Film Courage: What ruins the story for you? Dui Jarrod, Filmmaker/Playwright: Inauthenticity. Is that how you say that?
Film Courage: Yeah. Dui: When you know that it's not authentic
that is what really just ruins uh a film or a story for me when
you know this is not the exact example of what this
person would have done felt or truly believed i think it just
takes it always just seems to take me out of the piece that's when i
when i when i see it's not authentic is it the acting or is it the writing how
the character is portrayed i think it's a little bit of both um at
times i recently saw a play on broadway where
a woman was dealing with a very hard situation as far as her son and
trying to figure out where he was and how he was
but i could also tell that the story wasn't
authentically written it didn't come from an authentic place
i think the actors did a phenomenal job with the material that she was given but
i feel like they were trying to tell a story as
opposed to letting the story come from within
i think all of us get stories all the time and we want to go out and just tell
those different stories but i think the ones
that resonate the most they come from a place
of authenticity not saying it necessarily has to be your story
but it has to just be authentic and if it's authentic people will connect with
that right there's always i mean especially
now there's a debate on can someone really tell a story about
struggle or whatever if they haven't really lived it yeah you
know especially if they've lived a total opposite
right right but the reality because i kind of faced that with a recent project
that i had done where i didn't i wasn't i didn't have the same experience as the
protagonist of the series so i was kind of
challenged on it in some ways but there is a such thing as a human
experience right and once you're able to find that
human experience um everybody's dealing with the same
things we're all dealing with loss we're all dealing with grief we're all dealing
with joy we're all dealing with love and we're all dealing with it in varying
ways and so the difference between something being
inauthentic and um not well purposed which that happens
where people try to tell a story that they're not doing it
is it they come from a very human place but if you come from a human place
people will always be able to see the authenticity WAVES is a great
example of that. The filmmaker is white but the story is black but it
resonates THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO the
filmmaker is white the protagonist is black
but it relates because it's an authentic human story that anybody can buy into
and believe in yeah i really love that movie i hope it
gets nominated yeah i hope it does too i really i think
it was a special piece of theater i hadn't cried in the
theater in such a long time but just to know because i've had that
experience of like a friendship that jess has run its course and to see their
friendship fall the way that it was just beautifully executed the
cinematographer was amazing right and they both um you know the one
character had more of a stable home life and they
you know they tried to kind of take him in
but i think he knew like i don't really belong here
yeah and i know you're trying to make it feel like i belong here but i don't i
don't belong here and so it was about place it was about
belonging and um i don't want to give it away for
anybody who hasn't seen it but um yeah it's really beautiful film it was
an exciting piece of work yeah it really was i hope i hope it gets some
kind of recognition yeah something me too you
know it's hard when a lot of stories like that just kind of just
get shelved and
yeah that's why we need independent cinema you know it's
when i go to do you go to a lot of independent theaters oh i still do all
the time still do i'm still committed to that
process because that's where i am i'm an independent i'm an indie
filmmaker i'm not in the studio system and in a lot of ways
while i regard it greatly i'm not sure that that's where i'm supposed to be
just yet i'm supposed to be in the studio system because the independent
system makes the most sense to me i love having control over my stories
and my ideas and to be able to accomplish those ideas
in the most authentic way possible right and i think for i for me i don't
know maybe for you too but those are the stories that resonate with me the most
yep are those indie stories not the studio
ones where no one claps when they get up and they
and okay you know time to go to grandma's house
now or where yeah i mean you know i'm just saying like it's it's just a pit
stop in between where i think people that go to independent cinema
it's to really feel something just experience it be affected by it
absolutely and to have a conversation with a total stranger afterwards
absolutely that you wouldn't normally talk to absolutely
that's absolutely the case absolutely right and i hope
i hope that doesn't go away because i know those theaters are in danger
sometimes because there's not enough money behind them