The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Dramatization of history
‘Detroit’ screenwriter says value is ‘opportunity to reflect on the present’
The pivotal moment of the dramatic thriller “Detroit” takes place in the annex of a motel during the 1967 uprising in the city.
In the confined space, a number of African-American men and two white women were brutally interrogated for hours by members of the Detroit Police Department who believed there was a sniper on the premise.
Neither a sniper nor a gun was never found, but by the end of the night, three unarmed young men had been shot to death at pointblank range.
Re-creating the gut-wrenching killings for the film was difficult for the actors, whether playing police officers or suspects.
Algee Smith, the actor-musician who plays one of the suspects, says that while the cast would discuss what it would have been like in the room, “a lot of our conversations were also about what’s going on still. Unfortunately, while filming the movie, there were a couple of police shootings.”
“Detroit,” which opened Aug. 4, is from Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow and Oscarwinning screenwriter Mark Boal. They both won Academy Awards for “The Hurt Locker” and also collaborated on “Zero Dark Thirty.”
“The value of looking at the past and dramatizing history this way is that it presents an opportunity to reflect on the present,” observes Boal.
While much of “Detroit” is taken from firsthand accounts of the terrifying events that transpired at the Algiers Motel, as well as research, the filmmakers are careful to say the film is fictionalized. The names of those who were most involved have been changed.
This is in part because there is no one account that can reliably explain the whole chaotic event and partly because a number of participants are still alive. Although some officers and a security guard were charged with crimes, no one was convicted.
Boal began looking into writing a script about the Detroit riots in 2014, which is when he interviewed Larry Reed, one of those lined up by the police at the motel.
“Hearing Larry Reed tell his story is what convinced me to do the script,” says Boal, noting that what happened would change the then-young man’s life.
Reed had not spoken publicly about the incident in decades. The Detroit native was only a teenager at the time and the lead singer of an up-and-coming R&B group, The Dramatics. The city — racked by poverty and de facto segregation — was home to Motown Records, giving everyone who could sing a dream of escape.
When the unrest hit, Reed and a friend were unable to make it home, so they took refuge at the Algiers. He is only identified as Larry in the film and is played by Smith.
The actor and singer, who played pop star Ralph Tresvant this year in BET’s “The New Edition Story,” says the first two weeks of filming consisted of scenes in which the actors in the hallway had their hands up against the wall.
Smith says the intensity of the story made it exhausting at times.
“It was difficult to try to portray what these people were really feeling,” he says, and sometimes the cast found it overwhelming.
He describes how English actor Will Poulter nearly broke down after having to do a scene a number of times in which he had to hurl racial epithets at the black cast.
It wasn’t until about a week before filming ended that Smith got to meet the real Reed, whose pop-singing career got derailed.
“Kathryn didn’t want us to know a lot of the specifics. She wanted us just to come and react,” says Smith, adding the director would come in each day with different ideas for the cast to try out. “It was a way of keeping us off balance and getting spontaneity.” For “Detroit,” Bigelow with her cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd utilizes her familiar close-up cinema verite docu-style camera to increase the intensity, but before setting down in the motel the film gives audiences a thumbnail sketch of the elements that led to the 1967 riots in Detroit and other cities.
The director also interweaves archival footage of such officials as President Lyndon B. Johnson and Michigan Gov. George Romney as well as actual riot footage to set the stage for the National Guard being sent in.
The uprising had been going on for two days when sniper fire was believed to be coming from the Algiers Motel. Both the police and Guard responded, as well as a security guard, Melvin Dismukes, who was a consultant on the film.
Played by British-born actor John Boyega, Dismukes was hoping to mediate the situation at the Algiers.
Soon the situation turned ugly, and the guardsmen left the scene not wanting to confront the police. The decision by Dismukes to stay would cost him. The security guard would face charges and come under fire from people on both sides of the case.
Desperate to prove someone was the sniper, the interrogation turned into a “death game” where suspects were led off believing they would be killed. The situation soon spiraled, including at least one of the women being stripped naked.
“While the story itself is interesting, it is part of a continuum of other events that predate the Detroit incidents,” says Boal.
Clearly, though it is something that happened 50 years ago, “Detroit” — already being talked about in Oscar terms — will resonate with contemporary audiences.
Boal gives Bigelow credit for tackling the story.
“The biggest thing for me is that quite apart from her technical abilities she demonstrates a lot of courage in the material that she picks,” the screenwriter says. “This is the story that she wanted to make, and I’m not sure how many other directors would have done it. She’s gutsy.”
Smith sees the film as a way to open the door to conversations.
“Hopefully, people will have some empathy and see these people as not just black but human,” he says.