‘Get Out’: How Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton Inspired the Year’s Best Horror Movie – Daily Beast

Jordan Peele opens up about his scary-brilliant directorial debut, his SNL crossroads, and Donald Trumps penchant for gaslighting.

It was a screening I wont soon forget.

Rumors had been swirling through the thin mountain air: Get Out, a racial horror movie by first-time filmmaker Jordan Peele, would be the surprise midnight screening of this years Sundance Film Festival. In recent years, the surprise midnightersEddie the Eagle, Jupiter Ascending, etc.were head-scratchers, but this would be different. Its trailer debut elicited shock and awe, and its premise, about a young black man (Daniel Kaluuya) who becomes increasingly aware that all is, in the immortal words of Marsellus Wallace, pretty damn far from OK when his white girlfriend (Allison Williams) takes him to visit her liberal parents for the weekend, made for the perfect respite from a torrent of sobering indies.

And boy, did it deliver. As Kaluuyas Chris delves deeper and deeper into the mystery of this segregated suburbia, navigating spooky servants, discomfiting soirees, and hypnosis, the film broadens beyond mere thrills into something extraordinary. When the lights went up, the audience, including my seatmate Patton Oswalt, erupted in applause. What a deliciously satisfyingand surprisingchange of pace from one of the comedy gurus behind Key & Peele.

The Daily Beast spoke to Peele about his soon-to-be hit and the chaotic climate its being released into.

You opened the Q&A portion of the Sundance premiere by sharing that the idea for this came to you during the 2008 presidential primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. What about that matchup inspired Get Out?

I was at a point where I was asking myself, What is the real horror that I can discuss with my horror movie? I feel like all classic horror movies have a very true horror behind them, and the thought of doing a racial horror movie came up but I really doubted whether or not it was possible. When Hillary and Obama were competing for the Democratic nomination, there were a lot of questions raised about gender civil rights and racial civil rights, and almost a pitting against one another of the two different causes. I began to look at those two issues as being parallel issues, and two of my favorite movies are Rosemarys Baby and The Stepford Wives. The way that those movies deal with gender and are ultimately about men making decisions for womens bodiesand address justified fears from the womens lib movementwas a signal to me that you can also do a movie about race using the same model.

Its interesting how film projects tend to be ahead of the zeitgeist. Though youve been developing this movie for almost nine years, it does seem more relevant now than it was even, say, a year ago.

To the issue of relevance, I cant be sure. The movie was meant to come out at a time when we were in this post-racial Americathis post-racial lie, as I call it, right? The whole idea was youre not supposed to talk about race, and weve got a black president so race didnt exist anymore, right? This movie was meant to point out how many of us know were not done with race. Cut to now, and over the past couple of years, the way we talk about race has evolved into a somewhat more tense but at least present conversation. I dont know that the movie is more relevant, but I do think that the world right now is more ready for it.

Your star Bradley Whitford said Get Out was a commentary on unconscious, white liberal racism. It reminded me of Guess Whos Coming to Dinner? in that respectthe idea that rich white liberals are not as liberal as they think they are.

I think that movie succeeds on many levels. One of them is that it points out the juxtaposition of the white liberal parents who proclaim that theyre open-minded. The first little twist to that I pull was, when he first arrives to the parents home in Get Out, they dont flinch. You can see in Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburns faces, when they first see [Sidney Poitier], everything. Here, theres zero conscious acknowledgment of anything being wrong, and there was something about that, to me, that felt creepy and unnatural. As a lot of people know, were not quite at that point where, if someone whos never brought home somebody of a difference race to their house doesnt give a forewarning, I think there are few households where there wouldnt be a little hiccup of some sort, or a little readjustment.

Jordan Peele, the director of 'Get Out.'

Psychology plays a very interesting role in Get Out, primarily in the way Catherine Keeners character manipulates Daniels character and drags him deeper and deeper into the abyss.

Well, I wanted to make the character of Chris honor many commonalities of the black experience. Call them stereotypes or call them trends, but one observation Ive made about African-American culture is there are fears and a slowness to embrace the idea of therapy. Black people, we tend to find answers in religion, and I dont thinkas a wholeweve been encouraged to embrace the idea of therapy. Some of that is with good reason, though. The fear of somebody fucking around in your head is frightening. Its a huge generalization, but I felt that the African-American audience who I want to relate to the protagonist hereI want everyone to relate to the protagonist, but I felt like a black horror audience would really respond to the fear of someone meddling in your psyche.

The psychological manipulation aspect was one element of the film that appears timelier today than it did a year or two ago with the way our current president has attempted to meddle with the psyche of the American public. He tends to play strange little mind games when it comes to the things that he does, e.g. trying to convince people that he didnt do or say things that he clearly did in order to have their reality conform to his.

Yeah. Real textbook manipulations. These are manipulations that weve seen work before to very disastrous consequencesthe manipulation of fear, the gaslighting, and, quite frankly, the bold-faced lying. At the center of this movie is the fear that someone is pulling the wool over your eyes, and the question is: How deep does the pit go? How bad is it? But youre absolutely right with the projection. I noticed that, too. Sometimes, when Trump brings something up out of thin air, it really makes me question him. There was one point where, out of nowhere, he said, I want to take a drug test with Hillary. Ill pass a drug test, she wont. Literally no one was ever talking about this, and it was such a bizarre thing. I know he supposedly doesnt do anything, but that raised the question in my head of: Does this guy do drugs? Why would he even talk about this?

That made me raise an eyebrow as well. You know, a big turning point in your career was your Saturday Night Live audition. The show was apparently looking to cast a new Obama, and auditioned a bunch of comedians to play him?

It was during the primaries, while he was running, and I believe they wanted someone to play Obama. It had a profound effect on me. It was a situation where, first of all, I was very grateful to Lorne [Michaels] for extending the invite. He was very generous, and is a hero of mine, so it was sad that I couldnt get out of the contract I was in [with MADtv]. But the overall feeling was that all of a sudden the momentum in my career had stopped. MADtv was over, my prospects of going back to New York and doing my dream show was over. I had some anger and the ambition to really figure out my place in the world, so I began working on writing several projectsall of them horror, and all of them in the genre I call social-thriller, like Get Out. The original purpose was just to become a better writer and write the movie that would be one of my favorite movies that hadnt been made. So Get Out is the first of this handful of social-thrillers that matured into what it is now.

Speaking of SNL, Im curious how you think the show is doing as far as satirizing the current administration goes, and what the role of satire should be when it comes to those in power?

Enormous. I think you cant undersell it. SNL is doing amazing work right nowas good as they ever haveand I think that horror and comedy are similar in that they create a visceral response, an entertainment-based response, and that is the way to affect real change and affect the world. You need to lead with the gut, the entertainment, the fun, the story, and if youre successful in that, people are left to think about why they had such a visceral reaction to it. Dont tell people to think, tell people to feel and let them think for themselves.

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'Get Out': How Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton Inspired the Year's Best Horror Movie - Daily Beast