Jordan Peele on making a hit comedy-horror movie out of America’s racial tensions – The Guardian

Jordan Peele: There are social rules every black person understands. Photograph: Rich Fury/Invision/AP

In America, and among a devoted online audience, Jordan Peele is known as one half of a sketch show double act called Key & Peele. It airs on Comedy Central and has gained a reputation for the pairs spot-on impersonations and forensic attention to comic detail. A couple of years ago in a long glowing profile in the New Yorker, Zadie Smith noted: Beyond Key & Peele, its hard to imagine Peele in any vehicle not constructed around a comic character of his own devising.

She certainly didnt imagine him as a much-lauded writer and director of this years most celebrated horror film. But thats exactly what Peele has become with the box office hit Get Out. Seven days ago, the film took $33m on its opening weekend in America, gained a highly unusual 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and is trailing widespread critical acclaim in its noisy wake.

A fairly consistent part of my experience is worrying about how Im going to be perceived in the wrong neighbourhood

Drawing on a horror tradition that owes a great deal to the novelist Ira Levin in particular the cinematic adaptations Rosemarys Baby and The Stepford Wives Get Out looks at the experience of a young black man, played by the British actor Daniel Kaluuya, when he is introduced to his white girlfriends parents. Its by turns tense, funny and terrifying. And in an era of Donald Trump and Black Lives Matter, it taps into Americas racial tensions in the most unsettling and yet compelling fashion.

But Peele, an affable and highly articulate proponent of his work, had the idea for the film back when Trump was just a less confrontational Alan Sugar, and Black Lives Matter was yet to be founded. The genesis for the film was when Obama was elected and there was this sentiment that we can stop talking about race now because weve just solved the problem, he tells me on the phone from Los Angeles. We are now living in a system where racism is involved with policy. Weve left the era where people were trying to pretend that race doesnt exist.

Peele himself is biracial. He was brought up by his white mother in New York City, and had hardly any contact with his black father, who died 18 years ago. He told Zadie Smith that he thought race was an absurdity and it was crazy to define children in terms of their racial identity.

But long before that interview he was already thinking about the hidden drama of racial identity and how it might be employed in a horror format.

Much of the sly appeal of Get Out rests on the fact that the racism that Chris (Kaluuya) encounters is not initially overt. The setting is the white upper-middle-class liberal elite, the kind of people who pride themselves on their post-racial sensibilities.

At first Chris cant be sure whether the odd notes of discomfort he feels are in his own paranoid head or foreshadow something more sinister. Theres an ingratiating realism to the set-up, so that the audience shares in the uncertainty, and easily identifies with an attractive young couple going through the meeting-the-parents ritual which, just as in the Sidney Poitier classic Guess Whos Coming to Dinner, carries an extra layer of social unease.

In an early establishing scene a black man is seen walking through the white suburbs at night. Its a wonderfully disturbing inversion of the white guy in the black ghetto trope. The wide streets with their neat hedges and large houses seem to seethe with hidden menace. Peele explains why he wanted this opening.

I felt it was important first and foremost to get the entire audience on board with the inherent fears that a black man has.

Is that his own experience of the suburbs? Ive got to tell you, a fairly consistent part of my experience is worrying about how Im going to be perceived in the wrong neighbourhood. Im trying to get through it as quickly as possible. Its one of the pieces of the African American experience that people dont know is always there. When youre out of place, or feel out of place, you feel there is danger there. With the police as well. I think the majority of police are really good people and really good at their jobs but that doesnt change the fact that with any interaction I have with them, Im viewed as a potential threat.

Its a revealing picture of a perception that all too often goes unrecorded. One of the realities that Get Out implicitly references is the scenario in which Trayvon Martin , a 17-year-old unarmed African American student, was shot dead five years ago in a Florida suburb while walking home. His mixed-race Hispanic killer, a neighbourhood watch coordinator, walked free on the grounds of self-defence.

There was that, says Peele, then, lightening the tone and Im also a huge fan of Halloween, so there was some precedent for how scary suburbs can be in film.

Peele is something of a horror genre fanatic. Since he was a child he has watched and studied horror films, working out exactly what makes them scary and why. At 13, he says, he knew wanted to be a horror film director.

He attended the liberal arts college Sarah Lawrence in New York, with the intention of studying puppeteering. Instead he formed a comedy partnership with his student roommate, Rebecca Drysdale (a writer on Key & Peele), and dropped out to get into comedy. The pair moved to Chicago and performed sketches at the citys ImprovOlympic theatre. Later he left to join an improv troupe and met Keegan-Michael Key when they performed on consecutive nights at Chicagos Second City theatre. It was comedy love at first sight.

From there Peele landed on Foxs Mad TV, a loud satirical sketch show, on which he impersonated black celebrities such as Bill Cosby and Snoop Dogg. He stayed there for five years and, just before he left, was approached by Saturday Night Live, to be the impersonator of Barack Obama. But he was still under contract to Mad TV, so he had to turn down his dream.

Except it wasnt his ultimate dream, the one hed been nurturing since he was a young teenager. That one seemed to be fading too. When the comedy acting took over I kind of believed my shot at becoming a director was going away. I believe part of that was self-protection because I adored the form so much I felt I couldnt possibly make a movie as good as my favourite movies.

Leaving Mad TV, he hooked up with Key and they put together their own show. In one sense, he was further than ever from his directing ambitions. But the psychological discipline of comedy, Peele realised, had a lot in common with horror.

The reason they work, why they get primal, audible reactions from us is because they allow us to purge our own fears and discomforts in a safe environment. Its like therapy. You deal with deep issues that are uncomfortable with the hope that there is a release.

For many years black films were marginalised as exploitation or art house movies. As recently as last year at the Oscars there was embarrassment at the absence of black nominees. Last weeks best picture Oscar award for Moonlight seemed to mark a new era in recognition of black films and film-makers after all, not a single white face appears in that film.

Peele agrees that things are moving forwards, but he sees Moonlight as more significant as a film about a gay relationship than about black people, per se. For him the real turning point came with Straight Outta Compton in 2015, because it was a worldwide hit and, as he says, the industry could no longer hide behind the myth that black films dont work overseas.

In any case, the cultural arbiter that is Hollywood has decided that black films are commercially viable. But what about black films in which killing white people is gloriously cathartic? Did Peele think that Hollywood was ready for that?

I certainly thought those elements were going to prevent it from being produced, he says.

And early on, several people he showed his script to laughed it off as too bold ever to see the flickering light of a cinema. Peele knew he was on the right track, however, because he had an example of how it had worked before.

One reason that The Stepford Wives was a perfect template for me, he says, is because that movie was about gender and this movie is about race. I knew that when I watch that movie I dont come out of it feeling persecuted as a man. I come out feeling like I relate to the main character. I understand Katharine Rosss mental state through experiencing all thats gone before.

Its a characteristically thoughtful and informed response, but I suspect some of the anxiety his script caused was less to do with whether or not a white audience would identify with it, and more about the prospect of a black audience over-identifying.

Again I thought that concern was the type of thing that would prevent it getting made, he says. But the reason this movie is working and resonating with the black audiences is that it gives its audience credit. It doesnt presume that people are going to watch this film and go out and attack people. It presumes that people are going to be engaged intellectually and thematically. I knew it would do more to allow us to face our fears and address our horror than it would be a divisive movie.

Weve become used to seeing British actors take up leading roles in the US, particularly on TV. But it was a surprise at first, given the specificity of the character in this film, to see Daniel Kaluuya get the part. His CV Skins, Tealeaf, Black Mirror is not the kind youd expect to scream out to American producers.

I didnt want to go with a British actor, Peele admits, because this movie was so much about representation of the African American experience. Early on, Daniel and I had a Skype session where we talked about this and I was made to understand how universal this issue is.

He doesnt say explicitly what was said, but its known that three years ago Kaluuya sued the Metropolitan police for assault and false imprisonment, after an incident in which he was wrongly suspected of drug dealing.

Once Id wrapped my head around how universal these themes were, says Peele, it became easy for me to pick Daniel, because at the end of the day, he was the best person for the role. He did the audition and it was a slam dunk.

Kaluuya is indeed excellent in the part. Hes reticent, slightly sceptical but always willing to smother his doubts. Its an intelligent and beguiling performance and, as so often nowadays, you wouldnt guess for a second that he wasnt an American.

Black and white romantic relationships are still relatively rare on the American film screen. Without giving the plot away, theres something extra-loaded about the one between Kaluuya, as Chris, and Rose, played by Allison Williams of Girls fame.

She is cool, urban and acutely aware of racism. Peele himself is married to a white woman, fellow comedian Chelsea Peretti they are expecting their first child. He has described her family as intelligent, funny, empathetic, and he didnt experience any of the tension he portrays in the film when he first met them.

In Get Out, Roses parents, including the reliably fine Catherine Keener, are a little less attuned to the subtleties of racial discourse. For a start they have black servants. Its the first of many discordant moments when Chris meets the hired help.

Yes, says Peele, its a very tricky thing to grapple with because of course there are dark connotations of a black servant to white people. At the same time you have to take into account that its not necessarily socially enlightened to judge other peoples jobs and work. Whos to say that you cant be a black servant of a white family and have a noble life?

Its this kind of social complexity that the film plays on, as Chris struggles to overcome his own prejudices and paranoia. A particularly challenging situation arises when his in-laws introduce him to a black man at a party who seems jarringly white, not least by meeting Chriss fist bump with an old-fashioned handshake. One of the questions the scene implicitly raises is whether there are or should be defined categories of whiteness and blackness. Perhaps society makes those distinctions, but do we as individuals have to follow? Peele, for example, has said he had a childhood anxiety about his voice, that it was too white.

I think there are elements of the black experience that are unique to minorities or people who have felt like the outsider, he says. There are social rules every black person understands. [In white company] we give a little nod and a bro hug, and you dont rat each other out. These things are real. The part of the black experience that has us perceiving or looking for racism where other people probably dont is also real. Its what the characters in this movie use to unravel the mystery.

There is another scene in the film in which various stereotypes about black men are rehashed by a group of clueless white guests. And one golfer feels compelled to inform Chris that he has met Tiger Woods.

Its a good joke on white presumptions, but it also confirms that the white people are seeing Chris as not just another guest but a black man. The racism lies in the fact that they cant get past his race. How is it possible to escape that cycle?

Part of the desire to live in a post-racial world includes the desire not to have to talk about racism, which includes a false perception that if you are talking about race, then youre perpetuating the notion of race. I reject that. Because here we are living in this country where we had a black president and the whole idea was lets not talk about race any more. If youve seen Ava DuVernays The 13th, its a wonderful documentary that shows how slavery has simply transformed into the prison-industrial complex. The disproportionate number of black men thrown into a dark room for the rest of their lives is one of the central themes of what my movie is an allegory for.

Since hes mentioned Obama several times, I ask him what he thinks of Obamas impact on the US and as a president.

Well he changed the country in an enormous way. Just look at the fact that young black people had a new level that we felt we could aspire to. I think before Obama there was a glass ceiling. Thats a big change. As a president, I think he was the best. I felt like I could trust his judgment and hed take a measured empathetic approach, I dont see there ever being another Barack Obama.

He also attributes to the Obama effect the way that black stories are now breaking through in Hollywood. Having struggled to make an impact for many years, black film-makers are finally being heard and seen. And in Get Out Jordan Peele can be heard very loudly and seen, like all the best auteurs, very clearly.

Get Out opens in the UK on 17 March

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Jordan Peele on making a hit comedy-horror movie out of America's racial tensions - The Guardian

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero