From 'Caged Bird' to 'Delta': A Conversation with Maya Angelou

Long ago, in the mid-1970s, having been acclaimed for her first volume, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings -- a memoir -- and for a follow-up collection of verse, "Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie," Angelou participated in a workshop at the American Film Institute and directed several short films for AFI. Subsequently, she went on to a series of literary and academic ventures and honors.

But she always wanted to get back to directing. All she needed was the right script.

About two years ago, it came her way in the form of a screenplay, Down in the Delta, by a first-time writer, Myron Goble, who is white. The script had gained Goble a prestigious fellowship in 1993, but there the project rested for more than three years, until Reuben Cannon, a respected Hollywood casting director, was made aware of it. Envisioning Angelou as director, he took the proposed project to a group of African American actors -- including Wesley Snipes, Danny Glover and Will Smith -- who agreed to help arrange financing. A contemporary cautionary tale about members of a household in the Chicago inner city, Down in the Delta essentially depicts the struggle between two countervailing forces -- Loretta, a single parent in her 30s who is losing a battle to various substance abuses, and Rosa Lynn, her mother, who is determined to see her two grandkids navigate the perilous shoals of life on the mean streets.

To take the youngsters -- Thomas, an 11-year-old boy, and Tracy, an autistic girl, age five -- out of that atmosphere, and to give her daughter a vital strength and perspective, Rosa Lynn arranges for Loretta, Thomas and Tracy to spend the summer with close relatives still rooted in the family's ancestral Mississippi delta town. The patriarchal figure is Uncle Earl, the aging owner of a chicken restaurant who tends to the needs of his wife, Annie, an Alzheimer's patient. There, in the rural heartland, Angelou's modern-day story unfolds, against the backdrop of family history across several generations, from pre-Civil War slavery to the present, with a silver candelabrum as the family totem.

Angelou brought prominent Hollywood actors, including Alfre Woodard, Snipes and Al Freeman, Jr., into the project. The movie opened in selected cities across the United States during the last days of 1998, and has had a wider release in the first six weeks of this year. The critical response has ranged from respectful to enthusiastic, which has pleased its creator greatly.

Recently, in an exclusive interview with USIA, the filmmaker, on the brink of her 71st birthday, reflected on the film and on aspects of her career and life, including the recent publication of Standing at the Scratch Line, a new novel, by her son, Guy Johnson.

Following is the transcript of that interview with USIA:

QUESTION: With all of your manifold activities over the years, what prompted you at the age of 70 to direct a film?

ANSWER: Well, I was really prompted at 40, but I couldn't get the chance to direct. I was so prompted, in fact, that I went to Sweden and took a course in cinematography at the Svenska Film Institute. But of course, everything I learned 30 years ago was obsolete by the time I got a chance. Like all Americans, and probably all people by now, I've been formed and informed by film. Halfway through reading this screenplay, I knew I wanted to do it, because it really is a simple human story -- a great story. And it has within it all of the elements I've tried to deal with in my work -- loss, love, fear, threat, hope, redemption.

QUESTION: And also family, history, legend, contemporaneity.

ANSWER: Yes. I like that word. Exactly. I love the truth, of course -- who doesn't? But I love the fact that things are not what they seem.

QUESTION: Did the entire script embrace you, or was there something specific that most impressed you?

ANSWER: I suppose Uncle Earl -- his surface gruffness and his subcutaneous tenderness. We all know him. All you have to do is just wait a minute, and find that he's as tender as a rose. I loved the little boy. If given a different set of circumstances, he might become a Wall Street denizen or a high school principal. On the other hand, give him another year in that circumstance (in the inner city), and he'll be running errands (for a gangster).

QUESTION: It was chilling to hear the exchange between Rosa Lynn and Marco, the street hoodlum -- in which she tells him to leave "my Thomas" alone, and he counters by asking, "when he gets older, is he going to stay away from me?" That brief piece of dialogue would seem to be the fulcrum for the entire story.

ANSWER: That's right -- that and seeing her daughter in the "crack" house. She knows then that it's herself against the world, herself against all the elements. You see, one of the things she realizes is that Marco was once a little boy like Thomas.

QUESTION: Where do you feel you had the most impact in terms of visualizing the story?

ANSWER: When I met the crew and the cast together, we had a long talk. I said, "no stereotypes." Not one. I wanted everything to come fresh. I told the crew, "this is your milieu. If you see me do something you think is not wise, if you'll call my attention to it, I'll appreciate it. I'll ask you for a sign. Because if I see you do something I don't like, I shall never speak to you in front of anyone -- I'll ask you to come and have a walk with me." Within three days, one of the electricians called me aside and said, "I want you to see something. You wanted me to set a scene with this lighting. I've set it up and want you to see it." I went to see it, and it was terrible. And he explained everything to me. So I was very blessed. Everybody gave me everything I asked for -- and change. The crew rescinded their "turnaround," and so did the cast. You see, if you stop shooting at eight in the evening, you're not supposed to call everyone back until eight in the morning. We would shoot until eleven (at night), and at six-thirty in the morning, the cast would be back in the makeup chairs, and the crew would be there hanging lights.

QUESTION: How did this project broaden the scope of what you've tried to accomplish -- your intentions in your work over the years? How do you measure the impact of something like this film?

ANSWER: The week before last, Jesse Jackson took the film to Cook County Jail in Chicago. There are 1,000 female inmates. He asked, "how many of you have been in here before? How many are here for drug-related crimes? And how many of you have left a child for someone to take care of -- or not take care of?" And he told me that about 90 percent of the women stood up. Then he said, "all right, watch this film." And when they watched it, as Loretta smoked and drank, the women giggled. But when she went South, they stopped giggling. The first time Loretta responded directly when Thomas asked her (a question) about counting, one woman in the (group) said, "she's coming back." And as Loretta made each of her small triumphs, a litany began -- "she's coming back!" At the end, when Loretta says to her son, "let me tell you a story about a family staying together," one thousand women stood up crying, screaming, "she's back!"

QUESTION: That should make you feel good.

ANSWER: It does. It does. Of course, I had a captive audience!

QUESTION: You've never shied away from talking straight, and you've never talked down to people. Was it an easy call to decide to include street punks and dealers and a scene in a crack house?

ANSWER: It was necessary. It's not easy. And there's no profanity in my film. The majority of black people don't curse. I know that in that life, they do -- but it's not necessary to have it there if it's gratuitous.

QUESTION: When we get past the basic story of Down in the Delta, about the family being rescued by the shift in locale and scenery, we find ourselves at a crossroads where legend and history meet. Tell me about that -- the candelabrum not only as family heirloom but also representing the passage of the century.

ANSWER: I think in every culture, the story is supreme. The story of the family, the story of history -- which is why the Bible, the Torah, the Koran and all other written stories are so important. So the storyteller holds together the real fabric of the family. In this case, there are emblems and totems. Sometimes the totems are tangible, like a candelabrum. My chosen sister (Angelou -- an only child -- and a close friend made a mutual pact many years ago to treat each other within their respective families as sisters) has her mother's oyster plates up on the wall. They were given to her (in turn) by her mother, which would have been back in slavery times. Now the story of how they came -- we don't know that anymore. But we know that when her blood family comes, they look (at the wall) and say, "there they are!" Sometimes the totem is a story or a song. Somebody will start saying, at a family reunion, "Well, you know, Uncle Jack..." and then everybody'll say, "oh, here we go again!" That itself is a totem -- especially when there's been a non-literate society. If people were able to write journals or letters, that was one thing. But when there was illiteracy -- and during slavery, no place to keep letters if people could write -- then a story or a song became the medium through which people, the families, were held together. So I think that history and storytelling are one, and of great importance. That's how I directed. I told stories to the cast. And sometimes, it might be a Zen story, or something Jewish. And I would say, "now there may be something in that that you can use for your character."

QUESTION: This is not a Cinderella story. Thomas is fortunate to have Uncle Earl and Annie down in the delta. But the message of the single mother seems to be a story that is too infrequently told, of someone who can turn a life around.

ANSWER: Exactly. You know, the story is my story.

QUESTION: There are elements there. You were sent away as a girl.

ANSWER: Yes. From California to Arkansas, then back and around...

QUESTION: That autobiographical element, which was in the original screenplay, must have had all sorts of resonances for you.

ANSWER: Exactly. If a person looked at me at 17 or 19, she or he could deduce from my history that I was a loser. But a redemption is always possible -- and that is the burden of my song, in all my books and poetry, in the music, I really don't think it's ever too late.

QUESTION: And then there's the autistic little girl, who eventually speaks. Was there a symbolism to that character and situation as well?

ANSWER: I think my use of that was (to indicate) that change is possible. She's not going to ever say more than she does, but repetition in an environment can influence even a stone. Goodness will influence. Evil will influence.

QUESTION: There are some sharp contrasts within the family. You have the people with disabilities -- little Tracy with autism, or Loretta with her personality disorders, and Annie living with Alzheimer's. Then you have those with great abilities -- Rosa Lynn, Earl, and his son Will, raised to be a success story. What does that say?

ANSWER: I think it's true in any family. When you get any family together over a holiday, there's such a range -- of failures and triumphs, funny people and grumpy people, sick people and healthy people, rich and whining poor, pretty and plain -- just in two generations. So I didn't find that challenging my imagination at all.

QUESTION: The contrasts within African American life in the United States today are underscored as well. They're striking -- the reference to the Southern high school that had to close because of the shortage of students that materialized when the white kids enrolled in private schools, yet, on the other hand, the presence of a black doctor in a community hospital in the South. There's a great significance in depicting that whole mix.

ANSWER: In Washington, D.C., there's a charter school named for me. The students come in at 8:30 a.m., and are there until 8:30 at night, and (they don't want) to go home. It's their safe place, their place to learn and prepare themselves. These are all kids who've had run-ins with the cops. They're all out of some correction facility. So the very sharp contradictions exist in every community, but when a section of the community is under siege, the contradictions are even more visible, more tangible.

QUESTION: All that comes through in the film. I should mention that there are certain lines of dialogue that may not seem overly dramatic, but they get under your skin, like Thomas' poignant comment about his mother -- "Every time we get something she finds some way to mess it up" -- and what he says to her when she apologizes to him -- "There ain't that much sorry in the world." Lines such as the remark made about Rosa Lynn -- "that woman scrubbed hospital floors and emptied bedpans for 40 years to keep the family together" -- just gnaw at you.

Let me move from the film to another medium -- theater -- and the expanded presence of African American playwrights on the scene today after a lull of more than a decade. Is it possible that drama, whether in films or in theater -- through which audiences can visualize things -- has more power than the written word, which exists on paper?

ANSWER: I don't know. The written word continues, thank G-d, to at once have power and to tell. (Moreover), it is from the written word that the visual offering is made. I think of some of the new novelists and writers -- Bebe Campbell, Terry McMillan, bell hooks -- wonderful writers and thinkers.

QUESTION: I was going to discuss a certain male writer who's recently come on the scene, Guy Johnson, but we'll get to him in a minute!

ANSWER: All right!

QUESTION: What are the strengths to be found in contemporary African American literature?

ANSWER: I think that probably we're still where we've been -- that is, we're still telling the slave narrative. And until we finish telling it, we shall be looking at it from all aspects -- that is, the slave and post-slavery narratives -- what it's like to be black, what hurts, what helps, what makes us laugh. I like what's happening with the new novelists, telling the contemporary story and using the single mother and the Claude Brown "manchild" -- continuing not only to confirm, but to affirm, the right to be, and to be black in America today. That's really what the writers are about. And I say the writers, because she or he starts the ball rolling, and then it gets on the stage or in film or in song and in lyrics.

QUESTION: With the history being told, with a contemporary focus present, are there any subjects still crying out for inclusion?

ANSWER: Yes. I would like very much to see some brave and insightful soul write about the gay community within black society, and write about it honestly.

QUESTION: What are you working on now?

ANSWER: I'm hoping to direct James Baldwin's play, The Amen Corner, as a movie. I want use Harlem as a character, much as I used the South as a character in Down in the Delta -- without calling any attention to it. I want it to be as present as every other character. We've seen the underbelly of Harlem, but we've never seen the vitality that was Harlem earlier in the century. My thesis is that the blues and the spirituals are one. The play is about a woman preacher who broke up with her husband, a jazz musician. She claims holiness, and tries to deny her son the jazz world. He wants to follow his father in his art, and she's very conservative. All around them is life. It's the Forties. The streets are filled with Father Divine and Prophet Jones and Marcus Garvey. Countee Cullen, the poet, was James Baldwin's teacher.

QUESTION: To return once more to the present, The Washington Post has just called your son's new novel "a big, good-hearted book, carried along all but effortlessly by the power of the images it has tapped into and by Guy Johnson's remarkably adroit writing." Tell me your thoughts as a literary scholar, and as a mother.

ANSWER: I don't know that I can really separate them out. He's a really first-class poet, and has been for many years. I was so surprised to find him writing novels. He has another almost finished. He loves English, the language, and I take some credit for that. He has a physical handicap from an automobile accident. He (had been) paralyzed from the neck down. Today he uses a walker. One day in December, we'd been on a television program together, and afterwards, we came back to my apartment. Within a few hours he had to be taken to the hospital for a nine-hour operation, which began at the nape of his neck and went to his coccyx. While he was lying in the hospital, he called me one day and said, "Mom, recite 'Invictus' to me." As I began, I remembered this eight-year-old to whom I had taught, "Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul...It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul." Through all of those years, I remembered that little person, stomping around, marching like he was a soldier. And now, here he was, needing something to hold onto, something to repeat to himself. But he's walking around now. In fact, he's taking a group of handicapped children from the inner city on an outing sailing -- kids who've never even been on a boat!