THEIR TOWN: An interview with OT: our town's Catherine Borek and Scott Hamilton Kennedy. By Warren Curry 8/13/03

Scott Hamilton Kennedy and Catherine Borek

Director Scott Hamilton Kennedy "was completely smitten" the first time he met Catherine Borek, an English teacher at Compton, California's Dominguez High School, at a party in 1998. That initial meeting coupled with a shared love for theater paved the way not only for the two's relationship, but also planted the seeds for Kennedy's festival-favorite documentary, OT: our town.

OT: our town chronicles Borek's mission of creating a drama department at Dominguez High and putting on the school's first play -- a production of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" -- in over twenty years. Through this undertaking, Kennedy introduces us to a group of young, artistic minds at Dominguez -- students who come from one of the most notorious communities in all of the United States. Their combined efforts to achieve the singular goal exposes a commonality between people from all walks of life and serves as another example of the power that art has to trigger the creative impulses within teenagers. The Compton found in OT: our town is very much unlike the media depictions of the city that most are all too familiar with.

Kennedy and Borek recently sat down to discuss their new film. Their interviews were conducted separately, but in our quest to provide a more reader-friendly experience, the questions and answers have been combined into one easy-to-digest whole. Film Movement will release OT: our town theatrically in NY and LA, and on DVD to members of their film club, on August 15, 2003.

(Note: This interview was conducted as part of a press roundtable, therefore not all questions were asked by CinemaSpeak.)

(Read the review of OT: our town)

(Visit the Film Movement/OT website to watch the trailer)


You have a theater background. How important was it for you to make a film that championed theater?

Scott Hamilton Kennedy: That's a good question. Championed, I probably wouldn't have thought of in the beginning. I knew how important theater was, but that was probably part of the journey of making this film -- I got to see again how important it was. As much as I came from theater, I wasn't in a theater clique. I studied theater in college, but I still didn't feel comfortable in that clique. I was like, "Oh, actors -- they're so dramatic!" It was also really fun to see in the movie without having a drama department there, how quickly everybody took on those roles. It became a theater clique -- you had the person who was more melodramatic, the person who didn't like it, the person who wanted to be the lead, and the love interest between George and Emily. Through the process, I got to see how important it was for these kids and how much I loved not only seeing them go through the process, but sitting there as an audience member and watching "Our Town" come off was great -- and seeing the community see that. It was not probably top of the list when I did it, and it became very high up sort of in the process of seeing how important it was to them.

At what point did it become high up on the list? During the filming, in post-production?

SHK: Probably post. I was so deep into it during the shooting that I couldn't see what the movie was. Luckily I had an idea coming in about what I hoped the movie was going to be. We have this great underdog story about them putting on this play -- the first play in 20 years -- and that seemed like a given right from the start. And then we have "Our Town," and I like to call the subplot, Is "Our Town" their town? I didn't call it that from day one when I went in their shooting, but I had a feeling that that tension was going to be there. Were they going to relate to this play? Was this play, written in 1937 and set in 1903, going to relate to these students that are inner city and (living) in 2000, at the time?

How did you choose "Our Town"?

Catherine Borek: It was a difficult choice. I was very conscious of being a white woman choosing "Our Town," and I remember spending hours in the library looking through plays that I thought would be more appropriate for my student population. It was very practical. Mostly for "Our Town," you don't need a set. You just need some ladders and some chairs and that's about what we had. I could get some ladders, I could get some chairs -- done. Also, I'd done it in high school; I was Sarah Simpson, not Simon Simpson, the town drunk So, I'd done that before and having a model, something in the back of my head to follow getting into that process was (helpful). Also, I just loved the play. The idea was in my head that even if it is this sort of white Americana type play, it doesn't have to be a white Americana type play. It's got these ideas that are not so tied to color or race and can be expanded. Like it says in the movie, birth and love and marriage and death -- everybody goes through that.

Whom does it help to see those universal themes?

SHK: I think it helps all of us. I think we are much more similar than we are dissimilar, and it's an interesting time to say that. There are so many difficulties in our world that mostly come from, I hate to say it, but I think most of the tension comes from religion and people trying to separate themselves: "My God is better than your God, and this culture is better than your culture." When it all comes down to it -- I know everyone knows this already -- we have the same blood, we have the same bones, we have the same desires. As the Dalai Lama says, "We all seek happiness and avoid suffering." That is what we're really all here about. So my answer would be all of us would benefit from that. There are so many layers of serendipity in the film. One thing that I hope comes across in the film is the community of Compton, and the community of Dominguez, coming to see this play at the end and seeing themselves in this play.

Did it take a lot of convincing to get the students to be in the production?

CB: Not at all -- that was the funny part. Audition time it didn't take a lot of convincing. For auditions we had about 50 students out there for 24 roles, excited and giddy and borrowing "Out Town" scripts and finding someone to read with. When the work got hard -- everyone's really nice when they want the role and they have this idea from what that they've seen on TV or seen in the movies about what putting on a play is about, but then when it gets hard that's when it took the convincing. And I was sometimes not very good at that and sometimes decent at that -- at least decent enough that they stayed.

Do you feel that theater is an art form that is increasingly being lost on younger people?

CB: I might be off the topic, but I remember in this one Simon and Garfunkel song, there's a question, "Is the theater really dead?" That always struck me like it was talking about TV, and sort of this idea that there was no theater anymore because we're so obsessed with television now. Is that lost on our kids? Yeah, I think so. They're not going to see live theater as much. If you go into my school, I doubt that sixty percent of them have been to see one play in the last 3 or 4 years. But does that mean as far as acting goes that theater's dead? No. I think most of our students are actors on some level or have this desire to act on some level -- just to play different characters, which I think most of us have tried at some point or another.

Was there ever a point when you wanted Scott to turn off the camera?

CB: No. Actually, I think the film helped the play come to completion. They say that one of the teaching strategies is if you're having a hard time with your students, bring in a video camera because students seem to behave a lot better when they're being watched. The interesting thing about the video was that when we were just starting out and were happy and excited, people loved that camera there…further into it when things start getting stressful and you don't like the way you're coming off and you're crying, you're being ugly, people wanted the camera off at that point. There was a never an issue of the documentary stopping. Just like the play has to go through to the end, we have to see the film go through to the end. That was a part of this play in a lot of ways -- the fact that it was being documented.

You must have had a host of preconceptions about what a Compton high school was going to be like. Can you point to one in particular that was shattered during the process of making the film?

SHK: One would be that everybody is a gangster and only listens to hip-hop.

Did you really think that?

SHK: Well, that's good -- to focus (the question). The music thing -- because I just love so many different types of music -- that probably, as much as it's not as an important a cliché, is one that surprised me; to see what a great variety of music these kids to listen to. I did expect it to be a very high amount of hip-hop and that's there, but one of Ebony's favorite bands is Korn, and it just goes across the map. Not in a million years did I think this young woman named Rachel was going to walk up to me and say, "I just heard this song today and fell in love with it," and it was "At Last" by Etta James. I just wasn't expecting that.

Mainly, the biggest cliché that was slapped in my face was fear. My fear of going to Compton, my fear for Catherine teaching in Compton. The fear of, "Can you drive down the street and be safe?" Are you worried about a drive-by? Are you worried that someone is going to try to take your money or hurt you. Sure, some of those things exist there -- I've lived in many different cities and they are at least as dangerous. I lived in New York City for a long time, I grew up in the Bay Area, L.A. The world can be a dangerous place, and some of that is there, but the main thing is that I saw a great community. I actually fell more in love with L.A. when I went to Compton, because it was my first experience with a community. Los Angeles, sadly, is an industry town, and I love this industry, I love films, but it's a strange community that way. We all are kind of misfits in a way and come from different places -- some of us are from here and some of us are not -- and there are great communities around it, and I have a lot of close friends within that, but it wasn't the same feeling. Compton is a community unto itself. They don't care about what the box office is going to be or The Nielsen ratings or anything like that. Growing up in Berkley and Oakland, I grew up with a lot of students like that. Not to play some Vanilla Ice thing, "I'm so down," but I did -- that's where I grew up. I moved further and further away from that going to school in upstate New York and living in New York City. This was kind of like a homecoming in a strange way for me.

How receptive was the Dominguez administration to you coming in to make the film?

SHK: To this day, we're still frustrated by that. They weren't involved. I did not ask for permission, and that was a combination of being ignorant -- it was my first film and I didn't know I needed to -- and I was brought in with Catherine and Ms. Greene to help with the play, and I just brought the camera. I asked the kids if it was okay to film them, and I got releases from all of their parents. I clearly understood that you can't have someone under 18 give their consent. The school kind of gave me permission by not stopping me. Sadly, they still have not taken advantage of what the film can do. I'm not saying that as, "Oh, my film is so great." I'm saying that as, "At the bare minimum, what I have at least seen as a reaction to this film is that arts and education are important. Look what are students can do, look at the creativity and the intelligence and the potential for our students. Give us more money." They haven't taken advantage of that yet, and hopefully that will still come.

CB: It's a slippery slope. The film has so much good that it can do for our school, and the film itself is what has raised our drama money each and every year, so the school doesn't have to put out. We've raised about $20,000 from outside sources, and the school hasn't had to shell out at all. I don't understand how there could be any tension with that. I think the school just has a control issue and maybe they think this is a little out of their control. But so be it -- it's for the good of your school. At the same time, the administration has been very helpful with the theater department from time to time. I don't want to blame the administration for too much -- it's just a bunch of people who like to follow the rules even when it's not necessary to follow the rules, and when it's helpful to put your neck out a little bit.

Theater is largely seen as an inaccesible, somewhat exclusive form of entertainment these days, mainly because it's quite expensive to go see a play. In an economically depressed community like Compton, how do you cultivate an interest in the theater?

CB: (Pause) Well…our tickets are only $4. With "Our Town" we didn't sell out the last two nights, but every play since then we've sold out every single night. We make a big production out of it. I have students going around wearing clapboards all over campus, and we put up these advertisements like, "Sexy People Go See Plays." (laughs) They've just been very entertaining and that's what's kind of selling people. This past year with "Inherit The Wind," which is about the Scopes Monkey Trial, evolution versus creation, that gets people fired up. After "Inherit The Wind" this year, I came to school and I opened my door and I hear these kids talking about, "Well, I don't know about the Bible." They're having these conversations about theater and just making good quality work and the kids are really talented. Having that talent just makes people want to see them. They're really good at what they do.

Where did you screen the film in Compton?

SHK: At the high school. That was a nerve wracking screening; very tense. We were all in high school, we all saw movies in high school, and actually it's been a rule long before I made the movie: if you can keep their heads off the desks, you're winning. That's an image I always keep in my head. If this is getting them to start putting their heads on the table, you're doing the wrong thing. I feared that they were going to think that I got it wrong. That they were just going to think, "This is another guy with a camera coming to Compton and he didn't represent us." The one thing that seemed very clear is that they felt very represented...they all were very proud and they enjoyed the movie. They cheered and hooted and laughed and got tense. They stayed with the movie.

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