:16.253)
So that wasn't out yet. and lethal weapon obviously came out in 87. So that wasn't out yet, which was kind of like a big action blockbuster breakout for them, obviously. so even like Danny Glover is not a big star at this point. he's just kind of another name, you know,

Christian Robertson (01:09:20.916)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:09:27.668)
Right.

Christian Robertson (01:09:36.212)
He was definitely, when he first popped up on screen, I was like, I don't like him. I was just like, and I've never seen Danny Glover that young. I think my first memory of Danny Glover was probably the lethal weapon, well, no, Angels in the Outfield, probably. Yeah, classic.

Eli Price (01:09:42.173)
Yes.

Eli Price (01:09:46.493)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:09:55.261)
Yeah, yeah, that's probably my first too, honestly, because that was like, that was like a big movie when we were kids. Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:10:03.636)
Right, exactly. But seeing how he looked, I was like, he's just... I don't like him. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:10:08.701)
Yeah. Yeah. He carried it really well. which is funny cause he seems like a really sweet guy, you know, but yeah, Spielberg had seen them in a movie from 84 calls places in the heart, which I know nothing about. but Spielberg liked him in it and, said that he wanted him to play Mr. And he didn't really want anybody else. Like, I don't even think Danny Glover really auditioned. They just kind of hired him.

Christian Robertson (01:10:17.396)
Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Christian Robertson (01:10:35.22)
Mm -hmm.

Right, right. And that's a cool spot to be in. Like, hey, I want you to do this. Like, OK, I'm in.

Eli Price (01:10:41.373)
Yes.

Eli Price (01:10:45.181)
Yeah, exactly. I loved this quote. I pulled a quote from Glover when he was talking about playing the character that I thought was really good. He said, I never judged it. That's the worst thing you can do as an actor is judge the character. All you can do as an actor is try to be and to and try to live inside the character or whatever that is. I thought that was really a really cool like quote just about just insight into playing a character like that.

Christian Robertson (01:11:10.484)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:11:14.941)
for one, and then just probably just acting in general. I don't know if you related to that quote or not as someone. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:11:15.732)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:11:23.668)
So when I heard that quote, it makes sense because in order to do the character justice, approaching it that way would allow you to be a little more authentic to that character without bringing your personal beliefs or your personal mannerisms to it. Because for his character in particular, you know, if...

Eli Price (01:11:32.477)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:11:46.973)
President.

Christian Robertson (01:11:52.02)
And I believe Danny Glover is a nice, sweet guy. You know, he probably instinctively wanted to bring some of that to the character, but it's like, no, that's not who that character is. So just having some blinders on.

Eli Price (01:11:54.877)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:12:02.109)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, and obviously like he's not the kind of guy probably that wants to like be like beat up women and so like in the movie you have to like beat up women and it's like You really have to kind of remove yourself altogether to be able to do that And be convincing doing it I guess Because you I guess like if you are

Christian Robertson (01:12:11.188)
Right, exactly.

Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:12:24.308)
Yeah.

Exactly.

Eli Price (01:12:31.965)
bringing a lot of not able to like turn off your judgment of those actions off and you're really like, you could, I guess you could like portray like guilt or like shame on that character as you're like acting at, which you can't really do to be convincing. I guess. yeah, this is very hard. We'll, we'll talk probably more about that too. yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:12:37.812)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:12:54.388)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:13:01.789)
Margaret Avery plays Sugar Avery. so a little, same last name there was convenient. but yeah, Ruben Cannon really wanted Tina Turner, for the role. but Tina Turner, did not want to relive growing up in the South and her abusive relationship with her husband Ike and. Totally understandable. so she, she declined, and Margaret Avery,

Christian Robertson (01:13:09.844)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:13:13.652)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:13:22.836)
Totally fair.

Eli Price (01:13:30.845)
I'd read that she just like pestered, Ruben Cannon basically until she got in the park. but she had actually worked, with Spielberg. he had a TV movie called something evil and, in the early seventies and she, she, she wasn't like a big role in her and anything. She's kind of just like, for all intents and purposes, like an extra, but she is in the movie, like singing in it or something. and, she like reminded Spielberg and he was like, I've.

Christian Robertson (01:13:35.508)
Hahaha.

Christian Robertson (01:13:44.148)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (01:13:56.372)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:14:00.765)
I forgot like about that. Yeah. but, but yeah, so she's, she, I thought was great. the songs are actually performed by, Tata Vega, who was, I guess like a blue singer, or, you know, a singer, if not a blue singer. I didn't really look that up a whole lot into that, but, yeah, so that's like kind of dubbed over her.

Christian Robertson (01:14:02.132)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:14:14.068)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (01:14:22.1)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:14:29.597)
She's kind of lip syncing for the singing scenes. But yeah, I thought she does great as she gave me.

Christian Robertson (01:14:31.7)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:14:38.708)
Yeah, she was a nice addition to the cast. I really liked her.

Eli Price (01:14:41.437)
Yeah, yeah, she got she like, she brings a different energy as a character in the story. And I think she did a good job of like bringing a different type of energy to to the movie. Because that's like a very like a big care, like a big personality. And so especially like, she's, she's different.

Christian Robertson (01:14:53.78)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:15:02.292)
Right.

Eli Price (01:15:08.349)
like in physical appearance, then Shug is described in the book. so Shug is, Shug feels more physically like big along with her personality, like maybe not like a Sophia, like heavy set woman, but like, she just kind of like feels like she's a more like big presence, both like in personality and like, and just like physically then she, cause really like Margaret Avery, like is a, she's pretty tiny.

Christian Robertson (01:15:12.756)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (01:15:20.564)
Okay.

Eli Price (01:15:37.629)
woman it seems like at least like compared to everybody else on scene so she really had to bring like a big personality and to like make herself like stand out in her scenes which i think she does like

Christian Robertson (01:15:39.028)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:15:44.948)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:15:52.98)
Yeah, that character for me, she was a little mysterious when I was watching the movie, because I'm like, okay, who is this? Is this just someone, a singer he likes to go see and he's just in love with the singer? Like, is this someone? Okay. And so it took a little while. Like, is this just someone he's just a big fan of? But then she shows up at the house like, okay, what's going on here? So.

Eli Price (01:16:07.293)
Right. No, you know in the book, you know. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:16:18.909)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't even think about that, but yeah, that is kind of how it goes in the movie. Cause cause I had, again, I had already read the book, so I already knew who shook was, but yeah, in the movie, that's kind of more of a, I guess you kind of find out as you go who she was for him. yeah. he does kind of mention early on, like when he's getting her out of the car, like, she's who should have been your mama to Harpo.

Christian Robertson (01:16:29.3)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:16:36.5)
Yeah.

Right.

Christian Robertson (01:16:48.404)
Yeah, right.

Eli Price (01:16:48.957)
but it's like kind of a throwaway line, that you could like miss or just like, you know, shrug off like as, you know, but yeah, in the book it's much more apparent who she is like for, for Mr. but yeah, it, yeah, I thought Margaret Avery did great. and then, just kind of quickly through these other people, this is a hard name to say.

Christian Robertson (01:17:02.772)
Okay.

Eli Price (01:17:18.653)
Akasua, Akosua, Akasua, I don't really know. Akasua Busia. I'm more confident in Busia being a correct pronunciation than her first name. But she plays Nettie. Reuben Cannon suggested her to audition for Nettie. She was a stage actress at the time. So another kind of up and coming talent, you know.

Christian Robertson (01:17:30.132)
You're right. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:17:43.316)
Okay.

Yeah.

Eli Price (01:17:46.973)
It's really just everybody. There's not really any, any big stars in this movie. not yet anyway. yeah. So she, she, she actually read the novel in one sitting and like begged to be hired and then, did like went to the audition without having slept the night before and, and got the part. So yeah. So I thought she was really good. She, so for.

Christian Robertson (01:18:07.764)
Wow. And she did great, too.

Eli Price (01:18:15.869)
For Celie, there's two actresses that play her. Desiree Jackson plays the young Celie, but I'm pretty sure for Nettie, Busia plays the young and the older Nettie, which I didn't even realize watching the movie. I kind of realized that when I was doing my research after, I was like, wait, there's only one actress for Nettie?

Christian Robertson (01:18:27.892)
and older, yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:18:36.692)
Eli Price (01:18:44.573)
Like in the cast list, I was like, she's, I guess both. yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:18:45.236)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:18:50.068)
I did think that was interesting when she popped up. I was like,

Eli Price (01:18:54.461)
Yeah. So she, which is, I guess that's something about maybe the costume design and like makeup that like, I didn't realize like it was, I just assumed, I guess, because they're the actress for Sealy was different that the actress for Nettie was going to be different. And so I didn't even think about it, but yeah, she, she did great. I thought, she's not in the movie a ton, obviously. but, but yeah, she,

Christian Robertson (01:19:03.444)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:19:11.828)
Right, right.

Christian Robertson (01:19:19.476)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:19:23.261)
I thought she did really good. but yeah, one thing I thought was cool was her and Oprah, they both said they were there for every shoot, no matter if they'd been called in or not. They just like, they were on set. They were in it, you know, which you gotta love that commitment, you know? and it comes out of their love for the story, you know, for the book.

Christian Robertson (01:19:38.42)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:19:43.22)
Yeah, it's.

Yeah. And then, like I said, you get close to the people around there and you're just like, this is my family for now.

Eli Price (01:19:50.109)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:19:54.461)
Yeah. What Nettie too is an interesting. So like in the book, you get a lot more of Nettie's story than you do in this. Like the, in the, I definitely highly recommend the book. It's you get like so much interesting stuff about her journey to Africa and like the things she learns while in Africa. Like you get a lot of it, like the, basically like the last like,

Christian Robertson (01:20:04.212)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:20:23.037)
I don't know if it's the last half or the last third of the book. You get basically letters back and forth from Celie to Nettie and Nettie to Celie. And they're not necessarily like getting, receiving each other's letter. Well, obviously Celie is getting Nettie's. But I don't think, I don't know that Nettie is getting hers. Cause obviously she doesn't really know where to send them.

Christian Robertson (01:20:33.908)
okay.

Christian Robertson (01:20:47.028)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (01:20:51.22)
Right.

Eli Price (01:20:52.061)
But she stops writing to God and starts writing to Nettie instead, basically. and that's kind of part of her just character development too. But yeah, I, I definitely recommend that it's something that like, it makes sense why that's not necessarily like in the movie a ton, like you get a little bit of that, just enough to like, you get a feel for, for what was going on there. But yeah, and the, in the book, it fleshes that out a ton and it's like super interesting.

Christian Robertson (01:20:56.5)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:21:15.028)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:21:22.365)
yeah, cause it's basically like, you know, there's a, she goes with a family, like a black family. They, they're mission black missionaries going to Africa to minister to, you know, African people. And it's just super interesting. The dynamic there. the, like the perspective is like, it's just not, not a perspective I've like,

Christian Robertson (01:21:22.9)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (01:21:36.98)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:21:43.828)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:21:51.869)
experienced obviously myself. I can't but not one I've like heard a lot about so that was that was really cool to read.

Christian Robertson (01:21:54.484)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:22:01.94)
Was it, so in the movie, it made it seem like Nettie was just gone, you know, because the first thing Celie thought when she read the letters, or what Nettie had said was like, hey, I'm not dead. In the book, was it written that way to where you're thinking, Nettie, she's no longer part of the story and she just pops up, or was she kind of?

Eli Price (01:22:26.653)
Yeah, you, you don't really know in the book, you don't necessarily know why Nettie's not writing back. and, and Celie kind of talks about how she just kind of assumes like she's dead because Nettie does say like she does in the movie that, only death could keep her from, from writing to Celie or to, you know, from Celie or whatever. and so Celie is like, I guess she's dead because I haven't heard from her.

Christian Robertson (01:22:49.396)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:22:56.308)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:22:56.445)
Like she doesn't ever question like, Nettie forgot about me. She's just like, I guess she's dead or something's happened. like she doesn't ever like doubt Nettie's commitment or whatever, which is kind of cool. but, but yeah, you, you know, you kind of slowly later, like, so like in the movie, how basically like Shug and Shug kind of finds out that.

Christian Robertson (01:23:04.244)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:23:10.26)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:23:24.253)
There's been letters from Nettie coming in. she kind of tells like she and Celia are close at that point, like they are in the movie and she tells her and they do like, sir, they do like go and find all the letters and stuff. so yeah, you kind of find out like, Nettie's been writing this whole time later on in the book too. but then once, once that's the case, you read a bunch of Nettie's letters.

Christian Robertson (01:23:27.476)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:23:40.052)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:23:47.412)
Okay.

Eli Price (01:23:54.237)
in the book, and then it starts going back and forth. I guess, like, once she's kind of caught up with Nettie's letters, then she's like writing letters to Nettie and then still getting like more letters back from Nettie. Cause she finds out like, they're going to be, you know, coming home, coming back, you know, soon and stuff. So she knows like they're coming and all that, in the book, which is a little different than it is in the movie. I don't know.

Christian Robertson (01:23:56.148)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:24:01.972)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (01:24:11.636)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:24:16.628)
Yeah.

Okay.

Eli Price (01:24:24.413)
I don't remember if she's like aware that they're coming back in the movie. I can't remember. but yeah, that's, that is like a, one of the probably biggest differences in the book in the movie is that you don't get a ton of like Nettie story in the movie. Whereas in the book you get like all of it. Yeah. but yeah. other actors like, Adolf Caesar plays old mister.

Christian Robertson (01:24:41.172)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (01:24:44.916)
Gotcha, gotcha.

Eli Price (01:24:54.173)
I think he does good. Rae Don Chong plays Squeak or Mary Agnes. And she's a bigger character in the book too. Doesn't really have much of a role at all here. So other people, Dana Ivy plays Miss Millie. Leonard Jackson plays her paw. The guy you find out is actually her stepdad, not her real dad.

Christian Robertson (01:25:08.724)
Right.

Eli Price (01:25:23.965)
yes, same thing in the book. She actually finds out from a letter from Nettie. Nettie finds out, Nettie finds out, because of, you know, just some, some things that the, the pastor that she's with tells her, about knowing like some people in her family. And she realizes, that's not my dad. Like, yeah, big plot twist. Bennett Guillory plays Grady.

Christian Robertson (01:25:24.02)
Mm -hmm. That was a big plot twist. Why,

Christian Robertson (01:25:30.74)
Christian Robertson (01:25:41.734)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (01:25:48.18)
Mmm, yeah.

Eli Price (01:25:53.981)
who is suge's husband later on the movie and john patten jr plays the preacher the the suge's dad, I think he's not really ever named And then larn's fishburne is actually in this movie and I didn't even I didn't even realize that was him. Yeah, I was I probably just honestly I wasn't paying a lot of attention to that character

Christian Robertson (01:26:05.844)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:26:11.06)
Shout out.

Christian Robertson (01:26:14.9)
really?

Christian Robertson (01:26:21.524)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:26:21.661)
He plays a Swain who's like just kind of like a side character. You don't really see, see a whole lot of, he's Harpo's friend that plays the guitar and stuff. But, but yeah, so I was like, when I realized like that was Lauren's fish friend, I was like, wow. Like totally like missed that while I was watching the movie.

Christian Robertson (01:26:26.164)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:26:38.484)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:26:42.58)
Yeah, it was cool to see him. I was like, because I wasn't expecting, I was like, Laurence Fishburne is here. OK.

Eli Price (01:26:46.109)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But very small role. He was in Apocalypse Now actually in 79 and hadn't really like done a whole lot since then. And then does this movie and I guess like his career probably picked up a little bit after this, I would think.

Christian Robertson (01:27:00.148)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:27:07.828)
Okay. I remember seeing an old movie when he was a kid. I forgot what that movie was called.

Eli Price (01:27:12.637)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was in some stuff early on and then Apocalypse Now was like the big movie he was in. I mean, Apocalypse Now is a big movie, obviously, but yeah, between that, 79 and this is 85, like he wasn't really in. He was in a few things, but it's like nothing recognizable sort of thing. Yeah. They did also bring on some renowned musicians, Sonny Terry, who was a blues harmonica player.

Christian Robertson (01:27:35.124)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:27:42.429)
Greg Phelan Gaines, a keyboard player, and Roy Gaines, a guitarist. I don't really recognize any of those, but if you're listening and you recognize those names, maybe that's a fun fact for you. You're like, yeah, Sonny Terry. I love that guy. I wish I knew who he was, to be honest, but I don't. I like a good blues harmonica, I'll tell you that.

Christian Robertson (01:28:02.516)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:28:11.572)
Yeah. People are probably like, how do you not know who Sonny Terry is?

Eli Price (01:28:11.997)
What's not to like?

I know people are like, what? You don't know Sonny Terry? I do not. I'm sorry. I apologize. But yeah, let's, let's dig into the production. We spent, we spent enough time talking about those actors. Yeah. So this was shot in the summer of 1985. You did, they started off with.

Christian Robertson (01:28:33.94)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:28:44.125)
three weeks shooting the interiors on sets built at Universal Studios. Spielberg had actually moved the production there because he was expecting a baby, as you mentioned earlier, with his wife at the time, Amy Irving. So yeah, they were expecting their first child, which is cool.

Christian Robertson (01:28:59.028)
Hmm.

Eli Price (01:29:10.717)
So they shot at Universal for about three weeks and then they started location shooting. They had hoped for locations in Georgia, but couldn't find any suitable, which I find hard to believe because I feel like there's probably a lot of great locations in Georgia, but they were looking for like very specific, like a plantation with a house with plenty of like, they were looking for something very specific. From what I, yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:29:21.204)
Hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:29:34.868)
Yeah, landlocked, I saw they were looking for that.

Eli Price (01:29:38.845)
So yeah, they eventually found something in North Carolina. It was in some rural towns kind of east of Charlotte, North Carolina. So they found this, the city of Marshville where they filmed a lot of the streets and town stuff. And then they found this former cotton plantation in the vicinity of Wade'sboro, North Carolina, which is kind of like the main location we get for the...

the Mr. and Sealy's house and the land around that. And you get kind of like Harpo's bar and the Sealy's house is out there. And the church too is actually, I don't think I put that in my production design notes, but yeah, the church was actually like gonna be, it was a local church that was about to be demoed. And,

so they they like stopped the the demolition and Like asked if they could have it and they're like, yeah, so they like they basically like deconstructed the church and reconstructed it on that property that they were shooting on for the church scenes, which is Yeah movie magic The yes, so they on that cotton plantation

Christian Robertson (01:30:37.812)
well.

Christian Robertson (01:30:57.844)
be magic.

Eli Price (01:31:06.493)
They aged a house. There was a house there that they used that was like Mr. and C. Lee's house was the one that was already there. They, they did some like aging on it. which I, it's one of those things where it's like, you could probably spend hours, like just listening to the people that worked on a film, talk about like all the things they did. but unfortunately the, there was only like a few, like 20 something minutes.

special features on the on the Blu -ray. But they did age the house. They planted some tobacco and some flowers around it, which you see in the movie. And then they actually built Harpo's bar and see this house from scratch, which I'm always like super impressed. Like when I'm doing this research for these movies and they're like, yeah, we just built this house from scratch. It's like, that's crazy. Like you feel just like built a house.

Christian Robertson (01:31:35.924)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:31:58.516)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Eli Price (01:32:04.701)
But they do they they just do that they just build they'll build a house. It's like all right

Christian Robertson (01:32:10.26)
And yeah, it's very impressive what those set designers can do and what they're capable of. It's very impressive.

Eli Price (01:32:15.901)
Yes.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, they did that. They brought in one. Obviously, if you're going to have a movie set in Georgia, you've got to get some red dirt. Get some of that Georgia red clay in your movie. So they brought in some red dirt for like the roads of the town and that sort of thing. I guess probably like the roads that they kind of made on the

Christian Robertson (01:32:33.908)
Hmm.

Eli Price (01:32:48.604)
plantation to lead up to the house. One of the things they did was they planted a field of purple flowers for the very like important part of the movie. And I think this, I think the, so when I was watching the thing, what I remember is Spielberg saying they had gotten like, you know, all these flowers and they, it said purple flowers, but then like when you actually like,

Christian Robertson (01:32:51.476)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:32:57.94)
haha

Eli Price (01:33:16.989)
look at the picture, they're like kind of more pinkish. And so they planted all these flowers and then they grew and sure enough, they were like kind of too pink instead of like more purple. Which is like, well, we planted it now, I guess we've got to use these. So they, they did do some like artificial dyeing of some of the flowers that were going to be like more close up to the camera. but yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:33:20.724)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:33:28.724)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:33:36.276)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:33:43.22)
Right. Which when I was watching it and maybe I was catching more of the ones they wanted us to see, but I thought they were purple.

Eli Price (01:33:50.621)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When it wasn't until I was watching the, like the special features and they were talking about it and showing like the, you know, oftentimes in special features, they'll, they'll like show what they're talking about as they're talking about it. And I was like, yeah. A lot of those flowers are kind of more pink. Yeah. now that they're saying that, but in the movie, I guess like your brain is just telling you, of course these are purple flowers because.

Christian Robertson (01:34:06.164)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:34:10.644)
more pink. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:34:20.116)
Right, the name...

Eli Price (01:34:20.701)
They're talking about them being purple and the movie's called the color purple. So your brain is just like programmed to think you're looking at purple. So yeah, it, yeah, it worked for them. but yeah, towards the end of the movie, they, they removed the flowers and then they used like a bunch of Epsom salt and white flock material for snow for the winter scenes. they had like reverse black vacuums to blow it all around and,

Christian Robertson (01:34:24.532)
Right.

Christian Robertson (01:34:30.036)
Yeah.

Yeah

Eli Price (01:34:50.909)
It's always funny. Yeah, it's a lot of it. A lot of it. It's a lot of it. They had enough Epsom salt where they were able to like build snowballs and snowmen with it, which is funny. but yeah, it's always funny to me too. Like the temperature is actually like around 90 degrees when they're filming these winter scenes. Yeah. Yeah. It's gotta be miserable. yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:34:51.7)
I've held a lot of it.

Christian Robertson (01:34:59.892)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:35:10.996)
Yeah, and have these big coats on and everything.

Eli Price (01:35:20.477)
Some other production stuff. J. Michael Riva, the production designer was not happy with the letter design. So he got one of the other guys to basically they like wrote most of those like letters and like envelopes and stuff themselves. And then they like dyed them with this like solution and had it like hanging all over. They made it seem like they had it hanging like all over the break room because they talked about how like

Christian Robertson (01:35:38.612)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:35:48.02)
You're right.

Eli Price (01:35:48.508)
Spoolberg like walks in and he's like looking around and they're like, there's drying. We're like working on these letters and so we're like, okay, it looks great. Like walks out.

Christian Robertson (01:35:55.124)
Yeah!

Christian Robertson (01:35:59.316)
very curious as to what they looked like before and what he didn't like about them.

Eli Price (01:36:03.261)
Yeah, they didn't really mention that. But yeah, it's something we'll never know. We'll never get a peek behind that curtain, I guess.

Christian Robertson (01:36:09.972)
Yeah, you get so detailed on those sets, you know, especially if...

Eli Price (01:36:13.597)
Yeah, it was production people were like they think of stuff like you would never think of but it adds a lot to the texture of the movie like When you're watching like you don't think about like all these letters look great. But like in hindsight, you're like, yeah, they did look great I'm glad they like put that much detail into them, you know Yeah the only other thing I had for for production was they like

Christian Robertson (01:36:23.892)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:36:28.852)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:36:35.188)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (01:36:42.269)
dug a hole for at the end of the movie where like in the distance is like Nettie and and her kids and stuff and they have those like veils like blowing in the wind they had like dug a hole in front of them and put these fans in it like blow up the stuff which I guess sort of falls into visual effects there's not a whole lot as far as visual effects goes in this movie you know maybe Harpo falling through the roof is some visual effects.

Christian Robertson (01:36:45.236)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:36:53.268)
Yeah.

Right.

Christian Robertson (01:37:06.74)
Right.

Christian Robertson (01:37:11.188)
Yeah, I was curious as to how they pulled that off at that time, you know, because that looked very realistic. Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (01:37:11.549)
but

Yeah, that's definitely a stunt man for sure. Yeah, but yeah, definitely not weird EPU falling through the roof there. Definitely a stunt man. But yeah, for sure.

Christian Robertson (01:37:25.076)
Be right back.

They were really determined about that last scene with the fans. I read that they stopped production to go actually pick up an extra fan that, because one of them broke. And they're like, we have to do this scene with them. I'm like, wow, OK.

Eli Price (01:37:33.245)
Yes.

Eli Price (01:37:38.941)
yeah, yeah, yeah. huh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it's all those small details, man. You got to get them all exactly right. You know? but yeah, one of the cool things about this, so this is, you know, something we'll, we'll kind of flesh out more, but this is really like spill books first quote unquote, like adult film, I guess.

Christian Robertson (01:37:53.588)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:38:07.933)
In that like, it's a kind of a prestige drama. you know, he hasn't, he hasn't done a lot of that. really, really any of it up to this point. and so, you know, it's his first quote unquote adult film. And then two, like he sees himself as like kind of truly becoming an adult with his first child on the way. and what's crazy is they were so early on in the shooting, they're doing the birth scene, you know, at the beginning of the movie.

Christian Robertson (01:38:29.876)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:38:37.917)
and just like when they're getting into that, starting to shoot that, Spielberg gets a call that his son is being born. And so he has to like leave set. has Frank Marshall finished, that, that scene for him. And, yeah, he goes and his son, Max is born, as they're shooting the birth scene in the movie, which is awesome. and ironic for sure.

Christian Robertson (01:38:45.532)
Right.

Christian Robertson (01:39:01.236)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:39:06.045)
But yeah, Spielberg, and then Spielberg too like recorded Max crying at some point. And so the baby crying you hear in the movie is actually Spielberg's son, which is really cool.

Christian Robertson (01:39:18.228)
Yeah, that is cool. I wonder if he got a paycheck for that, you know.

Eli Price (01:39:21.501)
Yeah, yeah, pay max for his, for the rights to use his cry. Yeah. You set up the college fund with that. yeah, for sure. Financial chess, baby. yeah. And one, one of the things I thought was funny is that a critique of the movie was that it was just like for an, a Spielberg move for an Oscar bid.

Christian Robertson (01:39:24.112)
Right, yeah.

Yep, exactly. Spielberg playing chess.

Eli Price (01:39:50.845)
But really like, if you think about his maturing, like he's a big Hollywood director and you're really like, if you're a big Hollywood director, you're either directing like big action and blockbuster kind of stuff, adventure and action stuff, or you're directing like kind of like prestige film, drama films. And that's what this is. So it's really like the, just the natural progression for Spielberg to, to finally like direct a movie like this.

Christian Robertson (01:39:58.324)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:40:12.628)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:40:17.044)
Right.

Eli Price (01:40:20.637)
so I thought that was interesting thing to think about too. Yeah. He had some difficult scenes to shoot in this movie to say the least. the one that they talk about the most in the special features is, the Celia and Nettie getting separated. and yeah, so Spielberg had to like, let them take breaks between takes. and, Lucia said that Spielberg like,

Christian Robertson (01:40:20.884)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:40:29.844)
yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:40:39.06)
Mm -hmm, yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:40:46.036)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:40:50.109)
the way he directed her and the actress that played young Celie was like, don't let Mr. separate you like by any means. And so like when they're going through that scene, like you got to remember that they didn't do like a lot of rehearsing and they're just kind of like improving this, a lot of the stuff. And so the, like the result you get is really them just like actually trying to not let him separate. So, you know, they're holding onto each other and holding the pulse.

Christian Robertson (01:40:58.804)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:41:19.837)
pole and you know Glover actually comes up and like actually beats on her hands on that pole.

Christian Robertson (01:41:26.708)
which when I saw that part, I was like, is he really doing that? Because that's like, wow, you know, so the headspace he had to be in to again, play that character. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:41:32.605)
Yeah, you was. Yeah.

Yeah, you got to like turn off. Yeah, and they talk about how it was really the hardest on him to film that scene. And he actually like was like shaking after they finished filming it, which I can only imagine the like that's hard.

Christian Robertson (01:41:45.972)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:41:51.06)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:41:58.58)
I remember my first time on a set and we were doing this scene with my scene partner and it was an emotionally charged scene and you know they yell cut and stuff like that and I'm like okay cool and the other actress she's like on the sofa like I thought she was having a panic attack but she was just like so into it and the director was like hey it's okay she's just

Eli Price (01:42:10.365)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:42:24.573)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:42:27.796)
you know, very into it, just let her kind of come down a little bit. I was like, wow, this is crazy, you know, but, you know, some actors are just so dedicated and they get to that point and yeah, you get some of that.

Eli Price (01:42:29.053)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:42:35.773)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:42:41.661)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah, I can imagine like myself personally, like the just knowing myself, I feel like I would probably be like that. Like really, like, I don't know if I would be able to like, I don't know. Like sometimes I think like I would be able, if I was like an actor, I would be able to like turn, turn it on and off. Like a lot of actors are able to do, but then like sometimes like there'll be moments where like I'll think about.

Christian Robertson (01:42:55.7)
Mm.

Christian Robertson (01:43:08.372)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:43:13.981)
things I've experienced or moments I've been in and be like, maybe I couldn't, maybe I would be that kind of person that like really takes some time to like come off of that emotion. but yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. especially like just kind of like improving some of that stuff is must be like really hard. even like the, so the, Busea though, like her screaming why was

Christian Robertson (01:43:18.836)
Hehehe, yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:43:24.02)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:43:34.676)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:43:43.357)
like not scripted that she just kind of did that in the moment. It's like it worked really well in the movie, I think. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:43:45.46)
Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

Eli Price (01:43:52.829)
Yeah, so the cinematography, I had mentioned earlier, some of this stuff. One of them would be just due to the location. The weather makes it really difficult to shoot on location in the South. Because I guess like in this area there, it was just in the summer when you're, if you've never lived in the South,

Christian Robertson (01:44:09.78)
Yes.

Eli Price (01:44:19.741)
In the summer, you can have days where it's like blazing hot heat. And then all of a sudden it can be like a cloudy day. And then like, before you know it, there's just like, it can even just be like bright and sunny. And then all of a sudden there's a thunderstorm. especially like, when I lived in, I worked for some, a couple summers in North Carolina, more in the West side where this mountainous and especially like if you're in a mountainous area, like.

Christian Robertson (01:44:24.468)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (01:44:49.725)
you don't see the clouds coming until they're like over the mountain and it's just storming all of a sudden. Yes. And so that like was hard to work with. It really complicated things for Daviao, the director of photography, but he also like reflecting on it was saying that it'll allowed for like a range of moods. So they could shoot like.

Christian Robertson (01:44:55.604)
Yeah, yeah, like, hey, here it is.

Eli Price (01:45:16.957)
similar like scenes like maybe the mailman coming and so you'll get you can get like shots of in the same day like while when you were planning on shooting this anyway you get shots of him coming in the sunny and shots of him coming cloudy shots of him coming in a thunderstorm and like you're able to like portray the passage of time for the audience just due to the moods with the weather that you happen to have that day

Christian Robertson (01:45:20.884)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:45:31.38)
Yeah

Christian Robertson (01:45:39.188)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:45:44.852)
Right. So they learned to use it, you know, for the sake of the movie. You know, they learned how to maximize that.

Eli Price (01:45:52.613)
Yeah. Yeah, it's just kind of like that movie magic efficiency. You have to like, kind of learn like on this kind of figure things out on what, you know, as you go, you know, yeah. And then, you know, obviously they have to edit that altogether once they're editing the movie together to make it work. But yeah, the other thing was like the kind of dampness of

Christian Robertson (01:46:00.436)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:46:07.316)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:46:19.965)
the atmospheric dampness is the way that I heard it described, which is, I guess, just another way to say humid, humidity. It made like the light diffusion have like a lot of like pastels tones and stuff like that, which a lot of people actually like criticized about the movie, the kind of like pastelness of it and the way that like they do a lot of like work with smoke.

Christian Robertson (01:46:28.756)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:46:43.412)
Interesting.

Eli Price (01:46:48.573)
and if using the light through the smoke in the movie and, yeah, it's one of those things where like it's tip. It's a typical kind of like Spielberg move. you see it a lot in ET cause it's a lot of like, it's very like fantastical and it gives that feel. And I think a lot of people didn't like how like kind of fantastical some of that stuff looked in the movie. yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:47:06.196)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:47:13.684)
Gotcha. They do call it atmosphere. Like, hey, we need more atmosphere. So they'll come in with this little, almost like a smoke machine with these big things. And they're like, you know, diffusing it across the room to kind of give it that feel.

Eli Price (01:47:19.325)
Yeah. Yeah. huh. Yeah.

-huh.

Eli Price (01:47:31.837)
Yeah, and it it works. It just depends on like what you're going for with the lighting and everything on How much or little of that you need, you know? yeah. Yeah, this is definitely interesting the the I think the big thing though was that many in hollywood then and from what I could tell like a lot of people still don't know how to properly film faces of black actors. and you know

Christian Robertson (01:47:38.996)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:48:00.276)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:48:01.629)
If you're listening to this, Christian is an African American man. And so like he can speak to this probably more than I can. But he's actually lit very well here on camera with me. So kudos to yourself as your own personal lighting man.

Christian Robertson (01:48:05.3)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:48:09.3)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:48:22.1)
have to give you more than just eyes and teeth, man.

Eli Price (01:48:24.317)
Yeah But yeah, yeah, I thought it was really interesting I pulled this quote from Davial who's the cinematographer He said it is easier to deal with darker faces against a mid tone or darker background than it is against a light black background The lighting on the faces can be much more subtle and it is an awful lot easier to keep control of your walls

And so basically like one of the things they did was they made sure when they were like shooting all the interiors that like the walls and the houses were like mid to darker tones so that they could light better. And so I didn't really notice while I was watching the movie, but as they were like showing you scenes as they were talking about that, I was like, wow, this is actually like incredible. Like how, how like,

Christian Robertson (01:49:05.396)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:49:20.308)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:49:23.581)
what's the word I'm looking for? Like how textured and kind of like beautiful the faces of these black actors look in this movie. just like, honestly, like, I almost wonder if people today are even still going back to that movie when they're working with black actors to kind of like learn, okay, how do I best light my actor for the scene?

Christian Robertson (01:49:33.716)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:49:50.428)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:49:51.485)
cause it, it really looks incredible and I, you could probably speak more to that than I could, but yeah. Did you, did you notice that while you were watching?

Christian Robertson (01:50:02.644)
I did because, you know, it's funny when I'm on set and I may be like, maybe the only African American in the scene or whatever. And shout out to the lighting crew, because they have a hard job. And I can tell it's a little difficult because they spend a little more time like in my area, like, okay, we got to make sure we get this lighting right. So when the camera comes to them, we can see them and that.

Eli Price (01:50:14.525)
Sure.

Eli Price (01:50:19.645)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:50:32.34)
he looks good on camera, you know, so it's a big deal. So whenever you see good lighting for your skin tone, it's like, okay, they did a really good job because it's easy to get lost in.

Eli Price (01:50:33.437)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:50:42.397)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And I guess like, I don't know, I guess like Hollywood for a long time was largely for white actors. And so it's kind of like having to relearn techniques and stuff that like you for so long, like you're, I guess like you.

Christian Robertson (01:50:59.284)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:51:05.245)
I don't know, like, I guess like it's eighties. And so like really you're, you're really starting to get a lot of more like different skin tones, like in movies. and it was largely like dominated by white people for a long time. And so in the industry, I'm sure like people are like learning from each other techniques for lighting. And so that kind of like just grows and you kind of have, you start to have, you know, best practices for lighting.

Christian Robertson (01:51:14.548)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:51:20.723)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:51:32.413)
But then all of a sudden, you have this boom of people of different skin tones. And all of a sudden, those best practices might not work for everybody anymore. And so I'm sure it takes maybe a generation or two of filmmakers to relearn how to make adjustments for different skin tones and lighting faces well and that sort of thing. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:51:32.948)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:51:41.716)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:51:57.812)
Yeah, and also not having them look like.

someone they're not into, you know, so.

Eli Price (01:52:05.149)
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So.

Christian Robertson (01:52:10.036)
definitely an artistry to it.

Eli Price (01:52:11.613)
There is, and that's the one thing. I talk some about lighting in this show, but not a ton, but lighting is a big deal. It's a huge deal, and I think this movie is really a testament to that for sure. Yeah, kind of closing out production stuff, the score is the last big thing to talk about. And...

Christian Robertson (01:52:23.7)
Mm -hmm, yeah.

Eli Price (01:52:38.429)
Really like when you think about the music in this, you're having to cover music from like basically like 40 years of music. 1900 to 1937, I think is sort of the approximate range of years. And that's a big passage passage of time for musical styles. I think. So, yeah, quince Quincy Jones really like, I think he did a pretty decent job of like.

Christian Robertson (01:52:47.988)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:52:55.188)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:52:59.22)
Right, right.

Eli Price (01:53:06.845)
immersing you in the sounds of the time. I know they spent some time in Mississippi, like exploring the history of like juke joints and that culture and all that. And he even talked about the, one of the songs they use is called Dirty Dozen in the movie. And he talked about how he used to hear that like at his grandmother's, but you know, he never, until he was like doing research for this, didn't realize that that was like,

Christian Robertson (01:53:10.036)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:53:17.812)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:53:31.572)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:53:35.389)
One of the huge like anthems of the juke joints was that song. And so he's like, well, now I've got to put it in the movie, you know? but yeah. And then like sit the, the song, Seely's blues, or sister, which I've had stuck in my head all day. was.

Christian Robertson (01:53:39.316)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:53:43.924)
Right.

Christian Robertson (01:53:56.596)
Is that the underlying song that they play several times throughout?

Eli Price (01:54:00.125)
It's the, yeah, it's the one that she sings where like the crowd kind of splits and, and she's it's in Harpo's bar and she's singing it for Sealy. yeah, it's like sister. yeah, it's been stuck in my head all day, but the only word I can remember is sister. I just like say sister and then hum the rest.

Christian Robertson (01:54:04.02)
there's a thing.

Christian Robertson (01:54:10.452)
Okay, yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:54:14.196)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:54:20.724)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:54:26.237)
but yeah, it was written. Quincy Jones wrote that with Rod Templeton and Lionel Richie, which I thought was cool. yeah. So, and then Walker, Alice Walker said it was like one of her favorite things in the whole film was that song. so that, that song is, is written for the movie. You know, she's does a song called Seely's blues or whatever in the book. because, it comes from something she hums while she's like,

Christian Robertson (01:54:32.916)
really?

Christian Robertson (01:54:41.684)
Nice.

Christian Robertson (01:54:51.86)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:54:56.285)
bathing her in the book. And so that's, it's the same thing in the movie. But in the book, you don't get the actual song. You just know she's, she sang it at the bar. So it's really cool to like, for them to like bring that to life in the movie. It's one of those things where you, you're like, it's, it's kind of worth, you know, adapting a novel like this, just so you can like get those extra things like that, you know.

Christian Robertson (01:55:00.052)
Yeah, they did do that in the movie, yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:55:06.452)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:55:11.476)
in it.

Eli Price (01:55:23.709)
Which is probably why it was Walker's like favorite thing in the movie. Cause it's, it's something she as an artist doesn't do. She doesn't write songs. She writes novels. And so, you know, in the book, like she knew this character would write a song. but she didn't write it herself. And so that's, I would imagine like her hearing it and seeing it performed was kind of like a really cool thing for her.

Christian Robertson (01:55:27.828)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:55:35.604)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:55:52.66)
It kind of reminds me not to take this completely off topic to a whole new, whole different movie genre, but it reminds me of Twilight and Twilight they had, you know, Bella's lullaby and we just read about it. But then in the movie, they actually wrote an actual song for it. So, and then it just blew up. So it was kind of like that kind of a thing.

Eli Price (01:56:04.829)
Okay.

Eli Price (01:56:09.949)
Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not familiar with the Twilight world in the movies. So yeah, I mean, yeah, same thing really probably like, yeah, really cool. Yeah. I thought I have some thoughts on the score as a whole that we can talk about in a bit, but yeah, I do think Quincy Jones.

Christian Robertson (01:56:19.38)
Hahaha.

Christian Robertson (01:56:23.956)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:56:38.621)
The moments where you're hearing like the kind of music of the time, I think like that all that stuff is really good. yeah, the only other thing with production is that Frank Marshall, as I mentioned earlier, directed shots in Kenya to kind of illustrate Nettie's letters from Rhodesia. they had actually already started editing the film while he was over there. So he had to like get those shots and get them back to them to, to finish the movie. But yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:56:46.676)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:57:02.324)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:57:07.645)
Yeah, the movie production wraps up. There is controversy even before the movie is released, which I'm going to save that. Usually I would talk about that stuff here in the reception section of the release, but I'm going to save that as we get into the key points of the film, because it's a key thing around this movie. But yeah, it was released in the US in December.

Christian Robertson (01:57:17.78)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (01:57:28.628)
Okay.

Eli Price (01:57:37.661)
And I think of December 18th in 1985 So Christmas time you get the it's a kind of the classic like Christmas drama release and and yeah There's a lot of controversy. a lot of negative controversy around this movie And then on top of that film critics were generally not very kind to the movie either the

Christian Robertson (01:57:48.052)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:57:58.1)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:58:06.493)
I have like a list of critiques that film critics had of the movie at the time. They said it was shot too beautifully for it to make sense for the story. Okay. they denounced the fairy tale aesthetic, which I kind of mentioned earlier. they reproached Spielberg for removing the lesbian attraction stuff. which is, it's one of those things where it's like, you know, people.

Christian Robertson (01:58:10.804)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:58:22.772)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:58:33.277)
People will always like get upset when you don't include something from the source material in an adaptation. That's just kind of like a part of adapting something is someone's going to be mad at you because you didn't include this part of the book that they liked, you know, that's just part of it. They

Christian Robertson (01:58:39.22)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:58:43.668)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:58:48.948)
Yeah.

But in 84, 85, you know, it's probably... Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:58:53.885)
Yeah, yeah. It's a very different time. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and then they spoke out against eliminating the Squeak character, which I kind of mentioned, but you only have so much runtime to work with. So they also were against the recurring fall gag that Harpo did, which happened several times in the movie.

Christian Robertson (01:59:14.036)
Yeah, exactly.

Eli Price (01:59:22.493)
which I'll talk about that later. Yeah. they even like the scenes of Africa were not accepted. This is a quote from the harm Harvard Crimson. Whenever Spielberg has trouble interpreting the text, he slips into the trademark Raider esquexoticism. I'm just like, I didn't get that at all from that. It was just kind of like, here's some insert shots of, you know, Africa. I didn't really, I don't really get that critique, but okay.

Christian Robertson (01:59:24.436)
Need some comic relief. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (01:59:47.892)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:59:52.829)
The New York Times found Quincy Jones's music intrusive and they pointed out a lot of tonal discontinuities, which is personally a problem I had that we'll talk about. And then the New Yorker's Pauline Kael. Pauline Kael is notoriously a very like love it or hate it kind of film critic. And so like she'll either like...

Christian Robertson (02:00:04.852)
Interesting.

Christian Robertson (02:00:21.524)
Okay.

Eli Price (02:00:22.205)
really praise your work or she's just like, we'll tear it apart. Yeah. Yeah. And, I'm sure if you're listening, you might be hearing some thunder from mine and Christian's side of the microphone. So just ignore that. it's, it's light. It's lightning striking against, Pauline Kells, harsh critique where she said that Spielberg's the color purple.

Christian Robertson (02:00:27.636)
Red.

Christian Robertson (02:00:46.484)
I'm sorry.

Eli Price (02:00:50.013)
It's probably the least authentic feeling of any of his full length films. Yeah. So she, she did not go for it. I guess. Pauline kale. but yeah, Walker herself was even a bit annoyed, with the film, when it came out, due to just like different aspects of it. probably relating to, you know, the.

Christian Robertson (02:00:57.876)
Yikes.

Christian Robertson (02:01:13.812)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:01:17.597)
The sugar and silly attraction stuff is part of it. the, the kind of like some of the comedic stuff too, I think was part of it. but she did, she did like in hindsight in the interviews kind of talk about growing to appreciate it and even appreciating like the sweetness with which he like kind of, directs the silly and sugar relationships. So she like, she kind of come to appreciate it more over time.

Christian Robertson (02:01:21.78)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:01:28.244)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:01:46.685)
which is cool to hear. But despite all of the controversy, all of the film critic reception, it still was a pretty good success. It earned about 98 million worldwide box office with a $15 million budget. So I mean, yeah, yep. Now I will say this.

Christian Robertson (02:01:47.22)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:02:00.916)
Yep.

Christian Robertson (02:02:07.86)
laughing to the bank, you know, so.

Eli Price (02:02:14.429)
His film 1941, which was a similar thing. It, you know, was, probably a similar budget and probably made about a similar amount. I think that movie was like really bad. So like, yeah, they made money off of it, but the movie itself was like really terrible. It's like, yeah, it's the only like movie that I've covered in this whole podcast that I would say like, that's a bad movie.

Christian Robertson (02:02:29.012)
Hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:02:33.044)
Hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:02:43.092)
Interesting.

Eli Price (02:02:44.189)
But yeah, some people do like that movie, but those people are harder to find than the people that don't. So,

Christian Robertson (02:02:51.508)
I think maybe this movie, The Color Purple, carries that crowd of like, I've read the book, so let me go watch the movie.

Eli Price (02:02:58.813)
Yeah, and so I think I carried a little bit of that into the movie too. And like it's honestly one of those things where like it's hard to live up to the source material because sometimes like...

Christian Robertson (02:03:04.5)
Hmm.

Eli Price (02:03:14.557)
So I would say like, so Jaws was adapted from a book. the book is bad. I didn't, I didn't think the book was very good. I listened to that book on audio book too. Not very good. and so, yeah. and then, I'm trying to think if there was another book at, I don't know that there was another book adaptation before this one by Spielberg.

Christian Robertson (02:03:25.064)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (02:03:32.148)
Hahaha.

Eli Price (02:03:44.797)
but this one, I think so for jaws, like the movie is just like incredibly much better than the book. And I think this one, I don't think the movie like is like drastically worse than the book, but the book is just like phenomenal. And so it's hard to live up to that source material. So I think that's, that is probably part of it. Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:03:55.764)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:04:04.948)
Yeah.

Right. That's okay. That's fair. I can, I mean, I haven't read the book, but I can get down with that for two.

Eli Price (02:04:15.741)
Yeah. Yeah. but yeah, it, I mean, it's successful. It was like the fourth in ticket sales by the end of 1985. It was behind Rocky four and ahead of out of Africa, which out of Africa, I'm pretty sure is the movie that won best picture that year. which I've never seen it. So I don't know. Can't really speak to if it's good or not. but, but the color purple did receive 11 Oscar nominations.

Christian Robertson (02:04:31.988)
Okay.

Yeah, never heard of it.

Eli Price (02:04:42.493)
It did not receive it for best director, which people kind of say it was like kind of a, I don't know, a snub move. Yeah. but it received, I'll kind of list out the nominations. It got it for best picture, lead actress for Whoopi. it got two supporting actress nominations for, Margaret Avery as Shug and for Oprah as, Sophia.

Christian Robertson (02:04:50.74)
That's no, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:05:10.324)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:05:11.037)
It got a spring screenplay nom cinematography, art direction, costume design, an original song nomination for Missy Lee's blues or sister nomination for the score and for the makeup. And it did not win any of them. So we'll talk about some critiques of the movie that the NAACP had along with other groups.

Christian Robertson (02:05:28.724)
That's wild.

Eli Price (02:05:38.781)
but once this happened, the N some NAACP kind of went back around and is now accusing the Academy of refusing to honor black artists and ignoring films about African -Americans. And so, which is fair to be honest. so they might've disliked some things about the movie, but I think they also like recognize like, it is still good that there's.

Christian Robertson (02:05:39.828)
Hehehehe

Christian Robertson (02:05:47.54)
Haha.

Christian Robertson (02:05:59.828)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:06:04.957)
these black artists being represented and they were not happy when the academy basically like it gave them the nominations but they didn't win any of them like that's i think this i think it's a record it's tied for a record of the most nominations with no wins yeah

Christian Robertson (02:06:08.34)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:06:15.668)
Yeah, like...

Christian Robertson (02:06:22.612)
And that went, yeah. I think, and I don't know how true this is, but I saw one interview on the front end that NAACP was like, don't go watch this movie, boycott it, you know.

Eli Price (02:06:35.421)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're about to get into that. So, yeah. yeah. They, so they kind of doubled back, but, but it's to be fair, like it's okay to have nuanced, nuanced reactions to things where like, you're like, I don't think this is good, but at the same time, like, you're not going to recognize any of the people in our culture. Like, you're going to give them all these nominations and not let any of them win. Like it.

Christian Robertson (02:06:38.964)
Yeah, okay.

Christian Robertson (02:06:57.652)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:07:05.3)
That's a tough look. It's a tough look. 11 nominations and not a single. I would like to know, I'm not, you know, abreast to the Oscar history, but I would like to know what it was going against that year in those categories.

Eli Price (02:07:05.373)
Yeah. Yeah, it's tough.

Eli Price (02:07:16.541)
Yeah, me either.

Eli Price (02:07:21.021)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can maybe like vamp for a few seconds as I'm like Googling, but I do know, I do know that out of Africa, I'm pretty sure one best picture. I'm not sure which other movies were nominated, but I am clicking the link right now so we can kind of maybe see. I don't want highlights. I want the...

I want the full list. here we go. Okay. So, actress Whoopi was against... So the winner was Geraldine Page for the trip to Bountiful, which I've never heard of that actress or that movie. I don't... I reckon... Okay, Meryl Streep in Out of Africa was nominated. Jessica Lange in a movie called Sweet Dreams. I do know Jessica Lange. I don't know Sweet Dreams.

Supporting role the winner was Angelica Houston who I do know for a movie called Pritzzee's honor, which I've never heard of So, I mean I don't know this Geraldine Page actress I do know Angelica Houston, but I've never seen those so I can't really it's hard to like make any like judgments when I haven't seen these other movies and performances, but

But yeah, I mean, I don't know how like Oprah doesn't win that today. Today, Oprah wins that, you know, wins for that Sophia role for sure. yeah, out of Africa won a bunch of stuff. So it won like art direction, cinematography, directing Sydney Pollock was the director for out of Africa. yeah. So I mean it.

Christian Robertson (02:08:54.324)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:09:14.58)
Okay.

Eli Price (02:09:18.333)
out of Africa kind of like won a lot of the it won for score did it win for yeah it won best picture i'm trying to see it won for sound it won for screenplay yeah i don't i don't from what i gather like it's kind of like okay but that's kind of how the academy goes sometimes sometimes they like

Christian Robertson (02:09:34.324)
Must have been a very great movie.

Christian Robertson (02:09:43.444)
Hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:09:47.828)
Right.

Eli Price (02:09:47.837)
give all the awards to an okay movie. But yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:09:53.748)
Waiting for the day of Fast and the Furious movie wins enough.

Eli Price (02:09:55.805)
Has it not won any like effects or anything? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, you and other like fast heads like Christopher Nolan are probably like waiting for that day. Christopher Nolan, a notorious, fast and furious stan. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:10:02.804)
That's a lot more work.

Christian Robertson (02:10:12.284)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:10:20.372)
Yeah, I love them. I love them.

Eli Price (02:10:22.589)
It's not my thing, but I understand like the love, you know what I mean? I can appreciate and respect like the people's love of that franchise. I haven't, I haven't seen all of them. I've seen a few of them. but yeah, this, the only other thing about this before we jump into the key points is that it was adapted as we've said to a Broadway musical in 2005 is when that musical started and it was produced by Oprah and Quincy Jones.

Christian Robertson (02:10:27.252)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:10:32.212)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:10:52.413)
through Oprah's production company Harpo Productions, which as you'll maybe recognize Harpo is the name of the character in this book, but it's also Oprah backwards. Which yeah, I think that was something that Spielberg like pointed out when they were, when he was like hiring them, he was like, Oprah backwards is Harpo, you know? Yeah. And the Broadway musical is kind of based on the movie script, but also on the book. So.

Christian Robertson (02:10:57.396)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:11:04.82)
Yeah, yeah, fun fact.

Christian Robertson (02:11:14.484)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:11:21.213)
It probably has like a little, a few differences sort of going on there. But yeah, let's jump into some key points. Let's jump into some of the controversy. Are you, are you prepared to, to delve into the controversy, around this movie? We'll see. the first one comes with this question. Can a white male director do this story justice? jump the lights. Let's jump right in.

Christian Robertson (02:11:29.94)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (02:11:36.724)
we'll see, we'll see.

Christian Robertson (02:11:46.292)
Heheheheh

Eli Price (02:11:49.789)
to this. So that was a little controversy around the movie. It's not what I would say was the main controversy, but there was some talk around it. Spielberg talks about how like, it's one of those things where he like is being very careful about how he's like talking about it, but he did say that he could empathize with some of the, I guess like,

Christian Robertson (02:11:59.604)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:12:19.261)
oppression with like he had experiences as a kid with like anti -Semitism and stuff like that. So obviously like a very different thing. But it's, it's one of those things where you can connect with something from your own life that helps you empathize, empathize with the experience of another. So like, and that's kind of, he's not trying to like say it's the same thing in the interviews. He's just saying like it helped him connect with that experience.

Christian Robertson (02:12:26.1)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:12:48.308)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:12:48.413)
and understand it, which I totally understand. But yeah, were you gonna say something?

Christian Robertson (02:12:56.5)
My thing is he was sought out for this movie, so that's number one. And number two, yeah, like, hey. And so my question with that is how far does the movie go without him? So it's almost like a Brady Belichick thing, like was it Brady, was it Belichick, who needed who?

Eli Price (02:12:59.837)
Right, yeah. Yeah. He was even hesitant, you know.

Eli Price (02:13:17.021)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:13:21.853)
Sure.

Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:13:26.708)
So I think Steven Spielberg's cache, you know, I think that helped. But also that helped his career too, being able to do a movie like that.

Eli Price (02:13:31.709)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:13:37.597)
Yeah, yeah, kind of propelled him into a new phase of his career, you know.

Christian Robertson (02:13:42.74)
Right. I think being that he was sought out, but he also had consultants like, hey, this is how this should be. And that he was open to that. I think that's a really good look and that kind of helps the whole situation. So I think, you know, if you're in that position, but you're seeking guidance and help, like, hey, how do we make this as authentic as possible? And let me ask the people who would know the most and let me have them involved.

Eli Price (02:13:48.349)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:13:51.837)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:14:09.053)
Yes.

Christian Robertson (02:14:11.636)
and represented. I say why not? His popularity, his skills as a director, I mean, that only helps bring the story a little further, in my opinion.

Eli Price (02:14:20.733)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. And it was really like, honestly, like the kind of usual charges when it comes to something like this. It's like, you know, he doesn't understand black people. He, he sentimentalizes their experience. Like he doesn't actually show like the true poverty they experienced because, you know, it's like a more upscale property owners centered. and most of those are just like really unfair, like charges because you know,

Christian Robertson (02:14:33.972)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:14:45.748)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:14:52.221)
I obviously like, I can only speak to that so much as like a white male myself, but at the same time, it's like, this is being adapted. Like the story is written by a black woman and he's not really changing the story. Like the story is what it is. Like, and so like, and I think even Alice Walker talked about how some of the charges that were brought against the movie, like were hurtful to her because.

Christian Robertson (02:14:59.86)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:15:07.252)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (02:15:21.949)
It was like ignoring that it was her story. and even like, we'll, we'll get into next the controversy about like, you know, perpetuating stereotypes about black men. but she was like really hurt by that because this is, it was this, she didn't write this to be about that. It was, it was about the experiences of these women and it was written from like,

Christian Robertson (02:15:26.1)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:15:37.908)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:15:47.732)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:15:48.573)
Experience that she had heard people in her family talk about so like she was actually really hurt by that. But yeah The thing is like I think Spielberg did everything he could as right as he could do it For one like I do I do have some like quibbles that we'll talk about in a minute with like The way the film is made and the kind of Steven Spielberg miss of it. I

Christian Robertson (02:15:53.076)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:16:02.452)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:16:17.693)
I think maybe doesn't necessarily work with some of the material, but that doesn't really have anything to do with him being a white male director and it doesn't really detract from.

Christian Robertson (02:16:18.484)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:16:24.692)
Okay.

Eli Price (02:16:34.973)
I guess it does detract a little bit, but it doesn't really have anything to do. It's just his directing style. It doesn't really have anything to do with like, him not understanding the black experience. It's kind of more like, well, this is the guy you brought on to do it. And this is just how he makes movies. And it, it sometimes like clashes in my opinion with the material. but you know, it's.

Christian Robertson (02:16:41.78)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (02:16:51.796)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:16:59.444)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:17:01.757)
one of the things I heard, in Molly Haskell has a book called a life and films, Steven Spilberg, a life and film. and, she was talking about how a lot of people don't, don't really talk about one of Steven Spilberg's. They'll talk about like John Ford's influence on Spielberg and, people like that, but they don't talk about a big influence that you can see in Spilberg's work, which is a movie like Gone with the Wind.

And so it's this grand sweeping like period piece kind of epic movie. and this is a similar thing. It's like this grand sweep, like sweeping, you're covering like a lifetime of these characters. It's a period piece. and, she was relating Spielberg doing the color purple to what, the director who he was also a Jewish director, of Gone with the Wind, trying to do.

Christian Robertson (02:17:31.956)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:17:45.46)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:17:58.964)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:17:59.933)
the best he could with the oppression of black people. And then when the movie came out, like he got a lot of flack or, you know, the way that the black characters are portrayed portrayed when he was really like actually trying to like make progression with that, like, like earnestly he was, but then still got attacked for it. And it's a similar thing here with Spielberg in that he's like earnestly like trying to do good.

Christian Robertson (02:18:17.3)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:18:29.565)
for black representation, like having their story told, but gets like all the flack for it. And it's like, when can we win? And like you were saying, like, and a lot of the actors in the interviews, they were saying like, and this movie, like it's a bunch of no names, like it's a bunch of no names actors, even if they like, and on top of that, they're black actors in a, in a industry that's very white.

Christian Robertson (02:18:30.452)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:18:38.74)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:18:49.684)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:18:58.077)
So like, not only are they not known names, but they're just like, they don't unfortunately match the criteria of what typically they, the studios go for to make money. and so like this movie probably doesn't get made without Steven Spielberg, you know? Like, so it's just kind of like, I don't know. It's, it's hard.

Christian Robertson (02:18:58.772)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:19:12.404)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:19:18.1)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:19:26.045)
It's hard because like there is a degree, there's a degree to which like, yeah. And yeah, maybe we'll, we'll set this aside and cause I do have like, a defense of Spielberg coming up. And so we'll, we'll, we'll table that and then we'll come back to it when we get to that defense. he, he did also get flacked from feminists for the removal of like the more explicit love scenes. We've touched on that, how like Spielberg probably just isn't the one to do that.

Christian Robertson (02:19:27.316)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:19:39.604)
Okay. Okay.

Christian Robertson (02:19:53.076)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:19:55.133)
he did, he did later apologize for that. I don't know that he necessarily needed to, but he did. and honestly, like the more kind of like explicit erotic stuff, isn't my thing either. I, I was telling my wife, like, some of those scenes, like some of those parts in the book were like very uncomfortable for me. obviously like they do get into like,

Christian Robertson (02:20:02.996)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:20:10.932)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:20:21.524)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:20:24.189)
more detail than I would typically like be comfortable with. But so like for instance in Jaws, like this is very different, but there's some like more erotic stuff in Jaws, but it's just like totally unnecessary and doesn't like really add anything to anything. But in the color purple, like there's a really strong purpose behind those moments. And it has a lot to do with

Christian Robertson (02:20:41.56)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:20:49.652)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:20:53.245)
a woman taking ownership of her body and kind of being shown and guided into the fact that she is beautiful and that she is allowed to feel pleasure. And that's a big deal. So like there's, while it's not like my thing, like I don't typically like go for stuff like that. Like as I was listening to it in the book, I was like, okay, this is like,

Christian Robertson (02:20:57.108)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:21:03.572)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:21:13.62)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:21:21.341)
This makes sense. It's empowering a woman to have ownership of her body and to claim the right to feel pleasure, which I think we all should have. I think men, women, everyone should have ownership of their own body and be allowed to feel pleasure. That's just a part of being human.

Christian Robertson (02:21:24.82)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:21:33.94)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:21:37.94)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:21:49.492)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:21:49.981)
And so like, I get why it's in the material. and so like, I, I kinda, I guess all that to say, like, I understand why, like feminists were kind of upset that it wasn't more like some of the more explicit stuff was in there. but again, it's Steven Spielberg, like it's just, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:22:01.364)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:22:11.348)
That's not his usual MO.

Eli Price (02:22:14.429)
It's just you got the movie you brought on spill Steven Spielberg. You got the movie that that Steven Spielberg was going to make like if you wanted that stuff, like you should have gotten a different director, you know. so it's kind of just hard to put that on, on Spielberg. It's like, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:22:19.444)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:22:27.284)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:22:34.068)
It's tough because it's like creative choices, one, and then, you know, and so how much room do you have for that? You know, when it's art, you know, the actor, that's art, the director, that's art for them as well, you know, so you have creative choices that you make and it's hard to please everybody.

Eli Price (02:22:38.845)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:22:52.541)
Yeah. And yeah, to be honest, like the way he ends up doing that, that's that section is like, might be a little bit more sensual than like explicitly showing things, you know? just kind of like the, that, you know, he talked about it being like more poetic, but like when you watch that, that, that scene and the way like it follows their hands, like,

Christian Robertson (02:23:06.996)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:23:13.46)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:23:20.02)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:23:20.093)
as they're like touching each other and stuff. And like, it is, it's to be honest, like it is still very sensual. And I'm so like, I'm kind of like, yeah, it isn't what's in the book, but like, it is. Yeah. Like I'm watching and I'm like, this is pretty sensual. I don't know. Like, but yeah. So, you know, that was another thing.

Christian Robertson (02:23:29.172)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:23:34.516)
It's not like he skipped the whole thing. He, like they...

Yeah, yeah, right, right.

Eli Price (02:23:47.453)
Let's touch on the major controversy of this, which, so, you know, today you talked about how like this movie was quoted in your family growing up and stuff. And today it really is like considered a classic in, in black culture. you know, I know like some other friends that are African -American that are like, feel the same way. and obviously they like, it was, it was a big thing in your family growing up.

Christian Robertson (02:23:59.06)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:24:12.148)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:24:16.372)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:24:17.501)
But at the time, like there was a lot of hand wringing and unsureity about the film. and, in some of the issues, the, you know, we, we, we talked about like a white male directed it and that there was controversy around that, but, it was criticized for that, but that was really not the main controversy. It wasn't why people were protesting the movie. the main controversy was over the depiction of black male characters.

Christian Robertson (02:24:24.436)
Mm.

Christian Robertson (02:24:42.004)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:24:47.165)
so organizations like the coalition against black black exploitation denounced the film because of this, even a month before its release, they demonstrated in front of Quincy Jones offices. They protested in front of the motion picture Academy in LA during the screening for the black women's forum. so they were against it. The ends double ACP, expressed similar criticisms, talking about, the portrayal of black male characters being.

Christian Robertson (02:24:57.46)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:25:06.964)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:25:16.285)
quote, very stereotypical. And then just like generally among historians and writers and colonists, this controversy was like pretty immediate. And, you know, and even like in the black community at the time, the opinions of that surrounding that were very like divided. And very understandably, women were much more accepting of the film.

Christian Robertson (02:25:29.3)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:25:38.708)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:25:45.3)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:25:45.341)
because it's a film about these women. It's not, it's not about the men. It's about the women. but yeah, that was the big controversy at the time. and, I listened to, so this is my, I listened to, there's a NPR, podcast called pop culture happy hour. and they had done, I don't remember when this came out. I just kind of was searching around to see.

Christian Robertson (02:25:50.036)
there. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:26:07.956)
Okay.

Eli Price (02:26:13.372)
If I could find some good material to kind of research more into this. And they did something called Screening Ourselves, a series, and they covered this movie and the controversy around this movie as part of that series. And they talked about, it's very interesting. I'll try to remember to link it in the episode notes, if you're listening when this releases. Hopefully I'll remember to link to that episode.

Christian Robertson (02:26:27.668)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:26:41.149)
of pop culture happy hour, but if not, you can easily search it, and, and find it. but they talked about at the time there was a show called Tony Brown's journal and he had brought on, kind of like a panel debate about surrounding this movie. He had four defenders of it and four detractors of it. And they ended up dubbing the, this debate purple rage because of how like heated it got. it even got heated to.

Christian Robertson (02:26:57.492)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:27:07.06)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:27:10.877)
at one point, one of the mint, one of the, like the tractors of the film, basically calling, one of the, supporters that we'll talk about in a minute, basically said he might as well be white. it's like basically like calling them an uncle Tom, like, yeah. So it got heated at point. but, they, they kind of, I appreciated the.

Christian Robertson (02:27:26.836)
wow.

Jeez. Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (02:27:38.813)
the episode because they broke down the major critiques. So I didn't have to like go back and listen to the whole debate. They just like play clips from it and like broke it down. but they, they ended up breaking down four major critiques that were expressed. The first one and main one was that it, it perpetuated harmful stereotypes about black men to a global audience that would like believe those to be true of all black, black people.

Christian Robertson (02:27:43.316)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:27:49.428)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:28:00.884)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:28:08.02)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:28:08.893)
And so here's the thing, like a lot of people that like were defenders of the movie at the time and like upset with people that had this critique. a lot of those people like look back and kind of understand in hindsight that critique. cause like, if you think about where you are, you're in the mid 1980s. you're in the era of Reaganomic, the Reaganomics era. And we all kind of like are aware now of.

Christian Robertson (02:28:31.38)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:28:38.877)
the way that the Reagan administration would portray black men. You know, there's a lot of talk of black men as predators at this time. And so when you have a movie where all the black men in it are basically abusive, like, it's like, okay, like, I understand why these people were upset. Like, yeah, it's to them, it, it feels like propaganda.

Christian Robertson (02:28:44.436)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:28:56.436)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:29:02.26)
Not a good look.

Eli Price (02:29:07.613)
working against them, like it's, it's totally understandable. and so that was like the main critique, the main controversy. and people were like very upset about that. and then,

Christian Robertson (02:29:07.972)
Yeah. Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:29:18.58)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:29:25.3)
It's kind of like the whole airing dirty laundry, you know? And again, in art and stuff like that, how do you navigate that? Because there's a story someone wants to tell. Should it be told? That's debatable, you know? And because people are gonna look bad and you do have the chance of like...

Eli Price (02:29:28.637)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (02:29:36.669)
Yeah.

Right.

Eli Price (02:29:45.053)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:29:54.068)
those stereotypes happening to where, is this how all African -American men are? This how they all treat their wives, you know, because this is kind of lining up with what the government is kind of saying right now. So it's, it's, it's not a good look at all, you know, so it's tough.

Eli Price (02:29:59.101)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Eli Price (02:30:06.365)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:30:11.293)
Yeah. Yeah, it's not. It's one of those things though, like you were saying in art, it's like, okay, the people that want to see what they want to see are going to see it either way. You know, the people that are actually going to see this and be like, yep. See, this is how all black men are. Like they're going to find reasons to think that anyway, in my opinion, people that are actually like reasonable.

Christian Robertson (02:30:23.124)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:30:31.06)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:30:35.86)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:30:39.389)
aren't going to watch this and be like, yeah, all black men must beat their wives. It's like, no, this is a specific story, you know, about these specific people. Like it's not like, just like, I feel like any reasonable person would, wouldn't think that. But again, like, I'm, I'm kind of removed from that atmosphere. Like we were removed from it. So I don't.

Christian Robertson (02:30:44.724)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:30:58.804)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:31:04.276)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:31:07.325)
It's hard for me to like really like critique their critique a whole lot because at this, while I do think like it's a little bit overblown at the same time, it's like, it really is like totally an understandable critique. Like you said, like not a good look, especially in the time that it was coming out.

Christian Robertson (02:31:14.452)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:31:26.068)
Mm -hmm, yeah. Yeah.

Right. On the same token, I would say though, for African American women who were or did experience those type of things, you know,

Eli Price (02:31:40.093)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:31:45.716)
there's something to be said there too, you know? Because if the author, you know, she has her parents or grandparents or whoever experienced that, I'm sure that they weren't the only one, unfortunately.

Eli Price (02:31:46.653)
Yeah. exactly.

Eli Price (02:31:55.229)
Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. We'll, we'll keep talking about that, but yeah, the, the second major critique they, they pointed out in this, panel debate was that these same stereotypes would perpetuate self hate and shame in black viewers. And so they would point to stuff like Sealy constantly be called ugly and stuff like that. and that's an understandable critique too, honestly.

Christian Robertson (02:32:27.348)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:32:27.357)
but again, like my thing is, you know, and this kind of goes with what you were just talking about, like it's written by a black woman. Like this isn't, this isn't like a white man, like kind of perpetuating stereotypes. He's, he's adapting the story written by a black woman. Like, and you know, that's.

Christian Robertson (02:32:46.548)
Just, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:32:52.02)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:32:54.781)
that she's writing out of her experience and like stories that she's heard. Like, so it's just kind of like, well, you know, it's not, this was her, this was like the experience she wanted to write about. And so, and they made it into a movie and now everyone's seeing it, you know, it's kind of like, what are you going to do? the third one was the, the third and fourth main critiques were just kind of like,

Christian Robertson (02:32:58.612)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:33:07.444)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:33:11.572)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:33:18.036)
Yeah, yeah. Tough.

Eli Price (02:33:24.445)
In my opinion, just like didn't really have good basis. The third one was that it was historically inaccurate because abuse at the hands of black men was not an issue for women in the early 19 hundreds. And I'm just like,

Christian Robertson (02:33:28.948)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:33:38.973)
You don't think like ever like, like she wrote this out of stories she heard about her family at that time. So she's not just like making this story up to make black men look bad. She, so I just, and I, I think in the episode, they even talk about how like some of the stuff he pointed out just like, wasn't, wasn't good, like, wasn't good information.

Christian Robertson (02:33:41.812)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:33:48.596)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:33:53.492)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:34:05.012)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:34:07.165)
The other one was that the Sealy Shug romance was a threat to heterosexual black couples and black masculinity. And I'm just kind of like, well, I guess like I'm kind of, maybe you want to another one of those things where you're kind of removed from some of the stuff that was going on at the time. but that kind of seems a little bit ridiculous to me also. but I do think that might be tied a little bit to the first.

Christian Robertson (02:34:28.148)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:34:36.157)
critique and as far as black masculinity goes, maybe like those stereotypes, of black men, like maybe this, maybe it was like a threat to that, but I don't know. I don't think that should be the thing you see as a threat. You know, that's it's like, if that's what the threat is, then it's weak to begin with, you know, surely that's not.

Christian Robertson (02:34:41.236)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:35:04.66)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:35:05.309)
That's not like a huge threat to your masculinity, you know, to women maybe like having some romance, you know, it's kind of like, I don't know.

Christian Robertson (02:35:19.412)
Yeah, it's to the...

data. That particular issue, that...

Christian Robertson (02:35:31.252)
And I can't speak for the entire African -American community, obviously, but I do know stuff like that.

Eli Price (02:35:35.005)
Sure, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:35:43.028)
is it's a source of contention, you know, and I think as African -American people, anything that would...

Eli Price (02:35:46.365)
Sure.

Christian Robertson (02:35:56.424)
further take away from the advancement of the community. It gets immediately met with some apprehension because for so long we were looked at as less than and stuff. So it's like, hey, we can't have anything else that

Eli Price (02:36:02.653)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:36:17.533)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:36:26.484)
you know, keeps us from advancing. So things like that, things like, you know, you know, husbands beating wives and stuff like that, even though that very may well be happening and is a legitimate issue. It's like, hey, y 'all handle that in -house. We don't need everybody else knowing what's going on, you know, that kind of a thing. Yes. Right. So it's...

Eli Price (02:36:27.485)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:36:35.517)
Right.

Eli Price (02:36:47.805)
Yeah, kind of the airing your dirty laundry thing like you were saying. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:36:55.476)
And it's tough because it's like, real people are being affected by this. And this is an issue that should be handled and talked about. But at the same time, does it come at the cost of these other communities to having more ammo to be like, well, see what y 'all are doing over here. See what y 'all are doing with this kind of thing. So.

Eli Price (02:37:02.461)
Right.

Eli Price (02:37:13.853)
Yeah. And like, to be fair, like that happens way too often. so yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, I think the, I think all of these critiques are pretty fair. considering that, maybe not the historical inaccuracy of abuse. Like that's kind of like, that's a little bit ridiculous. It's like, how do you even know? Like,

Christian Robertson (02:37:19.988)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:37:37.172)
Yes, who right?

Eli Price (02:37:43.101)
Where are you pulling that information from? But the other three like.

Christian Robertson (02:37:43.188)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Eli Price (02:37:48.189)
You know, the other three, to be honest, are just like, yeah, it makes sense. Like you have a right to be at the very least to be bringing it up and questioning it and like making it a big deal so that people don't think that this is that these stereotypes are true. yeah. So that's understandable for sure. The actors themselves were kind of upset with the controversy.

Christian Robertson (02:37:54.836)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:38:01.588)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:38:11.188)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (02:38:18.621)
yeah, they, they, for one, like they were very close to the project. So like, this was their like, baby, like they made this together and they were, you know, they were upset that, you know, other people in their community were like protesting the film and stuff. Whoopi even said that the protests like were ridiculous and set black actors back like five to six years.

Christian Robertson (02:38:19.876)
yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:38:25.3)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:38:30.836)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:38:39.508)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:38:46.973)
because studios didn't want to touch an all black cast for a while. Like when, when a film like this comes out, it's a big film and it gets protests and like all this heated controversy around it. Like the studios just want to make money. Like they're not there. Unfortunately, like they're not that interested in progress. Like in like,

Christian Robertson (02:38:47.028)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:38:53.012)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:39:04.82)
Right, right, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:39:09.908)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:39:14.109)
Which ethnic group is progressing in society or not? They just want to make money. Like shouldn't be that way, but that's just the reality. yeah. and so like whoopee's point is that like, and I think even Margaret Avery kind of like. Confirmed that separately. And she was talking about how, like after this movie, she didn't really even, she couldn't get an acting job for like two years.

Christian Robertson (02:39:18.036)
Right, exactly. Yeah.

That's the bottom line. Yeah, the bottom line.

Christian Robertson (02:39:43.188)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:39:43.389)
after this movie, which is wild because she's so good in it, you know? But there was, you know, I don't know if it's necessarily tied to this controversy or not, but like, it's hard to like, wonder, you know, like, is it because of that? But yeah, so that was a big thing that came up. And, you know, Oprah, you know, Oprah says that it's...

Christian Robertson (02:39:48.468)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:39:59.316)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:40:12.829)
you know, a classic because the material itself is a classic. So like even in, you know, Boussia, the Nettie actress kind of said that the love with which it was made kind of outlasts the negativity and criticism. And I think, I think we kind of can see that now because as we talked about, like it's kind of become a classic in, in black culture, despite all of this controversy. and yet.

Christian Robertson (02:40:27.06)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:40:37.108)
Right. Right.

Eli Price (02:40:40.893)
Some of the defend, like some of the defending of Spielberg and this movie, you know, we kind of already touched on the fact that like it's 1985 and Spielberg's power in the industry kind of like maybe what gets this made in the first place. But another big defender was a man named Armand White. He was probably its biggest defender. I think he caught it the best film of 1985 even.

Christian Robertson (02:40:58.388)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:41:09.053)
but he was a African American, gay man who was a film critic. So he kind of had, I guess, two points of connection with it. and, and the, and those two ways, and, but he, he, so he was actually the one that's one of the detractors on the Tony Brown panel called. He's, he said he might as well be a white man, to arm and white.

Christian Robertson (02:41:19.124)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:41:23.444)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:41:38.244)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:41:38.621)
Which is, I guess, kind of ironic because I guess in a sense his surname is white. So he is, which I'm just now realizing. But yeah, I guess I don't know if it's okay to make that joke, but I thought it was kind of ironic and funny. But yeah, so he, he was a defender of the movie. He saw the focus on oppression of women as a welcome relief.

Christian Robertson (02:41:45.94)
Yeah

Yeah.

Eli Price (02:42:08.38)
From knee -jerk, the knee -jerk issue of racial discrimination. so he kind of saw it as like, this isn't about a movie about race at all. It's about women and the oppression of women, which I think is how Walker herself saw it. You know, we, we talked about it when she wrote the book, she wasn't really interested in showing the oppression of white people against black people. She was interested in women being oppressed.

Christian Robertson (02:42:13.908)
Mmm, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:42:22.164)
Yeah. Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:42:37.044)
Yeah, right.

Eli Price (02:42:38.173)
And like, she can't, she can't really write about white women being oppressed because she's not a white woman. So yeah, makes sense. yeah, he, he defends Spielberg too. you know, he talked about how art is about empathy and a white man director doesn't detract from. Like the end product you get. and I think that's fair. it's kind of one of those things where I can kind of see both sides. It's like.

Christian Robertson (02:42:45.587)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:43:01.172)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:43:07.869)
You know, a white male as a director can only like direct that experience so far. that's a fair critique, but also like, I understand Armand White's like defense too. It's like, well, no, like, and you talked about it too. Like he's, he's empathizing. He's that's what art is about. Like, it's not, it's not as ridiculous as the like, well, he's not an alien and he directed EP, which is a re -

Christian Robertson (02:43:16.756)
Yeah.

Mm.

Christian Robertson (02:43:30.58)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:43:36.66)
Hehehehe

Eli Price (02:43:37.661)
It's kind of a ridiculous thing, but Armand White's defense is fair. I wrote down this quote from him too. He said, the color purple feels like the first insider's movie about black America because the characters aren't defined by their relations to the white world, nor created through a white artist sympathetic condescension. These are new black archetypes as fictional creations. They are so free of political justification that the whole issue of correctness is that.

I thought that was a really, really good insight, into why the film probably like why the film has lasted despite the controversy, and, and its appreciation. but, but he does talk about how like film culture still really doesn't hold up the movie as important. And, he, he like feels similar to the NAACP because he,

Christian Robertson (02:44:22.836)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Eli Price (02:44:38.237)
He thinks that the, you know, the film industry and film culture is still only interested in black people being beaten down and depressed and victimized and not in them being joyful, which really like the end of this movie is a joyful experience. Like there's, it doesn't end with victimization and, and, and depression. It ends with joy. and the book is the same way, even more so in the book actually.

Christian Robertson (02:44:48.596)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:44:56.788)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:45:04.243)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:45:07.997)
the, the end of the book, like leaves you like feeling uplifted and, and joyful and, like a full human being. and I think that's like a really interesting point that white makes that like him as a black man, like felt joy from where this movie took him. And maybe the film culture is still like.

Christian Robertson (02:45:20.372)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:45:34.484)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:45:37.533)
not as enlightened as they claim to be because they're unwilling to uplift this film that ends with such joy.

Christian Robertson (02:45:42.612)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:45:49.94)
Yeah. Yeah, it's I think it's.

It's tricky, I think, because there's so many stories of oppression and stuff like that. And it's like, hey, we need to tell these stories to show everybody what's happening. But at the same time, we don't have a lot of stories where it's like, hey, this is just a great family or this is a great story, just about not about all of that.

Eli Price (02:46:02.813)
Right.

Eli Price (02:46:06.621)
Right.

Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:46:21.341)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:46:24.884)
but just a wholesome kind of a thing. And I think the farmer, you know, it does have more of that shock factor, you know, it probably makes more money and stuff like that. And so there is something to that, I think, you know.

Eli Price (02:46:24.925)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:46:35.741)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:46:46.109)
Yeah. Yeah, it basically we need more American fictions. Have you seen America? you've got to see it. It's great. Yeah, it's it's so good. Sterling Cray Brown and then, man, my mind just went totally blank.

Christian Robertson (02:46:53.364)
Yeah, yeah, which I heard was a great movie. I haven't seen it yet, but I love Sterling K Brown.

Christian Robertson (02:47:08.852)
I know who you're talking about though. He's, yeah, from the James Bond movies, 007.

Eli Price (02:47:09.437)
Jeffrey Wright, Jeffrey Wright. Yeah. Yeah, I love Jeffrey Wright too. He's, they're both really great in it. And the movie's really, really good. It's like half satire, half family drama, but it's like, it's, it's a black family that is just like so full and like, it's, it's like they're a loving family. They have family drama, just like you.

Christian Robertson (02:47:20.884)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:47:27.188)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:47:39.325)
would expect from any family. But they're just like, they're full people. Like they're not defined by any stereotypes. You know, it's just really good. We need more movies like that. That win Academy Awards like best screenplay, which it did. So, you know, we're getting there.

Christian Robertson (02:47:39.668)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:47:43.252)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:47:50.42)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:47:56.18)
Yeah, yeah.

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:48:08.34)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:48:08.861)
But yeah, we've got some work to do for sure.

Christian Robertson (02:48:14.036)
Right. I read a quote and I can't remember who it was, but someone said like, I don't want to make another slave movie or I don't want to be in another slave movie, you know, something along. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:48:22.237)
Yeah. We've got enough, honestly. We've got a lot of them. and, and they're very good. I think it's one of those things where it's like, we have.

The unfortunate thing is that it's those movies that get recognized and not enough of the American fiction types get recognized because they're out there. Like those movies are out there. It's just that they don't get the big push and they don't get the award nominations and all that stuff. I think that's the big thing.

Christian Robertson (02:48:47.092)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:48:53.46)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:49:05.908)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:49:09.693)
So we definitely have, we're getting there, I guess. Like, yeah. But yeah, that's really like, I mean, you have like, like we talked about, like the hindsight of, you know, it kind of taking time to get out of that, like alarmism and chaos of the eighties to really appreciate the movie for what it is. The NAACP.

Christian Robertson (02:49:14.996)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:49:34.388)
Yeah.

Right.

Eli Price (02:49:37.981)
actually did eventually award it some image awards. So like it got some recognition. And then, you know, the musical was made by, you know, black producers and black writers. And I think that's probably helped like rebuild the story's reputation to a degree. I mean, you have Blitz making the...

Christian Robertson (02:49:42.58)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:49:54.58)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:50:00.788)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:50:07.421)
directing the movie. He's, I don't know what all he's directed. I know he's directed some Beyonce music video stuff. I'm not sure about what else he's directed, but he directed the, the, like the movie version of the musical, that the new one, which I think is, is really good. I, I do really enjoy musicals. I still think the musical.

tone is a little strange for the movie, but I kind of understand it. It kind of like now looking back on it, it kind of feels like they are focusing more on the joy than on the on the depression and the oppression. So like in hindsight, the

Christian Robertson (02:50:54.068)
Hmm.

Okay, yeah.

Eli Price (02:51:01.725)
When I was watching the movie, the tone felt kind of strange because it is very like, hard material and a lot of the music is still pretty like joyful and exciting. But in hindsight, like after watching this and like reading all the controversy and stuff in hindsight, I'm always wondering if like, I just experienced it wrong. Like if I, if they are like actually trying to reclaim some of that joy that you see, like, as you get to the end of the book.

Christian Robertson (02:51:10.644)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:51:14.516)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:51:23.764)
Hmm.

Eli Price (02:51:31.997)
just spread through the whole musical. So I don't know, I kind of want to go watch it again now from a different perspective and I would probably honestly like it more. But yeah, it's... I'm glad that it's gotten its recognition after all the controversy for sure. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:51:33.076)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:51:37.652)
capture.

Christian Robertson (02:51:42.612)
Yeah, right, right.

Christian Robertson (02:51:55.252)
Yeah, yeah, because it is a classic.

Eli Price (02:52:01.021)
Well, we do, we've talked a long time already, but let's try to hit some main, some other main things. Were there any like, like intriguing shots or sequences that like stood out to you, like where you were watching and you were just kind of like, wow, that was an awesome sequence or wow, that was an awesome shot.

Christian Robertson (02:52:25.332)
So two of them come to mind. One was a shot of Mr. Outside, but they shot it through the glass of, I think it was snowing or something like that, but they shot it through that. I think that was cool. That stuck out to me. And they talked about this shot in the interview that I watched, but when they transitioned characters,

Eli Price (02:52:34.077)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:52:39.325)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:52:53.885)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:52:54.548)
from the younger Sealy to the older Sealy. I thought that was a really cool, yeah, that was like very impressive. And the third one, I say two, but there's three, was the shot whenever Sophia punched Squeak. And it kind of like panned around almost like Marvel -esque type. I was like, that's a really good shot. I really liked that.

Eli Price (02:52:57.661)
Incredible, yeah.

Eli Price (02:53:09.981)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (02:53:15.901)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. yeah. I wasn't even thinking about that, but now that you're explaining that, I was like, yeah, that was interesting.

Christian Robertson (02:53:28.596)
Yeah, it almost like was a shot ahead of its time, you know, because I'm thinking 1984. This is this seems like a pretty advanced shot. I really liked it. And some of the the long shots that they did, you know, feeling walking through the house, going to different rooms. I like some of those.

Eli Price (02:53:32.541)
Sure.

Eli Price (02:53:44.445)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah, you do get a lot of like just following Kind of characters, which is good Yeah, the the transitions in this movie are so good. I think There's like really good visual and also like sound transitions that like It's like it's like Spielberg was kind of this is almost like his peak transition scenes movie cuz like

Christian Robertson (02:53:50.388)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:53:58.1)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:54:02.836)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:54:12.596)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:54:14.077)
They're just like all throughout. You have that shadow one that you talked about with Sealy from young, young to older. That's just like really good and iconic. I mean, it's like, like I have the, the movie right here behind me and on the front cover is like the shadow of, of Sealy reading, on the, the Blu -ray I have. So yeah, it's kind of like an iconic, I think it's on some of the posters and you know, that's the shot. yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:54:20.052)
Right.

Christian Robertson (02:54:26.612)
yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:54:32.5)
Right.

Christian Robertson (02:54:41.172)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:54:42.493)
Just really good. And then like even sound transitions, like there's a point later in the movie where it transitions from Sealy reading Nettie's letter and there's like these kind of like tonal drips of water leaking into different like pots. And then it transitions sound wise to the African percussion with the different like tones. And it's like, that was a really good like sound transition.

Christian Robertson (02:54:59.828)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:55:04.052)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:55:10.132)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (02:55:10.205)
kind of taking you from one world to another audio, audio -y, really good. A lot of really good stuff like that. some other ones I, I, I thought were good. the tracking shot through the flowers at the beginning where it's like the flowers are like going by really fast and it's like the camera moving, you know, with them running, I thought is just like really beautiful. The, the see Missy Lee's blues, the crowd, like,

Christian Robertson (02:55:15.22)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:55:36.052)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:55:39.901)
I wrote down in my notes, like the crowd splits. So like she starts to sing the song and the crowd like splits and it creates this like lane of vision from her to Sealy. It's like just really cool. And, and even just like the way whenever they're, they have like Shook singing in the Harpo's juke joint, like the way the camera moves around in there is just like so good and like interesting. And like it's.

Christian Robertson (02:55:47.796)
Christian Robertson (02:55:51.988)
Okay, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:56:01.78)
Mm -hmm, yeah. Right. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:56:08.221)
What I like about it is it gives you it like, what's the best way to say it, it, it kind of like ingrains you in the culture of what's going on at the juke joint, which is, which is that's Spielberg. That's like something Spielberg does really well. So like in that, in that way, like he is like helping you as a white man in like,

Christian Robertson (02:56:20.052)
Yeah, right.

Christian Robertson (02:56:27.252)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (02:56:36.829)
learn about this black culture just because he knows like just technically, how to move the camera to achieve that. and so I think that's really well done. Some other interesting ones, like maybe symbolic is like the church is being bulldozed and it does this, like, this like reverse tracking out of the cross, like in the door.

Christian Robertson (02:56:40.852)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:56:44.596)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (02:56:48.244)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:56:59.86)
yeah.

Eli Price (02:57:05.085)
where you're like seeing the church being bulldozed through the like the cross and the door, which is probably like kind of symbolic of that kind of like rethinking your theology, I guess, that is in the book. Yeah, there's a lot of like really interesting shots like that.

Christian Robertson (02:57:06.164)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:57:10.676)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:57:16.596)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:57:24.372)
I really like that.

that scene when Shug is singing, but the church is singing too, that whole portion, that was very powerful. I didn't know what was going on, where they were going with that, but how it all came together, I thought that was super cool. That was one of my favorite parts of the movie.

Eli Price (02:57:34.717)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:57:43.709)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:57:48.541)
Yeah. It's so interesting because like that part, that part doesn't, it's one of those things where like, I could see how this could work for people, but that part didn't work for me. and I think it's like, it kind of goes with some, we can get into some of my quibbles. I probably had way more than you, you did. but in a lot. Yeah. A lot of it is from just because I had read the book first.

Christian Robertson (02:58:00.436)
Mm -hmm. Okay.

Christian Robertson (02:58:10.844)
I'm a little lenient on movies.

Eli Price (02:58:18.685)
And I almost wonder if I would have liked this more if I hadn't read the book and just like watched it. But like one of the things that like is a problem for me is like the characters and the book are so they're like all all of them are like very, very like fleshed out and in full characters.

Christian Robertson (02:58:19.06)
Okay, yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:58:42.836)
Okay.

Eli Price (02:58:44.381)
And I feel like the movie leaves a lot to be desired as far as that goes. and I think part of it is just like in a book, you know, you have a lot more space to get into a lot of detail, obviously. and what's not helped is that it, it spans like so much time in the lives of these characters. and in the book, it, it works. but in the movie, you like,

Christian Robertson (02:58:49.492)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (02:58:58.868)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:59:06.868)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:59:14.269)
you're having to, like there's almost only so much time you have to like dig into like these characters developing and how they're developing. And so, yeah. And so coming from the book to the movie, I was like, I was just like, these characters aren't as,

Christian Robertson (02:59:21.62)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:59:25.236)
Yeah. So they have to pick and choose who to, you know, focus on and.

Eli Price (02:59:41.917)
nuanced and interesting as they were in the book. And so it's just kind of like, almost like, maybe I should've just watched the movie before I read the book. Cause I'm an, and I might've like thought it was better. but like Celie's development in the movie is kind of like all out of order. Like one of the pivotal things in her development is a conversation she has with Shug about God and how she pictures God as like a white man.

Christian Robertson (02:59:45.46)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Christian Robertson (02:59:54.452)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:00:03.764)
Okay.

Eli Price (03:00:11.741)
and how Shug was like, yeah, I used to also, and I like, I had to like, I had to like tell him to leave whenever he would pop up in my head and it, and they go through and her talking about, so at the end, towards the end of the movie, like Shug is talking about like, God being pissed if you walk by the color purple and don't appreciate it. Well, that happens in that conversation way earlier on in the book.

Christian Robertson (03:00:35.188)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:00:39.389)
And so, and that's like a pivotal conversation for, for Celie to, for Celie, like developing as a character, like she starts to look for God in different ways than she was before. And that's a big part of her, like develop. It's why she starts writing letters to Nettie and not God because she feels like, well, Nettie is someone tangible that I, that I know I can love and feel love.

Christian Robertson (03:00:40.404)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (03:00:49.716)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:00:53.364)
Hmm, okay.

Christian Robertson (03:01:01.012)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:01:08.125)
And so I'm writing to Nettie now instead of God, which is like, which is interesting. Like it's.

Christian Robertson (03:01:09.524)
Right.

Okay.

Eli Price (03:01:16.765)
All that to kind of say like, I just was like, it's her developments out of order from, from what it was in the book. And I feel like it was so much like richer in the book, the way they actually structured it there versus how it's done in the movie. The, the whole color purple thing in the movie feels almost like an afterthought where in the book, it's like, it's like a pivotal moment.

Christian Robertson (03:01:25.428)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:01:42.644)
Yeah, it's funny because I didn't read the book and I thought, you know, I thought it was great, you know, and I was, I was.

Eli Price (03:01:49.757)
Yeah, it's, I'm just like, I messed up. I should have watched the movie first.

Christian Robertson (03:01:54.868)
Yeah, it's tough coming from a book to a movie, you know, because we have to concede that, okay, a movie is not going to have as much time to, you know.

Eli Price (03:01:58.333)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:02:01.821)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I feel similar about Sophia. Sophia is such a rich character in the book and I think Oprah does her so well that like it kind of makes up for a lack of her development and the kind of writing. But yeah, I feel like Sophia could have been even a better character and I think they do better with her in the musical.

Christian Robertson (03:02:16.436)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:02:23.412)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:02:31.06)
Mmm.

Eli Price (03:02:34.173)
be honest. So there's that. One thing I really like, just didn't like is the way they did used Harpo. Harpo is like, he's just kind of used as a goofy foil. And in the book, he's like very nuanced and complicated. And, and I'm just like, why are they making Harpo into like a, he's just kind of like a bumbling.

Christian Robertson (03:02:34.74)
Okay. Okay.

Christian Robertson (03:02:46.452)
Hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:02:51.412)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:02:55.86)
Okay.

Eli Price (03:03:02.973)
in the movie. And I just really didn't like that. and so like, now that I think about it, maybe, you know, the critic, those people critiquing the movie were onto something as far as Harper goes. but yeah. And then like the, another reason the, the shook thing threw me off with her thing with her dad is like, that's not in the book at all.

Christian Robertson (03:03:03.956)
Yeah. Okay.

Christian Robertson (03:03:14.804)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:03:31.572)
Yeah, so I was wondering if I missed something in the movie when that came to the end. I was like, wait a minute, did I miss something?

Eli Price (03:03:37.757)
There was one scene earlier in the movie. That's another reason why it doesn't work. Not just because it's not in the book, because in the movie you have one scene with her and her dad like earlier on and it's like a one or two minute scene. It's like not very long. She like walks into the church and she's trying to talk to her dad and he just walks out. I don't know if you remember that part. And so yeah, see? And then like you get to the end of the movie and she's like,

Christian Robertson (03:03:52.148)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (03:03:59.124)
Okay.

Basically.

Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (03:04:08.061)
supposed to be reconciling with her dad? It's like, we didn't like this is very forced. Like what's

Christian Robertson (03:04:11.444)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:04:16.436)
Yeah, yeah, I was, I had to make some assumptions there. I was like, I must have missed something.

Eli Price (03:04:19.741)
Yeah. Now, like as like, if that were a standalone, like short film, it's like, yeah, you can kind of be expected to like, it's a short film. You've got to kind of like add some pieces on and figure out, but like in the, over the course of a movie, it's like, it's not in the book at all. Like you don't have any interactions with her and her and her preacher. Like she, she mentions it. She mentions like her relationship with him, but there's no reconciliation in the book and there's no like.

Christian Robertson (03:04:36.24)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (03:04:42.388)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (03:04:49.725)
her going and talking with her dad in the book. and so it's like, I don't really understand why they felt like they had to like add this into the movie and that when they did, they didn't really like fully flesh it out. They just kind of like tacked on a scene in the middle and tacked on a scene at the end. Now the way it's shot and the way like it all plays out, it's like really great. it just like felt empty to me personally.

Christian Robertson (03:04:49.94)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (03:04:53.492)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:05:09.204)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:05:14.26)
Right, yeah.

Eli Price (03:05:18.525)
If people connect with it, like, I don't have any problem with that. Like, I'm glad someone did, you know?

Christian Robertson (03:05:19.348)
I think...

Christian Robertson (03:05:24.756)
Yeah, I think it was still powerful and maybe.

Eli Price (03:05:28.221)
I can see that. It just wasn't for me personally, you know.

Christian Robertson (03:05:30.9)
Yeah, yeah, I think that Danny Glover's character, I didn't want him to have that resolve because he was, yeah, yeah, but he did. So because he did, that kind of makes that scene with Suge and her dad. You can.

Eli Price (03:05:41.565)
Yeah, that's fair, because he was so awful.

Christian Robertson (03:05:56.756)
I feel like you can swallow it a little bit more because it seems like everybody is kind of loosened, reconciling, making things right kind of a thing.

Eli Price (03:05:58.141)
Okay.

Eli Price (03:06:02.813)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And so in the book, Mr. and Celie actually like end as friends. So they actually are like, they're fully reconciled in the book. they're, as, as friends, like not like romantically or anything, but like, they're like, Hey, cause Mr. actually in the book, like, kind of like reproposes to her and she's like, no, she's like, no, we're not going to do that. You know, I,

Christian Robertson (03:06:14.356)
okay.

Christian Robertson (03:06:18.58)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (03:06:24.628)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:06:33.076)
really? Yeah.

Eli Price (03:06:36.125)
You know, you're who you are and I'm who I am and we have our past and now like we we can I'm glad like that you because mr. Like actually like Grows and develops in the book a lot more and I think it it goes back to to just Alice Walker like Wondering like how do people change? Like how did my grandfather who used to be like this? He now he's like this?

Christian Robertson (03:06:50.74)
Hmm. Okay.

Christian Robertson (03:07:01.108)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:07:04.029)
And so Mr. is kind of like her like thinking through that. in the, in the movie, he, he does that act of kindness, but they're never really actually reconciled. There's the, there's the scene where like she sees him out of the window of her shop. and, but then he like is gone and there's never like any resolution there. which Alice Walker said she did kind of like that because.

Christian Robertson (03:07:04.948)
Hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:07:10.548)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:07:18.644)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:07:23.572)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:07:29.428)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (03:07:32.541)
One of the things she thinks is interesting is like looking at the beginning of how people kind of come back to who they should be. and she said, that's kind of his mom. That's Mr's moment for that. but yeah, in the book, it's like, they're, they're cool with each other at the end. and I thought it, it's really, it, it all ties into Sealy's development as someone who comes.

Christian Robertson (03:07:42.228)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:07:46.1)
Mmm, yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:07:52.66)
Gotcha.

Eli Price (03:08:02.141)
becomes comfortable with who she is. and kind of like, because of the way she starts to see herself and the way she starts to see, like one of the big things is like, God can be seen in the flowers. God can be seen in how, like, in another person, you know? and that's one of like the big things. And so because of the, her perspective change on all that,

Christian Robertson (03:08:05.78)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:08:24.916)
Mm -hmm, yeah.

Eli Price (03:08:31.485)
It's like she's so self - by the end of the book, she's so self -secure that she can see that Mr. has learned from his past and she's like, okay, yeah, I can love you as a friend again and forgive you. And to me, that's really powerful. To be able to have a legitimate friendship with someone who used to abuse you.

Christian Robertson (03:08:45.3)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:08:49.332)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:09:01.085)
Seems dismissive of the past, but I think in our culture today, that's, and our culture today, that would seem like wrong. Like you shouldn't be friends with someone who's abused you in the past. But the reality is people do, people do change. And I think that's something Alice Walker was exploring. and you can.

Christian Robertson (03:09:04.18)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:09:17.268)
Yeah. Right. Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:09:26.996)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:09:29.597)
And you can, in the movie, you can see the seeds of that. It just doesn't get fully developed, which that's not, I wouldn't say that's a fault of the movie. That's just something that I thought was interesting to point out. I didn't, I didn't like dislike the movie because it didn't fully flesh that out because it only has so much time. And the way Spielberg talked about it was like, well, it wasn't Mr's movie. Like they did, they actually did have a scene where they kind of played that

Christian Robertson (03:09:39.06)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:09:47.412)
Yeah. Right, right.

Christian Robertson (03:09:54.548)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:09:58.141)
forgiveness stuff out that he just didn't end up putting the movie because he decided well, this is the women's movie. It's not I don't I don't need closure for mister, you know The other big like Quibble had was like the tone and it goes back to like stuff with Harpo like there's like all these gags with Harpo that are just like ill -timed and like

Christian Robertson (03:10:00.02)
really? Okay.

Christian Robertson (03:10:06.516)
Yeah, it's not about him. Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:10:25.844)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:10:26.301)
Like the biggest example is in the middle of Sophia's like awesome monologue in the cornfield. It keeps like intercutting these stupid like stuff with Harpo like telling Mr. like, it was the donkey that gave me these. And I'm like, why are we interrupting Sophia's like awesome, like heartfelt powerful monologue with these stupid like gags about Harpo.

Christian Robertson (03:10:35.604)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:10:44.244)
It was the dog food. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:10:56.221)
Like, like that's not in the book at all. Like, why did we, but, but you don't need comic relief intercut with a powerful monologue. Like, and then I don't know, like the Harpo falling through the roof, like over and over was like, I don't know. It's just like, why do we need that in this movie? there's like the brawl that breaks out.

Christian Robertson (03:10:56.596)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:11:01.268)
They needed some comic relief, man.

Sure. Sure. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:11:21.332)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:11:25.341)
with Sophia and Squeak and stuff is like, it's like Looney Tunes. I'm like, what movie are we in now? Yeah. I'm just, and like, not only that, but like Squeak flies off, like, like she's, I don't know, like she's Daffy Duck and like flies off into the, I don't know. It's just stuff like that in the movie feel like the cartoonish stuff and like,

Christian Robertson (03:11:28.5)
yeah.

Because everybody starts fighting. Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:11:43.284)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:11:54.941)
Even like the score at times feels very like cartoonish and weird. And I'm like, I just didn't like that. I just, it just felt, yeah, it, it felt off to me. Like it just, the, the tone felt inconsistent. Like I'm like, am I supposed to think this is funny or am I supposed to like really be like trying to empathize with these characters? It's just like.

Christian Robertson (03:11:55.124)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:12:01.812)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:12:06.1)
It got a little too light for you.

Eli Price (03:12:24.221)
I don't know, it didn't work for me.

Yeah, that's kind of all my quibbles. I will say a lot of the themes of the book still shine through despite my quibbles and whatever flaws people have seen in the movie. I think a lot of the themes of the book still do very much shine through, which says a lot about the film and the source material, I think.

Christian Robertson (03:12:33.588)
I like

Christian Robertson (03:12:40.084)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:12:46.9)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:12:51.156)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:12:58.1)
Yeah, I like Harpo's character because I like, you know, when you have so much heavy stuff, I like some lightness to it, you know, to kind of bring a little bit of...

Eli Price (03:13:04.957)
Sure.

Eli Price (03:13:08.413)
Yeah, I don't I don't mind that, you know I just I just like It just for me personally. It just I didn't like how it was executed in this movie in particular

Christian Robertson (03:13:23.668)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (03:13:25.821)
I think because, and I think it's not because there was like comic relief. I think it's because of the like Looney Tunes, cartoony way it was done. I think that's, I think it's more that than the fact that there were funny moments. Cause like there's funny moments in the book, like some funny stuff happens, like, but it's not like cartoonish. and I think that just kind of is a

Christian Robertson (03:13:37.104)
Yeah, okay.

Christian Robertson (03:13:44.788)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:13:49.332)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:13:54.036)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:13:56.445)
comes with Spielberg maybe. That's how he shoots comic stuff a lot is very cartoony, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this themes, was there any like, were there any like major themes that like when you walked away from the film, you were, you kind of like reflected on and like this was a powerful.

Christian Robertson (03:13:59.7)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (03:14:03.476)
Yeah, you just have to have it in there somewhere.

Eli Price (03:14:24.733)
message, I guess, of this movie.

Christian Robertson (03:14:30.964)
I would say, you know, I said I didn't like how Danny Glover's character had like a act of kindness there or like a somewhat reconciliation. But I would say that showing how people can change, you know? So not only him, but also Seeley, how she became more confident and into her own.

Eli Price (03:14:41.245)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:14:45.085)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (03:14:51.293)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:14:56.733)
Yes.

Yes.

Christian Robertson (03:15:00.372)
You know, so that's a show of like someone changing. But also Sophia being how dominant she was and then being very lowly, you can say, but then kind of getting her fire back. So she kind of went on a different journey, you know? So I liked all of that and all of that spoke to me in a sense of like,

Eli Price (03:15:07.133)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (03:15:14.781)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:15:19.005)
Yes.

Yeah.

Eli Price (03:15:26.621)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:15:30.26)
people change over time. And it's funny because I don't particularly like these, would you say it's a coming of age story? Yeah, you know, I'm not really drawn to those types of movies, but when you see a character start off one way and finish another way, that's very satisfying. And I think, I think for going back to Danny Glover,

Eli Price (03:15:44.669)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (03:15:50.781)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah, it is.

Christian Robertson (03:15:59.636)
his character just starting off so bad, you know, but then seeing his humanity come out to where he's on his own, like laying in the chicken coop and stuff like that, you know, that was powerful.

Eli Price (03:16:03.057)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:16:11.677)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, he's definitely, well, I was reading through my notes. I try to like, when I'm watching movies for this podcast, I like take notes. I don't typically take notes while I'm watching movies, but I do for this because I kind of need to. And when Seely shows up, when young Seely shows up at Mr's house for the first time, I wrote, I literally wrote my notes. Dang, that house is dirty.

Christian Robertson (03:16:32.148)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:16:44.052)
Yeah! Yeah!

Eli Price (03:16:45.565)
And then when, when, you know, she's gone, it's like, it's back to the way it was before. And like, it's like a very like strong visual representation of like, the strength of Celie. Even when, even when she was at her lowest, like that house was in order. and then when she left, it was back in disorder. Like she was the one that was.

Christian Robertson (03:16:52.692)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:17:01.492)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:17:05.46)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:17:14.228)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (03:17:15.453)
That was truly like bringing order. Like Mr. Might've been dominating her, but she was the one bringing order and she had the power all along. I think is what is what that visually shows. and that's what she realizes in the movie, in the, in both the book and the movie, what, what you kind of like, I think to, to flesh out.

Christian Robertson (03:17:22.036)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:17:26.836)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:17:31.732)
And it illustrated that. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:17:42.813)
To go off of what you've been saying and like flesh that out. It's not even like these characters are are Like they are they're changing but the change comes from I think them realizing what was there all along It's not them like becoming a new person it's been real it's then real like Celie had the power that Power and that strength all along but she needed

Christian Robertson (03:18:00.564)
Mmm, yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:18:05.652)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (03:18:12.852)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:18:13.085)
people like Shug and experiences to show her who she really was. And same thing with Mr. Like Mr. has the seeds of that compassionate person in him all along. But he needed Sealy like leaving him and showing him those things like from her growth, like to show him that like.

Christian Robertson (03:18:19.636)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:18:31.156)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:18:39.56)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (03:18:42.621)
Sophia like it's all the same thing. Sophia knows who she is in the beginning She loses that and then gets it back and then realizes it again it's it's it's a lot of like the character growth in this is a lot of Just these characters realizing like this is who I am and stepping into that You know, I think that's so cool. It's so powerful in the book and like even though like yeah, I have flaws I have

Christian Robertson (03:18:50.42)
Mm -hmm, yeah. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:19:03.284)
Right. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:19:11.261)
quibbles with the character development in the movie. Like it still comes through. Like even for me who has the quibbles, it's just such a, a well -done story. yeah. And the acting helps a lot too. I, as we talked about it, some powerhouse acting.

Christian Robertson (03:19:15.38)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, yeah. Right, right.

Christian Robertson (03:19:23.54)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:19:27.604)
Yeah, for sure.

And you wouldn't even think that these are, you know, quote unquote, no mains are beginners because they shine really brightly in this.

Eli Price (03:19:36.893)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I just think one of the things that Glover said, Danny Glover said that I thought was good. He said we all become equal with age and death. And in the story, these characters have lived their lives basically, and they've become a part of memory in a different way by the end. And I thought that was really cool the way he put that, very insightful. But,

Christian Robertson (03:19:56.852)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:20:04.692)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:20:08.701)
But just as a final thought on that note, one of the things that, I think is really well done in the movie is that they, he bookends the film with Celia and Nettie and the flowers. yeah. And yeah, you have to, and both of these characters have like, have changed as we talked about drastically there. They've had different experiences there. They're just, they've changed a lot.

Christian Robertson (03:20:22.484)
Yeah, you have to. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:20:31.252)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (03:20:36.029)
but their love for each other is just like unconditional. And it's not dependent on like the changes they've been through or what they've experienced. it's not dependent on like, Hey, have you grown into the person you're supposed to be or not? Like it's just based on their sisters, like, and they're, they're going to love each other. It doesn't really matter what, what the circumstances are.

Christian Robertson (03:20:41.588)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:20:54.388)
Right, right.

Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:21:02.548)
Right.

Eli Price (03:21:05.565)
And I just thought like those shots of them, like in silhouette at the beginning and at the end and the flowers playing like they're not like playing that hand game. just really illustrate visually that unconditional love, like despite the passage of time, like their sisters, no matter what. And I just thought that was really cool. Like,

Christian Robertson (03:21:10.26)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:21:16.02)
Mm.

Christian Robertson (03:21:23.124)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:21:29.46)
The significance of that hand game was super cool because even when Nettie was being ripped away from her and she was walking, like they started doing it, you know.

Eli Price (03:21:35.357)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, just really good. Yeah. And that's like that silhouette is like Spielberg 101. That dude loves doing those silhouettes. And he, I mean, he knows them really well. So, I mean, it's hard to, it's hard to blame him for that. yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:21:49.14)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:21:57.844)
Hahaha.

Gotta have a signature on it.

Eli Price (03:22:04.925)
That's really like we fit most of the things in the notes. There's a lot of notes on this one. but yeah, what? So at the end of the day, ratings we all know are very subjective and don't really mean anything, but I always like to talk about ratings. What, what would you rate this? Like, let's say out of 10 out of 10, the color purple is what?

Christian Robertson (03:22:20.372)
Hmm. Hmm. Mm -hmm. yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:22:32.692)
I would say an eight. Yeah, eight.

Eli Price (03:22:32.861)
Eight. Cool. Yeah. Totally fair. I'm like, I'm like on the fence between a six and a seven. Like that's kind of where I am. so like, I don't know if you've ever used letterboxed. it's like a, it's kind of like a film watching social media and you can kind of keep a, a journal, like a diary of like the movies you watch and like, and like, yeah, you, you can log them and like, right.

Christian Robertson (03:22:37.876)
holiday.

Christian Robertson (03:22:41.94)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (03:22:57.972)
no, I haven't heard it. Sounds cool.

Eli Price (03:23:01.949)
short or long reviews or whatever. You can make lists and rank things. So it's like, I love it. I use it all the time. So they do five star ratings. And you can do half stars too. So it's basically a 10 out of 10, but it's just with five, you can do halves. But I have this thing where,

Christian Robertson (03:23:05.268)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:23:08.916)
Interesting.

Christian Robertson (03:23:20.564)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (03:23:24.148)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:23:30.621)
If a movie is a, for me, a three and a half star, which is like seven out of 10 or up, I usually hit the little heart, the little like, because I'm like, I like this. It's seven out of 10 or above. I like it. if a movie is like two and a half stars or five out of 10, like it really doesn't. There's only a few movies like the, like the star Wars prequels that are like, I'm like, this is a bad movie, but I like it. Like.

Christian Robertson (03:23:38.868)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:23:42.675)
Okay, okay, okay.

Eli Price (03:24:01.213)
you know, I grew up with it. I like it. so there's very, very like, there's only like maybe like two or three that are like that, but, but a six or a three star, I'm like, this is, those are the ones where I'm on the fence where it might get the heart or it might not. and this is definitely one with a, I think this is one with a heart. cause I do like it. I do appreciate it. And I appreciate how like, even despite like,

Christian Robertson (03:24:01.364)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:24:10.292)
Okay.

Christian Robertson (03:24:18.836)
Hmm, interesting.

Christian Robertson (03:24:24.02)
Okay.

Eli Price (03:24:29.245)
some of the like filmmaking flaws that I see like in the writing of it. It's still like the points still like shine through and I appreciate that. And it is like, I think still like a beautiful movie. Even, you know, even despite some of the things I mentioned, but yeah. So.

Christian Robertson (03:24:35.54)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Robertson (03:24:39.604)
Yeah.

Christian Robertson (03:24:51.444)
It's nice not to get a totally different movie than the book to where you don't even know.

Eli Price (03:24:53.789)
Yeah. I think if I would have, I think if I would have watched this without seeing the book, it would have been a seven or eight, I think for me, but it's just, it was just like, I hit my mic. It was just like, man. Like I'm hitting my mic. Like Oprah hit Steven Spielberg space shuttle model. Man, I should have, yeah. It's just one of those where it's like, man, that, that book ruined the movie for me. Right.

Christian Robertson (03:25:02.164)
Okay, okay. Yeah, tough.

Christian Robertson (03:25:14.196)
Hahaha!

Christian Robertson (03:25:23.124)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (03:25:23.901)
Garnbuck. man. But yeah, I think that's, I think that's all we have on the color purple. We've, we've gone along. I think this might be the longest episode of the series so far. So making history for the Steven Spielberg series, with, with Christian Robertson here. so yeah, that's the color purple. There's, there was a lot more we could have talked about, but I think we've talked for long enough for this episode.

Christian Robertson (03:25:36.756)
Hey, making history.

Eli Price (03:25:51.965)
So we're going to go ahead and end our discussion on the color purple. next week, I kind of teased, earlier that Christian is going to be joining us again for a little interview on his experience in acting. So look forward to that. And then after that, we'll be continuing the Spielberg series with, his movie empire of the sun. so I'm excited to, I haven't seen that yet. so I'm excited. Another blind spot that I'm getting to fill in.

yeah, there is, and I've been listening to it. So, there's a, I don't, I'm not going to finish the book before I have to watch it. So I'll finish the book after I, watch the movie. So maybe that'll help. Yeah. but Christian, do you want to, plug anywhere where people can follow you or DM you if they want you to act in their movie?

Christian Robertson (03:26:23.412)
Don't read the book if there is one.

Ha ha.

Christian Robertson (03:26:40.404)
Good, good.

Christian Robertson (03:26:50.772)
Yeah, like I said, my DMs are always open. You can follow me on Instagram, Christian underscore jrobertson. I'm also on Twitter at Christian Robb 25.

Eli Price (03:26:53.181)
Ha ha.

Eli Price (03:27:01.405)
Cool. Yeah. And I'll make sure to link those in the episode description. So you can just go down there and click instead of having to like remember those. so yeah, I'll, I'll make sure to do that for you. but yeah, that's all we have for this week. I have been Eli Price for Christian Robertson. You have been listening to the Establishing Shot. We'll see you next time.