Ghosts of Black men haunt my connection to my projects. I find myself living out a metamorphosis of sorts with my male leads, all of them, Billie Joe Johnson, Ossian Sweet, and Little Willie John.
I experienced this most explicitly with Ossian. Because of the process of making the film. At moments, it felt like I was him, dealing with the same thing he faced. I experienced how hard it must have felt, a measure at least.
Most of the crew was white and underpaid and very talented, but film crew people without the resources for proper catering (actually quite bad), they can be very difficult to manage. My producer was inexperienced and no longer produces films at all. I fired the previous producer because he was in over his head.
The director, Daniel Pfeffer, the first time I hired another director for one of my films, is very talented and continues to work in the film industry. He was finishing his graduate degree in film at my alma mater, and I had seen his previous work. The cinematographer is from Detroit. He is named Jeremy Brockman, and continues to work in the film industry.
I am going to be honest, I hope you buy the film (it’s so cheap) and watch it and share your thoughts with me in the comments, but this film disappointed me.
Let me start with the things I like:
The script. I wrote it. A+ on the script. Everyone that read it, loved it. I began to write it in the Dominican Republic during the weeks after my older sister’s passing.
The Costume Design. Heather Rhyan Thomas killed that shit. Ossian’s unrobing throughout the film is chef’s kiss. We came up with that together on the fly. Also, she called me a genius during the making of the film because she has taste.
The Production Design. Ana Novacic is killer. She did it from Europe, never even came to Detroit. Eli Gold . did the artistic direction and the on-the-ground work. I flew to New Jersey, and Eli walked me through picking up a U-Haul and driving to carry a truckload of props for the film. I immediately drove back. 15-hour drive.
The Cinematography. The film looks A+. I knew Jeremy and Daniel would do well together. They were a hell of a team. They’d make an even better film together now.
The Score. No music. You know how much music makes movies pop? The music, man, it can really manipulate the emotions to make the film capture your attention. No music here, baby. Cocky. The mob is the score. I created it from scratch. Wrote out hateful lines towards Black people, but I couldn’t give them the N one. Nope. I wanted their hate to be very specific. Rats. No one wants rats in their home. Racism is an ugly and claustrophobic room.
The editing. Lily Kleinman, the editor, did an outstanding job with the material she had.
Shoutout forever to Aqeel Ash-Shakoor for his work as Hewitt. A local jewel who has gone on to continue to make incredible work.
The house. In Boston Edison. One my company was in the middle of rehabbing, when we transformed it into a 1920’s interior for a couple of weeks. We finished the house and sold it to the beloved Detroit poet, Jessica Care Moore.
J.D. Williams was a godsend for this film. He made the film as much as anyone. Magnetic said one day we gotta talk about how I got him into the film, but I am gonna just tell all of you. I reached out to his agent via a very small casting agency I hired for the film, included a letter, and that dope script from bullet point #1. I say that to say, he was not impossibly expensive. This was an expensive film to make, but he was one of the more affordable parts of the budget compared to the quality and brand he brings to the film to people who really understand American acting and TV history. He did the film because he dreams of doing his own period piece, but he has yet to get the funding and continues to fight not to get typecast into characters associated with crime and poverty. My favorite moment of his in the film is one when he reacts to Gladys at the dinner table. He gives her this attentive look, then looks out the window. There’s a lot in that look away.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of things I don’t like in the film.
The direction is good, but it stumbles in a few key scenes. The scene before Ossian goes up to get the guns was rushed because we were behind schedule, in part because of bad scheduling decisions the team had made, and because we wasted too much time in the early days over-shooting the same beautiful shots, in love with the images but not the pace of the storytelling. The scenes with the rifles and Henry upstairs—there was not enough high-quality material to piece together, and there are at least two other scenes I could attack with that same defect, but you know—enough blood.
Daniel is a great director, and I appreciate his talent on this film, but he spent too much time in front of the camera and not enough time moving the film along. Another mistake that J.D. Williams pointed out earlier in the production: Daniel was directing the film too much like how he thought other directors he loved pieced them together, but he didn’t understand they came to their masterpieces in a more natural way.
Said simpler, he was nervous and tried to edit the film in camera and didn’t give us what we needed to cover all the beats of the film with high-quality takes.
Henry Sweet. The problem with this wonderful character started with the casting. Daniel had a friend who was up-and-coming and apparently about to blow up and had just starred in a film that had been in the micro-budget Sundance circuit. This guy refused to audition for the film. Daniel was so gassed on this guy that I allowed myself to get distracted by the many wonderful and local talents I had seen through the casting agency. I watched tons of auditions and found a few actors who I believe would have done a good job. Instead, I allowed Daniel to ignore that talent for his guy, who refused to audition but did a phone call where he talked to us like he was Denzel Washington and he still turned down the role. We took an actor who had to do two audition tapes to convince me. This actor did a terrible job, created tons of drama on set, played cock-swinger with a very patient JD Williams, and has no additional credits since the film finished. I am sure his mother loves him.
The lighting. It’s not bad in most scenes and great in a few, but there are a couple of scenes later in the movie where the lighting is too bright. I also think she was hurt by the time pressure during those scenes, to be honest, which was a scheduling issue not caused by her.
The Score. As much as I stuck to my original vision, I can see a world where if you took the amount of layered sound I added at a lower volume with the mob and mixed it with a score that played up the tension, the film would move faster.
The Executive Producer. Me. I spent $100K on this art project. Eight years of my savings invested into this short film. I should have done a better budget prior to deciding to make the film. I needed a good and experienced producer for the film. That producer could have created a strategy for film festivals, of which I had none. Ideally a producer who had already produced films that had gotten into a list of film festivals I hoped to get the film into.
There you go. I will stop there. This post is almost as long as the film. No.
It’s 19 minutes. Please buy it, watch it, tell me what you liked and what you didn’t.
Do you agree with my critiques?
The video poem I made for the film is awesome. I like it more than the film.
Ain’t life like that?
Maybe I will make another film one day… A feature of this story. No one else has yet. One or two have been in the works.
If you Google Ossian Sweet film now, you come to One Sweet Night.
