The debut
Comedian Jordan Peele kicks off his directing career with the searing ‘Get Out’, releasing on Thursday, a thriller that taps into the terror of racism
J ordan Peele is “kind of done” with performing.
“I don’t necessarily love the attention,” Peele said. “It takes a particular kind of toll on you.”
While that might be a dagger in the hearts of fans who came to know and love Peele as an uncannily calm Barack Obama, the endlessly annoying Meegan or any of the other characters he played in the sketch comedy series Key & Peele, the good news is that he’s still in the business of entertaining. He’s just taking a seat behind the camera. The better news? He’s really good at it. His directorial debut,
Get Out is one of those rare creations that functions both as a taut psychological thriller and as searing social commentary about racism in the modern era. The premise is simple: A black man, Chris, (Daniel Kaluuya) goes upstate with his white girlfriend, Rose, (Allison Williams) to meet her parents (Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) and things get weird. It’s been described as The Stepford
Wives meets Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Peele, who also wrote the film, isn’t necessarily com- menting on interracial relationships directly. His mother is white, as is his wife, comedian Chelsea Peretti — although he met her after it was written. Instead, it’s in part based on the experience of being the only black man at an event full of mostly older, white people.
“There’s a desire to connect that is sweet and endearing, but I wanted with this movie to show how you experience it different from our perspective,” Peele said. “It’s one thing to have one conversation with somebody but when every conversation you’re having begins to resemble that conversation you begin to realise that you are being seen as other ... it’s at least a reminder that we’re not past race.”
Like Scream, Get Out is a satire with “full thriller vocabulary.”
Peele was unabashed in referencing his influences during filming — often telling his production designer that he wanted one thing to feel very David Lynch and another to have more of a David Cronenberg vibe. He described it as pooling his influences and melting them down to create something new.
“[Quentin] Tarantino is the guy who taught me with the most clarity that you don’t have to be afraid of your influences in order to create something absolutely new,” Peele said. “I mean, what is more unique than
Pulp Fiction and what is also simultaneously more derivative? I think that’s something very freeing for artists to realise. There’s no way to escape that which formed you as an artist.”
Peele is a lifetime fan of horror films and thrillers and on one level wanted to make something for the underserved black audience — but not exclusively so.
“The black horror movie audience is a very loyal fan base,” Peele said. “We come out and we enjoy horror movies and there’s this extreme lack of representation of black characters, black protag- onists, but also the values that you see demonstrated in a theatre — people yelling at the screen, ‘Get out! Get out of the house!’”
But it was also important to Peele that Get
Out wasn’t “just a black movie”.
“It had to be an inclusive film. If it doesn’t work for everybody then it’s not worth it. There’s this mix of the movie itself being about the fact that there’s never been a movie like this,” he said. “Part of what’s special about this movie is that it is about representation. It’s about giving someone like me a chance and a platform to make a movie from my perspective and trust that an audience will come and see it.”
Peele is optimistic. He sees a renaissance happening in Hollywood where people are finally being given chances.
“That’s why it’s cool to be in the industry right now,” he said. “You see the emergence of people who should have been in the picture the whole time.”
“It had to be an inclusive film. If it doesn’t work for everybody then it’s not worth it.” JORDAN PEELE | Director