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A Dialogue With Sidney Poitier
From: American Film Institute
| By:
Sidney Poitier |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
Sidney Poitier's 1950 debut performance as Dr. Luther Brooks in No Way Out established him as the first African-American actor to break the color barrier in the US motion- picture industry. For the next twenty-two years, Poitier (right) performed in such great films as Blackboard Jungle (1955), Porgy and Bess (1959), Lilies of the Field (1963) and In the Heat of the Night (1967). Concerned that his acting career would be limited as he grew older, Poitier made an effort to learn cinematographic and directing skills while on each movie set, and at the age of 45 he made his 1972 directorial debut with Buck and the Preacher.
In this discussion with filmmaker Ron Silverman and AFI Fellows at a 1994 AFI Harold Lloyd Master Seminar, Poitier describes his early acting influences and details some of his directing techniques. |
On early influences
Question: Why did you decide to become an actor? |
Sidney Poitier: I became an actor by accident. I was a dishwasher in New York City. And I was alone. My family was in the Caribbean, where I came from originally, and I was in New York washing dishes for a living. I used to get my jobs out of a black newspaper called The Amsterdam News. I was in the want-ad section one day looking for a dishwashing job and on the opposite page there was a theatrical page and it said "Actors Wanted," just like it said dishwashers wanted, and porter and elevator operators wanted. So I said what the hell, "Dishwasher Wanted, Actor Wanted," and I looked up the address and went to the place that was saying this and I got to The American Negro Theatre at 135th Street and Lenox Avenue in the basement of the Schomburg Collection Library. There was one guy in there. The theatre was not quite as large as this--it had a small stage like this--and the guy said, "Can I help you?" |
I said, "Yes, I saw this thing in the paper about actors." |
He said, "Are you an actor?" |
And, to make a long story short, he said, "OK, here's a script." I never knew what a script was. He said, "Page 21. You read so and so, I'll read so and so." |
So I got up there and I'm reading, but I went to school for a year and a half in my life, so I hadn't really yet learned to read very well. I started reading everything marked under "John,"--I assumed that's what he wanted me to read--and I was stumbling over the words. He saw immediately that I was not an actor and he came up on the stage--he was a very big guy--and he grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and yanked me off the stage and marched me to the door. As he threw me out he said, "Stop wasting people's time. Why don't you go out and get a job as a dishwasher or something?"--absolutely true. |
I'm walking down the street, going to the bus and I said to myself, "How did he know? Was there something about me that gives off that I am dishwashing material?" |
It was that day that I decided to be an actor. Not to be an actor, but just to show him and myself that there was more to me than washing dishes. I intended to become an actor to show him one day and go, "he, he, he" and then give up the business. It didn't happen that way. [Laughter] |
Q: Who had the most influence on your career? |
Poitier: I would say Lloyd Richards. He was a teacher in New York with a man named Paul Mann. They had a studio in New York and I learned most from them from the craft point of view. From a working actor's point of view, it's difficult to say. |
You have to understand that I came along at a very special time in American life, in the late '50s and early '60s, and America was at a particular place at that time, historically. So a lot of people were instrumental in my career in that there were a lot of producers in this town, I think infinitely more then than now, who had a very strong sense of conscience and responsibility as filmmakers. |
America was a segregated country at the time when I started, and blacks did not have many opportunities in the film business. But in the film business at that time there were certain men, white men, who felt a need to articulate their feeling about the state of things in the industry and in the country. Some of them were producers and some were directors, and if you look at my history you'll see that I worked for a lot of those guys: men like Stanley Kramer, the Mirisch brothers, Joe Mankiewicz, Ralph Nelson and many, many others. These were guys who had to say something about their time and about the question of race in this country. They said it the best they could. So a lot of people were responsible. A lot of people contributed so I can't give you any nutshell kind of answer. |
The thing that made me most happy in my career was the nature of the work itself. For reasons that are certainly not attributable to me, I have had the good fortune to be in about seven or eight classic films, and in one lifetime that's pretty terrific. I have been making films for 43 years and I've made my living from films all those years, so I really have no complaints about it. Especially since the nature of the work and the quality of the work has been so satisfying. |
On directing
Q: On the directing side and as an actor, how do you prepare when you're going to make a film and how do you work with your actors? Especially when you run into scenes that don't work quite the way you want them to or performances that don't come across the way you imagined them? |
Poitier: I've done about eight or nine movies as a director and when I first started directing movies, I fell into the trap of being very, very inflexible with my actors. I treated them wonderfully well because I was an actor myself. But I was inflexible in the first few turns because I didn't trust myself and I didn't trust my actors. I've later learned that actors bring their own energy and they bring their own feelings and their own truths. I used to choreograph everything for my actors. It worked okay and the pictures were successful, but there was a stiltedness to them. I've learned to release the actors, to just put them in the set and let them fly for a moment. Of course this is during rehearsals, this is not when I'm shooting. |
I let them read their lines to the lightbulbs or to Marlon Brando--whatever they want to do. And slowly, if you have the time, you begin to mold them and suggest that, "Maybe if you start over there..."--always make sure they know what they're after. And if they understand what they're after, somehow it begins to work itself into shape. Now the thing you learn as a young director is that you can put your camera anywhere and it will capture the truth if it is, in fact, there to be captured--if the actors are giving it to you. If it's working, you can put the camera pretty much anywhere. There are good, better and best places to put it, but if nothing is happening then there is no good, better or best place to put it. If nothing is happening, you will get a technically interesting movie to look at even though nothing is happening in the frame. |
Q: What turned you onto directing? Do you think that was an extension from your acting career? |
Poitier: It was a practicality on my part in terms of career management. I thought that my days as a principle player were numbered. I mean let's face it, I'm going to be 68 years old at my next birthday and I thought that naturally I would either segue into being a character actor or find myself sitting around bowling or something. So I decided early that the only way to stay close to the creativity that I like and that I really love is to be sufficiently diversified. So every time I worked--as a matter of fact it goes back all the way to Norman Jewison--I started asking questions about the camera and I started asking technical questions and I learned of the things that before then I had paid no attention to because I had an eye toward what would happen to me when I was no longer a viable product as an actor. |
So I wrote and I directed and did all those things, and I kept trying to expand my horizon. I wound up writing five movies with a professional writer and I directed eight or nine of them. I went out to expand myself simply because I knew how delicately balanced a career can be singularly in terms of just being an actor or just being a director or just being such a person. It's delicate. |
I've been at this business for 43 years. I've known for a long time that you could hit and be hot for three years and then you're gone. Things change in the business and it has nothing to do with how good you are; it has to do with an awful lot of other things, not the least of which is luck. So I chose to sort of spread my bet and cover as much ground as I could by learning to do as many things as I could. But mind you each thing I tried to learn to do was something that was a part of my love for the game. |
Thoughts for aspiring filmmakers
Q: Did you ever do any other directing before you did Buck and the Preacher? Did you ever try to make a short or anything on your own? |
Poitier: No, I did not. I had not. I was just collecting information and learning from the cinematographer and the director on whatever picture I worked on and absorbing things, but I never did that. I've got to tell you, the best advice you can be given about that is to get yourself a camera, be it eight millimeter or sixteen, and make something. Now the best example of that being the way to go is that Spielberg made short pictures and Lucas made short pictures. |
There is a Mexican young man named Robert Rodrigues who made the film El Mariachi for $7,500. I saw the movie and it's one hell of a movie, trust me. You should all see it. I have no idea how he made that picture for $7,500, but he did. This isn't a cliché but if he can do it, you can do it. If Spielberg did it when he did it, you can do it. If Lucas did it when he did it, you can do it. |
I made a movie once for which I won an Academy Award as an actor. It was called Lilies of the Field. It was made for $240,000. How was it made for that kind of money? United Artists--speaking of guys who have no vision and not much creative stuff--didn't want to make the film, and in order for the director to make it they said to him, "You will have to put up your house." He lived in this town and mortgaged his house to United Artists. |
We rehearsed in secret; he didn't have enough money because according to the union you are supposed to pay the actors for rehearsing. We all waived that and went to his house and we worked and rehearsed. We got on a plane, went to Tucson, Arizona, shot the movie, all of it, and were back here in two weeks. Now if he can do it, you can do it. Trust me, you can do it. All you need is your own creativity and the technical stuff: you need a camera, which you can rent for very, very little money; you can beg, borrow, steal or buy short ends of film; and you don't need that much light for the film that they are making nowadays-- you can use sunlight. |
My point is, if you want to be filmmakers, to really make films, you can do it. You cannot make, maybe, an hour-and-a-half film for $7,500, but you can make a signature film that runs 20 minutes or 10 minutes or 14 minutes so that when you go and you say, "This is what I have done," you don't have to explain it or prepare them for it, you do nothing. You just give it to them and they stick it in their old VCR and wham, it's up there. Whatever you are as an artist is up there. And in the event you are successful, remember I work rather cheaply. |
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