THIS SON IS IN LOVE WITH MOONLIGHT
TARELL ALVIN MCCRANEY found it hard to watch Naomie Harris in the Oscar-nominated film Moonlight.
Mccraney wrote the initial script for the film back in 2003, right after his mother died from AIDS-RELATED complications.
Now Moonlight, a visual poem of heartbreak, honour and hope, has eight Oscar nominations.
it started previewing in the UK last week and so far has taken more than £200,000 — an extraordinary amount for what is very much a non-Hollywood film.
Mccraney’s mother had been addicted to crack, and died in her early 40s. He last saw her a couple of months before she passed away.
‘Her mind was gone. She was suffering near-dementia,’ the playwright told me.
He wrote the screenplay in an emotional haze after her passing. ‘i felt very lost, and i wanted to find a way to concentrate a lot of these guilty and hurt feelings,’ he said, explaining that he had never got over not being at his mother’s bedside when she died. He put some words down on paper. And some more. And just kept on writing.
He didn’t know he’d written a film until he read it back later and recognised its cinematic scope.
And then he put it in a drawer. Several years later, a friend asked if he had any material that might work as a film.
the script was passed along to director Barry Jenkins, whose own mother was also an addict.
it turned out that Mccraney and Jenkins had grown up three blocks away from each other in liberty city, Miami. they hadn’t known each other, but had friends in common. ‘He’s only eight months older than i am,’ Mccraney, 36, marvelled.
He still thinks about his mother; and the film hasn’t helped. ‘i have made myself watch it, and Naomie’s depiction is so accurate.
‘it’s hard to watch, because i wish she were here. But, at the same time, i know she would be suffering.’