The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Midview advances to sectional final
Stanfield, Plemons talk about their complex characters, scenes shared in ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’
Once the postseason tournament hits, anything can happen.
The 17th seeded Midview girls basketball team knows that well after earning a hard-fought 4842 road win over 11th seeded Brunswick on Feb. 13.
The Middies advance to a Division I sectional final where they will take on Southwestern Conference foe and fifth seeded Westlake on Feb. 18.
“We lost to Brunswick in the regular season. We knew when we played that game we weren’t at our best,” Midview coach Jessy Bendik said. “We had something to prove today and the girls had something to prove. They didn’t want their season to end. We prepared hard all week and they came in focused every day.”
The game was tight throughout and it came down to the wire. Midview (6-9) held a 40-37 lead with 3:35 left in the contest before Brunswick (12-11) sophomore Samantha Kim drilled a 3-pointer to the the game at 40 all.
Following Kim’s basket, both teams traded buckets before the Middies used an 8-0 run to close out the game. Midview’s Olivia DiFranco scored the first basket of the run and after Brunswick came up short on the other end, Middie Autumn Vance (six points) was fouled in the act of shooting.
The senior stepped to the free throw line with the chance to put her team ahead by 4 with under a minute to play. Vance sank both free throws and in doing so, put Midview ahead 46-42.
“I was surprisingly calm,” Vance said of her trips to the stripe. “You would think in that situation ... it’s pretty nerve-racking but I was actually pretty calm. I knew whatever happened was going to happen and I’m just happy that I could seal it for my team.”
On the ensuing Brunswick possession, Midview forced a Blue Devil turnover with 43 seconds left, forcing the home team to foul. It was Vance who stepped to the line once again. Calm, cool and collected, the senior dropped both free throws into the net to give the Middies a 48-42 lead and all but put the game away.
“It feels awesome,” said Vance on moving on in
the postseason. “I’m just excited to keep going. We play Westlake next. We’re really excited and hopefully we can keep our winning streak going.”
Midview jumped out to an early lead and held a 19-12 advantage after one quarter. Middies guard Mya DiFranco (five points) drained a 3-pointer just before the first half concluded to give her team a 25-22 lead at the break.
“They executed the game plan and that’s what we needed to do,” Bendik said of her team’s performance. “It was something we struggled
with all year long, that execution piece, against good teams and pulling out that win. I know they are capable of that and today they believed in themselves enough to do that.”
Brunswick was paced by freshman Journey Hildebrand, who scored a teamhigh 16 points, as well as senior Jordyn Wickes, who tallied 15 points.
“That’s not a 17 seed, if anybody looked at their schedule and their talent,” Blue Devils coach Anthony Ocacio said. “Midview plays in a very tight conference that gets you ready for games like this. They came ready to play and took it to us.”
Olivia DiFranco led the way for Midview as she scored a game-high 18 points and hauled in 13 rebounds.
Her scoring output, efforts the glass and defensive effort helped send her team on to the next round. DiFranco came out firing and helped her team jump out to an lead early. She scored 10 points in the opening quarter.
Bendik wasn’t one but surprised by the freshman’s performance under the lights on a big stage.
“Olivia is a phenomenal player,” Bendik said. “As a freshman, she has brought so much to our team. We are more of a guard oriented team and I can put her anywhere. She’s so physically strong and has had a lot of double-doubles this year.”
Midview also received key contributions from senior Izzy Patarini, who scored 10 points and grabbed six boards.
“It’s amazing, we get to play Westlake,” Olivia DiFranco said of her team advancing. “We really hope that we beat them.”
In late 2019, a noteworthy film production set up shop in Cleveland.
“Judas and the Black Messiah” — a Warner Bros. Pictures production that hit theaters and HBO Max on Feb. 12 — was shot at, among other Northeast Ohio locations, the Masonic Cleveland auditorium, Lane Metropolitan CME Church and North Presbyterian Church in Cleveland and St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in Parma. The production also traveled to Mansfield for filming at the Ohio State Reformatory.
Asked when he was in town for the shoot during a recent Zoom-based interview, cast member Jesse Plemons hesitantly answers “November …?” He then has a little laugh, musing about that time, when he walked around with no fear of a certain virus.
“I really enjoyed Cleveland,” he says. “I’d never been. We were right downtown, and I found people to be really friendly and excited that we were shooting there.”
While Plemons (“I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” “El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie”) checked out the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, found a couple of music shops he liked and hit some bars and restaurants, fellow cast member LaKeith Stanfield (“Sorry to Bother You,” “Knives Out”) says he largely kept to himself while in Cleveland but had a good experience, especially when it came to the shoot.
“It was dope — we were welcomed, and it was a cool spot,” he says during a separate video interview. “It was nice to see all the community come together and be extras in the movie and help us tell this story. Everybody was just excited, and it was a beautiful time.”
The inspired-by-trueevents story told in “Judas and the Black Messiah” is that of Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, who — as the movie portrays events — was assassinated by the FBI.
While Fred, portrayed by “Get Out” star Daniel Kaluuya, is the “Messiah” referenced in the film’s title, the “Judas” is William O’Neal, portrayed by Stanfield.
William, following an arrest and facing years in prison, is coerced by an FBI agent — Plemons’ Roy Mitchell — into infiltrating the chapter and growing close to Fred for the bureau’s purposes.
Stanfield and Plemons share several key scenes. While both of their characters can be considered villains in the film, they are written as something more complex than that and are inhabited by actors who appreciated that complexity.
Plemons says “cliched bad guys” never have interested him much.
“The world is more complicated than that,” he says. “People are more complicated than that.”
Similarly, Stanfield says, “If there’s a character who exists simply as a villain, then I have no kind of connection to (him) whatsoever. I find it disingenuous. I feel like real villains don’t exist in that capacity, so I wanted to provide a little bit more color to it if I could — just to make it more realistic in my mind.”
The relationship between William and Roy isn’t simple, either. While Roy empathizes with William’s plight and doesn’t seem to wholly buy into the conviction of his boss, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen), that the bureau must ensure a “black messiah” doesn’t arise from the streets, he does have a job to do. Meanwhile, William appears to lose sight of the idea that Roy isn’t truly his friend.
The actors say they greatly enjoyed working together.
“He’s a great human being,” Stanfield says of Plemons. “By the way, he’s nothing like Roy Mitchell (laughs). He’s a sweet guy.”
Plemons says the two didn’t get much time to rehearse, which may have served the movie.
“For this film and the dynamic between our characters, it really worked that we were just sort of thrown into it and could go for it,” he says. “I think even in the first scene, I threw something different in than what was written to just sort of test the waters, and he threw something back at me, and I knew it was going to be fun and he was an actor that likes to play around and isn’t just trying to beat one choice to death.”
Stanfield says Plemons was so easy to connect with that a late scene hit him strongly.
“It felt like Roy was betraying me because we were such good friends,” he says. “It was dope to be able to play around with somebody that’s just so invested in the craft and so good at what they do.”
Speaking of actors making an impact on “Black Messian,” Kaluuya gives a powerful performance, adding to a resume that also includes memorable supporting roles in 2018 films “Black Panther” and “Widows.” Stanfield, who had a supporting role in “Get Out” but works more closely with Kaluuya in this film, calls him “amazing” and “inspiring.”
“Ever since his table read — when I first heard his rendition of Fred — I was in tears,” Stanfield says. “I was in tears.”
That’s especially noteworthy considering a misconception had when King first reached out to him about being in “Judas.”
“I just assumed I’d be playing Chairman Fred,” he says. “And then when Shaka revealed to me he wanted me to play William O’Neal, I was a little bit crestfallen at first. And then I grappled with it for a couple of days and realized it might be an opportunity to help tell a story in a unique way.”
“Judas” is King’s first film for a major studio, and, Stanfield says, he met the moment.
“He was patient, took his time and listened,” he says. “I feel like he chose people for the roles that he really believed in. He let us have our own creative license to express ourselves and helped guide the performances in the way he wanted them to go.”
Plemons says the director was one of the reasons he chose to do the film.
“It was only a few minutes of talking to Shaka where I realized I hadn’t seen any of his work, but I was convinced if I was wrong about this guy as a filmmaker, that was a gamble I was willing to take,” he says. “He was so incredibly passionate about the project, so wellinformed, had really specific ideas about it.”
Plemons, who’s in his late 30s, became known to many as a cast member of “Friday Night Lights” in the mid-2000s. He has myriad TV and film credits and has worked with some top talents, including Vince Gilligan (“Breaking Bad”), Paul Thomas Anderson (“The Master”), Steven Spielberg (“Bridge of Spies,” “The Post”) and Martin Scorsese (“The Irishman”).
What’s his secret to getting cast so often and in so many well-regarded projects?
“I don’t’ know — when I find out I’ll tell you,” he says with a laugh. “Luck of the Irish? I’ve got some Irish in me.”
Noting he’s often asked how he chooses projects, he adds, “The majority of them don’t feel like choices at all. It just feels obvious.”