[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

"On Story" is also brought to you in part by the Bogle Family Vineyards, six generation farmers and third generation winemakers based in Clarksburg, California.

Makers of sustainably grown wines that are a reflection of the their family values since 1968.

[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story," a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators and filmmakers.

This week on "On Story," screenwriter/producer, Clint Bentley, and producer, Monique Walton, join us to discuss the making of the independent prison drama feature, "Sing Sing."

- We knew there was a tone we were trying to hit and knew there was something we were trying to do that we just couldn't figure out how to do it.

And it was an interesting process.

For those of us who are writers, we know that sometimes you have a feeling on something, and you know what something should be like, and then you write it down on page.

You even tell somebody about it and they're like, "Oh yeah, that sounds amazing."

And then you write a script, and you send it over, and they go, "This is terrible.

This is not what you said at all."

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] [Narrator] They explain their process developing a script inspired by a real life Rehabilitation Through The Arts program, and their mission to depict an authentic incarcerated experience.

[typewriter ding] - Congratulations on making such a powerful, important, and impactful film.

- Thank you.

- What's the origin story for the film?

- Greg and I had made a film called "Transpecos," and Greg was looking for what his next film as a director would be.

And he stumbled...

He was helping a friend...

He was producing a short documentary, and it was set inside of a maximum security prison.

And they were just on the way to do the interview deeper inside the prison.

He just walked by a cell where there was a young man raising a rescue dog.

And in that moment, it was just that kind of like light went off of a different vision of prison than all the stereotypes that we have in media.

And he just went back to his hotel and found this organization, Rehabilitation Through the Arts, found a article about them that was in Esquire that was about a play that they did in 2005, about a time traveling musical comedy, called "Breaking the Mummy's Code," which became the centerpiece of our film, of these men trying to mount this play that's just insane, as crazy as it sounds.

And then, it was just like... Then, that was six years from that time until we finally got to be on set and make the film together.

But a big part of it was we met the real men who were in the program, who had been through the program and were now out.

We met the real teacher who had helped them through...

Helped them mount this play.

Greg and I went inside into a maximum security prison and taught as volunteer teachers to get to try and understand it better.

We brought Monique on into the process to help us craft the script and figure all out.

- I don't mean to step on anybody toes in here or nothing, or disrespect the group, but do all the plays have to be so serious?

- Yo, what do you mean by "serious" though?

- I mean, like every day, we dealing with trauma, drama, every day we got tragedy.

I mean, I think population just might appreciate a comedy.

- How do you guys feel about that?

- That makes sense.

[background chatter] - You got a comedy?

- I ain't got a co...

I don't write comedies.

I got satires.

- You never did it before.

- What kind of comedy would you propose?

I mean, would it be a broad comedy or something more low key, or-- - I don't know, I'm just talking about making people laugh.

- How did that impact the approach to the storytelling and writing?

- We knew there was a tone we were trying to hit, and knew there was something we were trying to do, and that Greg wanted to pursue as a director on it, that we just couldn't figure out how to do it.

And it was an interesting process.

For those of us who are writers, we know that sometimes you have a feeling on something and you know what something should be like, and then you write it down on page, and you even tell somebody about it, and they're like, "Oh yeah, that sounds amazing."

And then you write a script and you send it over, and they go, "This is terrible.

"This is not what you said at all."

One, it was just like an embarrassment of riches to all the stories that we would be told and the things that they were sharing, and the experiences that we were having.

It was too much to fit into one script.

But then, also, there was an aspect of, like, we were not fully able to capture that feeling that we'd had, and we were really trying to blend...

Both in the script and what Greg wanted to do, directing it, trying to blend this real world documentary-style approach and using real people from the program, non-professional actors, in the project, but then also have real actors who are professional actors, like Colman Domingo and Paul Raci in there.

And so, part of that was making our film before this, called "Jockey," where we blended those aspects well.

- Monique, you came on board before there was a script.

So what was your relationship to helping shape some of the ideas that eventually made it into the final draft?

- There was a treatment, there was an arc, and there was the six years of work that y'all had done.

And I think coming from the background that I do, which is also like partially from documentary and using documentary to inform how we approach fiction filmmaking, I understood what that wor... How important and how valuable that work was, those six years were.

Especially when you're doing something where you're kind of... You have the responsibility to tell this story that is really sacred to all the people who participate in the program, and have transformed...

Were transformed by the program.

So once we knew that, "Okay, the majority of this cast is gonna be from this community," that was going to help inform what some of these scenes were.

So it was like the scene...

The actual architecture of the script where the narrative arc, which was like the...

The core was the friendship between Divine Eye and Divine G. But then, there were these scenes that were more fluid because they were more improvisational, like "imagine a perfect place" and things like that.

And that was really informed by the people that we had cast and some of the stories that they had shared during the casting process.

- I'd like you to go to your most perfect spot, perfect moment.

[soft organ music] Do you hear anything?

Are there any sounds?

- So in those conversations with the cast, as you're writing and you're rewriting, was that going all the way up until production and through production?

What was that timeline like as you were bringing them in and out of the script?

- We did a lot of it along the way in a really non-traditional approach to this script.

Partially, because we brought on Colman Domingo with about as much as Monique joined with, which was we had this one page treatment of "Here's the bare bones outline of the story.

It's about this friendship."

And we sent him the article.

We didn't have... We had thrown out the other drafts of the script we'd written.

I think we'd done three page one rewrites by then and we threw them out.

So we're like, "Here's... We're gonna start fresh on the script.

We wanna do this in concert with you.

We don't have any money, but do you wanna make the movie?"

And he was like, "Yeah, I think I do."

It was influenced by the fact that we had no time to write a script.

We were deciding to make a movie before we had a script ready, but... And so, what we started doing was we would get together with Colman and Clarence Maclin, who's Divine Eye, plays a version of himself in the film.

And we would write a bunch of scenes... And we were working with John Whitfield, the real Divine G, on whom the story's based.

And we would write four or five scenes, and then we'd get together on Zoom with Colman and Clarence, and they would pop up, and then we would just share the scenes live, and they would do cold reads of it.

And in that time, you can process.

As you're working on it, you can talk about that and workshop it.

And then, the other thing that happened was we would hit kind of roadblocks where, like, we...

There's a scene that's really powerful in the film, where Divine G is in a parole hearing.

And he's in his parole hearing, this thing's been working up to this in the movie, and it's a really indelible moment from the trailer also.

And we were like, "We don't know what a parole hearing... "What happens in a parole hearing?

"How dry is it?

"How businesslike is it?

"How personal is it?"

We just didn't know.

So we were looking up all this research and trying to find out what's it like, and then Greg talked to Divine G and was like, "Hey, man, can you tell me anything about these hearings and what they're like?"

And he told us some stuff.

And then, Divine G was like, "I can just give you my transcript of mine."

- Just something a bit more, I don't know, wonderful because it helps people get more in touch with their feelings, and able to process, and actually move through and truly get some rehabilitation.

- So are you acting at all during this interview?

- And it's this moment where this parole officer's asking him all these questions about the acting program, and he's talking about how much it means him, and then she says, "Are you acting in this moment?"

And it just is heartbreaking.

You know it's over for him in that moment.

And that was in... That was just by reading the transcripts.

- It sounds like that was, through and through, behind the scenes all the way up and up until today that you trusted the process.

- Trust the process.

Especially with filmmaking, right?

You just don't know, it's so unpredictable, and that's part of the fun of it.

But it's also part of what makes it scary and it makes you feel like you're not getting anywhere.

We finally had a script right towards the very end, right before we started shooting, and you can tell a little bit more about how that script changed right before we started shooting.

And we had a cast that was mixed with... That was a mix of professional actors who were veterans in the industry, and then also people who had only acted in theater and had never acted in film.

And so... And then, we were filming in real...

In a real prison.

It was an opera...

It was no longer operational, but it was a real prison that they... That most of our cast had been through actually, when they were incarcerated.

And so, there were a lot of things that were unknowns, and that we had to actually figure out and embrace, and really tell ourselves, "You have to trust the process and also just embrace whatever's happening in real time."

And a lot of our cast have different ways that it was hard for them emotionally to be in that space.

But there was the actual reunion community of their cast members, and the support that they gave each other.

And I think also the support that our whole entire crew created around those... That time.

But it was tough, I would say.

It was hard on everyone, being there.

- I mean, and then you can feel that.

You can feel that beauty in the film.

And I think that's what makes it also so human, is you have such a close relationship with everybody in the cast and the whole filmmaking team, and that everybody's just on the same level too.

And I think also that goes back to some of the practices that y'all instituted when you first made "Jockey," when you worked with Pay Equity as you developed the film.

Would love to hear more about the structure of that and how you implemented that through the filmmaking.

- I thought it was the best way to tell the story because it was a... Because we were talking about we're making this film a community, we want to invite the community in, we want the people who have lived this to bring this experience to the screen.

And so, they are also bringing more of themselves than... Than you might typically do.

And personally... And also, it's a very vulnerable space to be in, to play a version of yourself from that time.

And so, it felt like, "Yeah, this is the right way to try to make this film."

And I think we're in a moment, and continuing to be in a moment, where we're looking for new ways to survive as filmmakers and artists and tell our stories, and tell it in a way that's sustainable where we can actually continue to make pro... To make films.

And a lot of crew members really appreciated it because it was really clear, it was really transparent.

It was transparent that everyone was doing it, including Colman.

And this idea that you could actually own a stake in the movie, so if the movie makes money, you make money, was really compelling to a lot of people.

[typewriter ding] - I would love to hear a little bit about the decision to give it this documentary sensibility.

- From the writing perspective and putting the thing together, that was something that was always important to Greg and I, of like bringing that...

Bringing those aspects of what we were finding at RTA and... RTA is "Rehabilitation Through the Arts," which is the program inside prison that these folks put on these plays through.

But bringing those aspects into it and bringing in the real people because it was just clear that you can't replicate this by writing down, "Okay, Dino's gonna say this "and we're gonna find somebody in central casting who seems to have a spirit like Dino and has some of his magnetism."

It's just like, you just cast Dino and work around that.

And all of the folks from RTA are very seasoned and know how to like... Because they've done a lot of theater.

But still, they've never really been in front of a camera before.

- Well, he resonated with me, man.

I mean, the brother said... What the brother said?

He said, "When we are born, we cry because we're born to a stage of fools.

And I said, "Yo, whoever wrote this, man, "had to have did a bid before," you know?

- Yeah.

So, King Lear just fell off of a library cart and you just happened to pick it up and read a few pages?

- And then, from the style of it, I think that Greg just wanted to push that even farther, of like... And what he developed in the style of directing with Pat Scola, the cinematographer, was this feeling of almost like a news crew running through here with these guys, doing a special about this.

And there was this thing that they found that was very considered in moments and then just chased them around that made it feel so spontaneous in a way that's really hard to do with film.

- How was it moving through the facility as a whole team as you're navigating the days?

- We had this point where we had Colman for... At first it was four weeks, right?

That we had available-- - Yeah, it was like... At first, it was like 18 or 19 days, yeah, Then it went down to... - Yeah, it just like...

He's kept having prod...

Things that he needed... People needed from him for other projects that just kept whittling down days here and days there, to the point where we lost a week with him and we just didn't have a week, and he was in every frame of the movie.

But there's a moment in the film where Colman's character has kind of a breakdown and leaves the program for a bit, and you don't know what, what's gonna happen 'cause he's a central part of this play that they've been trying to put on.

And in the original script, we went with him.

And you go with him as he's doing this thing, and you're kind of bouncing back and forth.

And we're like, "What if you have a movie where you just let the main character walk out of it in the back third of it?"

You get to this point, the big second act shift, and you just let the main character leave, and then we follow the other people and let them deal with this, and see what that feels like.

And it became something that was really then exciting, and something different, and an interesting narrative question and idea that we never would've gotten to had we not had these pressures put on from the outside.

And then when we did that, it's like, "Oh, great.

That solves that problem."

- Yeah.

I mean, in 48 hours when you guys were writing, I was like, "Trust the process."

- Trust the process.

- Just trying to trust the process.

- "It's gonna be fine, Monique."

- And they were just writing away, you know?

But this was literally the week before we started shooting.

- Yeah, this was very-- - It was very close to production.

So it was kind of like, yeah, do or die.

I remember, you were just like, "No, we're not..." But we were like...

I was doing budgets for like, "Okay, we'll get an extra--" [Clint] Oh yeah, "We'll do another--" - "We'll do a week in August and what does that cost?"

And it was like way more money than we had, and you were just like, "No, we're not.

"We're rewriting."

Yeah.

- That is a great use of the lack of Colman, but it's a risk in storytelling too.

- That was another example of how the casting process informed this crucial moment in the storytelling.

So originally, we were gonna have an actor come in who was gonna play...

So in the third act, we have someone come back and they're talking to the guys, and it's supposed to kind of give them hope for the moment that they're in right before they do this play.

And we were gonna have an actor come in, and then it turned out that his schedule wasn't gonna work.

And so, we were like, "Who are we gonna cast in this role?"

And then we looked back at our Zoom, because we were doing Zoom auditions of all the guys, and we looked back at our Zoom auditions and one of them, Nate, had told this story about being home, and reentry, and dealing with his dog, who he recently had to put down, and he was just telling the story.

And we went back and we watched it and we were like, "That's the scene."

[Clint] "That's great."

- That's it right there.

And so, we cast him.

But that's also, from a risk perspective, it's like you invite in a completely new character that no one's ever seen in the third act and you're just like, "Who is this?"

[Clint] "What is he?"

- But that was one of those scenes where it was just like it was so powerful, and I think it also lent in, again, bringing in the world, letting the world breathe into the story, and then also bringing in this layer of we are talking about a system that does exist.

[men cheering] - My man!

It's good to see, y'all.

- Yo!

- Oh!

- Good to see you man.

- Tell us what's going on outside.

- Oh, man.

The world, man.

I get up 4:30, I'm in that bakery, man, pumping out donuts, cheesecake, grinding.

But man, I take so much joy in just being out at night, you know what I'm saying?

It's summertime, 10 o'clock at night.

You know what I mean?

You go to your basket-- [Monique] I think that it just added this layer that was so powerful.

- It became so much better than anything that we wrote because it was real.

And talking about something that... An aspect of the system that somebody who's been through it can put into words maybe that you can't, even as much as we know about it.

- Were you sharing the script with the guys and soliciting feedback from them?

- Yeah, 100%.

And that goes back to that was in the process along the way.

And we, like... That was something of opening it up and bringing them into the process, particularly Clarence and John, the real Divine Eye and Divine G, bringing them in as...

They have a "story by" credit with us because that's the level of involvement that they had along the process.

- I'd love to hear more about some of those moments that might be pulled directly from those moments, from those Zoom calls, and how is those shaped on the page.

- There are quite a few of those where... That was one that was scripted a certain way, where that's more from just a storytelling perspective, of like, "Okay, you need to comment on the facts."

And I'm sorry, I'm speaking as if you haven't seen the film, assuming that you haven't.

But you need to speak to the fact that some of the things they do in there are very silly.

Some of the things that they...

Exercise they do for the play of like, "Okay, walk like a zombie," and "Walk like it's really cold in here."

Things like that, that are very silly for any of us as adults to do but especially in a maximum security prison, they're even more ridiculous, right?

And that's the point of it.

And why they do them is it opens up...

In a place where you're constantly wearing a mask, it helps you pull off your mask and become more emotionally vulnerable and more open.

And so, that started as something where it's...

It was just a storytelling moment where you need this character to tell this character... Divine G is gonna give Divine Eye some advice of like, "Hey man, just don't worry about it and go along with it."

And he's like, "[bleep] off, dude.

Stop giving me advice.

Stop talking to me.

This is stupid."

And that moment where you just need tension.

And then, what came from it was something that actually is part of the program, where rather than...

They use the term "beloved" to talk to each other, and there's a corrective moment of, like, where Divine G tells Divine Eye, "We use the term 'beloved' to refer to each other rather than other words."

And that was something where that just came from them talking.

And we were on Zoom, Clarence told Colman that, and then we were all like, "Well, that has to be in the movie.

We just have to put that in there."

And so, yeah, it was always that push and pull of writing scenes that started as just maybe something that was just narratively needed, of like, "Okay, they're going to reunite and they're gonna...

He's gonna sit down next to him, and try and bring him back in the program."

But then there... We were always looking for like, "How do you pull this out of just that flat area?"

And like, "What else can you pull into this from the outside?"

- How did y'all decide what play the inmates were putting on for the final sequence?

- That was when Greg first found this article about that insane play, that was the thing that struck us.

Partially because if we were to do like "Hamlet" or "12 Angry Men," or something like that, it's just like, it...

It weights down something that's already a very dramatic movie, and can make it feel just melodramatic, and can make it feel too much.

But the aspect of putting this kind of playful thing in there, one aspect was just lightening up the movie.

And if that's not taking itself so seriously, then the other stuff is gonna hit heavier and you have some opportunities for comedy.

And it was just too good to be true.

Like, it was an amazing story.

But then, the other part of it was, I think, the more we found out about it and the more we found out part of "trust the process" for them is also some of these folks who are behind bars, who are participating in this, are never gonna get out.

They're lifers.

[stammering] They're not going to...

They're not working on any skills that they're going to take to the outside one day.

And that's part of the incredible beauty of the program, is that it teaches them skills that are much bigger than job skills or anything like that, and it opens them up as people.

And that's even more pronounced and clear when that change is happening by doing a time traveling musical comedy that's part Robin Hood, and part Black Plague, and part Hamlet, versus, like, you would expect it with "A Few Good Men" or something.

- Now, give him some love.

Give him some love.

All right, all right, all right, that's enough.

All right, now, what's your emotional state?

What's underneath there?

- I'm mad as mother-[bleep].

- Okay, nah, nah, nah.

Okay, anger is the easiest thing to play.

Am I right, Brent?

- Too easy.

- What's more complicated is to play hurt.

That helps you name the thing, all right?

Let's try that.

All right.

- From the top.

- There you go, Brent.

Ah!

[bright music] [typewriter ding] [Narrator] You've been watching On the Making of "Sing Sing" on "On Story."

"On Story" is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story Project that also includes the "On Story" radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about "On Story" and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

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