February 2008 | blackfilm.com | features | BE KIND REWINDAn Interview with Danny Glover

BE KIND REWIND
An Interview with Danny Glover
By Wilson Morales

February 18, 2008

Having played so may roles over the years, you wonder if there’s anything left for him to play, but lately Danny Glover is back on the big screen doing lead and supporting roles. Fresh from playing the lead in ‘Honeydripper’, comes his next film where Glover plays the owner of a videostore whose stock gets erased while he's on a business trip. In ‘Be Kind Rewind’, his clerks (Mos Def and Jack Black) remake all the tapes their own way.

In speaking with blackfilm.com, Glover goes the spoofing of films and working with Jack Black.

With ‘Honeydripper’, and now ‘Be Kind Rewind’, you seem to be in the spotlight these.

Danny Glover: You know, it’ really been great. When people go out and see the film, it’s fascinating for me. It’s not the big releases like ‘Dreamgirls’ and ‘Shooter’, but it’s certainly the kind of work that I see myself doing.

If there was a film you could go back and rewind, which would it be?

DG: ‘The Seven Samurai’

Were there any films that were spoofed that didn’t make the cut? How about ‘Lethal Weapon’?

DG: ‘Lethal Weapon’ wasn’t even considered, which I am happy about. Someone even mentioned that we should spoofed ‘Predator’. This film is really about imagination and collective imagination and I think back to what (Albert) said, ‘Imagination is more important that knowledge’ and when we talk about how power controls you and your ideas, you have your imagination to control your ideas. The idea of this community organizing around the film within the film and one of the most imaginary musicians, Fats Waller, and he was a child prodigy. He was an incredible musician and virtuoso. This story also opens up the topic of gentrification; which is happening all over the country. Small towns are being industrialized.

‘Roger and Me’ is a classic example of this.

DG: Yep. There’s a wonderful chapter in Jeremy Rifkin’s The End of Work, where he talks about black labor and he talks about how in the 50s, job were outsourced from the jobs that could be by cheap labor; and you can definitely tie in the revolt that happened in 1967 in Detroit to previous years before that. Jobs left the community and that itself almost became non-existent. Men and women who had jobs or the opportunity to get jobs, good paying jobs, were left with nothing.

As you family rewinds your life, what images do you want them to remember?

DG: I think more than anything else, that they are valued and loved. I want them to know that their ideas have value and that they are important. Like I used to say about dreams, ‘Here’s a dream you’ve been waiting for’.

How was working with Jack Black? Is he as wild and crazy as the media portrays him?

DG: You ought to see him as a father. He’s doting. It’s just beautiful to watch him as a father. I can only tell you about working with him. I don’t read the stuff that’s written about him, but in working with him, it’s a joy. It’s wonderful when you watch someone work, and with each particular take, they always bring something new to it. It revitalizes you in some way.

BE KIND REWIND opens on February 22, 2008