I’ve been a fan of Darren Grant’s work for many years. His name has graced the bottom left hand corner in the openings and closings of music videos for artist such as Jaheim (“Anything” featuring Next, “Put That Woman First” and “Fabulous”); Brian McKnight (“Anytime” & “You Should Be Mine” featuring Mase) and his 2001 MTV award winning “Survivor” video by Destiny’s Child (he also directed their “No, No, No part 1”, “No, No, No part 2”, “With Me”, “Bills Bills, Bills” and “Bugaboo”). Darren also directed the posthumous star-studded tribute video of “Miss You” by Aaliyah. His directing style is visually appealing and memorable. With an impressive list of over 130 Music Video directing credits under his belt, Grant’s transition into feature film was inevitable.
During a pre-release/promotional tour for the movie, Darren Grant made a stop here in Seattle, a city that he once called home for the first 19 years of his life. Director Darren Grant is sure to be the latest claim to fame for a city synonymously known as the birth place of Grunge, Sir-Mix-A lot, Starbucks and Microsoft. I got a chance to sit down with him to discuss his journey into Music Video direction, his feature film directorial debut experience, what it was like to work with Tyler Perry and his future plans.
Before I even entered the room in which Darren Grant was situated, I was greeted by the gray-haired, gun-toting image of “Madea”, which made me smile (and relax!). When I entered, he stood from the couch & we shook hands. His smile was genuine and again, helped ease my nerves.SLO: I’m a little nervous…
DG: That’s alright!
SLO: Ok, let’s see…I read that you were from Seattle. What are your roots here in Seattle?
DG: Um…Born and raised. Lived here for 19 years…
SLO: Where did you go to school? High School?
DG: Uh, Sammamish High School in Bellevue…
SLO: I went to Redmond.
DG: Oh you did? Aww (laughs)…rivals.
SLO: Uh-huh!
DG: Yeah, I just bounced around, ya know from Northgate to Seward Park to Bellevue ya know, so, that’s it. Finished in ’87, went to San Diego for 5, 6 years and then like after Community College and just kinda like not knowing what I want to do, I finally decided that I wanted to do film.
SLO: Okay! Well you’re actually answering a couple questions…(laughs) in that one…
DG: Yeah, my mom has always been like kind of, uh, into the whole indy film thing, ya know, since I was growing up and we used to go to the Seattle [International] Film Festival and ya know and she used to go to Sundance and she’s always been a screenwriter and so she’s done all that so it was always kinda been around me…
factoid: Darren Grant’s mother, Patsy Hilbert, was a vital part of the Seattle film scene, having written and directed several award-winning small films. Ms. Hilbert was part of several popular commercial campaigns in the city of Seattle.
SLO: Right…
DG: …I just never really knew what I wanted to do until, like, I just got a little bit older. I was a little B-Boy breakdancer when I was younger and then my mom was into film and I was like ‘Music videos seem like a good mesh of like Hip-Hop and filmmaking…like lemme try that” and then so I started to go that route and then, ya know, ended up getting a film degree and just saying, ya know what…I did music videos for like, ya know, some years and I was like, ya know this is cool but I wanna do a film…I just didn’t know when I would be ready.
SLO: ‘Cause you have been actually doing it for awhile. I actually, know your name…
DG: Uh-huh…
SLO: …everytime I’d see a video I would be like “Ah, that’s his…ah!” I just love your work…
DG: Thank you
Darren & I discussed how his ability to “tap into people” helped him re-define the image of Brian McKnight and create that crossover appeal with the video for “Anytime”. Same thing happened with the video for Deborah Cox’s “Nobody’s Supposed To Be Here”, where Grant envisioned this video to have a “down South, Gospel flavor”.
DG: We shot that, like, in the oldest existing slave plantation…it’s like a historical landmark.
He is also the main man behind all the conceptual ideas for the videos he directs by writing the actual treatments himself or having writers handle it when his schedule is busy. But nothing compares to the master himself.
DG: ‘Cause its just that personal touch!
We conversed on the noticeable directing styles of himself and fellow music video directors like Hype Williams, F. Gary Gray and Lionel C. Martin, specifically in the “content” that is seen in the videos that they direct.
SLO: You don’t do the…car thing…
DG: Mmm-hmm…
SLO: …and the women and the stuff like that…I think that’s a good thing…
DG: That [the cars & women] was a good and bad thing because they wanted, ya know, you get ‘hot’ by doing that, ya know what I mean, by doing, like, videos like that ‘cause that’s, like, the trend…
SLO: Right…
DG: …I was just like, ‘Man, what’s up with the story? What’s up with some emotion?’ Ya know what I mean? Like, ‘Can we have more than just a T&A type of video?’, ya know, so I got a little bit of backlash because I just wanted to do something that had a little more depth to it so I didn’t always get all the ‘Bling” videos even though I did a few.
factoid: Fellow music video director turned feature film director F. Gary Gray also directed “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” leading lady Kimberly Elise in his film “Set It Off” (1996), her first acting role in a feature.
SLO: So when I realized that you were doing this…this movie, I was thinking ‘Huh!’. Is that what you plan to do…are you out of the music video business?
DG: I mean pretty much. I mean I’ve been working on this for almost a year…a little less than a year, so…
Darren also touched on the decline in quality musical acts being put out vs. when he first started out in the business. The music video genre has changed because the music industry has changed causing budgets for videos to shrink because music sales have been bad therefore causing creativity with music video content and themes to suffer creating this vicious cycle of mediocrity.
DG: I mean it’s starting to turn around after, like 3 or 4 years of being really, really bad, it’s starting to turn around but…I dunno, I just…ya know, I’m just a storyteller and that’s what attracted Tyler to my work, ya know?
Since Tyler Perry was so accustomed to not only producing, writing, starring in and directing his stage plays, I wanted to know how Darrin & Tyler handled that shift in power during the production.
SLO: Being that he’s [Tyler Perry] a director himself…
DG: Mmm-hmm…
SLO: …was it hard directing a director?
DG: Oh, yeah, a little bit (laughs). I mean there were moments like, where I’d be like, ‘Tyler…this and this and this…’ and then something wouldn’t work and he’d be like ‘Darren what do you want me to do? Just tell me what you want me to do!’…
SLO: (laughs)
DG: …’Just tell me!’, ya know he’d get a little attitude but he was just trying to keep the pressure on because our schedule was so tight, ya know what I mean?
factoid: The movie shooting schedule was for a 25 day production. The big, beautiful mansion that appears in the film is Tyler Perry’s actual Atlanta home…all 16k square feet & $5 million worth!
DG: I wanted it to look big, ya know, so that was the challenge a little bit was that I still wanted to be able to infuse some of the stuff I’ve done in music videos and we were able to, ya know, we made it look elegant where it needed to be elegant and look country when we needed it to look country.
We went on to discuss the state of black films and the restrictions Hollywood places on the types of films depicting black people and culture.
DG: Hollywood doesn’t allow you to make these types of films, ya know what I mean? If it’s a black film they want to make, they wanna be able to put it into a box, ya know what I mean? Films like ‘The Color Purple’ and ya know, ‘Waiting to Exhale’ and ‘Soul Food’, those are all good films but they’re all, like, one type of movie, ya know what I mean? ‘Coming To America’…one type of movie…you’ve never seen a film that has like, 5 different…and “Officer And A Gentleman”…5 different films rolled up in to 1.
Darren Grant was actually not the first choice to direct “Diary of a Mad Black Woman”. In fact, after a phone conversation between Darren & Tyler, Darren’s agent told him that Tyler Perry thought he was “arrogant…but I like him!”. Perry had confidence in Darren and enjoyed his work enough to make it happen.
Perry being behind the creativity of the project proved beneficial on the set for the director, cast & crew. Darren credits Perry with being able to provide enough backstory (info that was not literally on the printed/readable script) for everyone to feed off of & work accordingly.
“Diary of a Mad Black Woman” also had an amazing cast…including the legendary Cicely Tyson, who plays the mother of Kimberly Elise’s character, “Helen”.
SLO: What was it like to working with Cicely Tyson?
DG: She was great! I mean I was a little bit nervous because of her status in the business…
SLO: Like I am…right here with you (laughs)…
DG: (laughs) Yeah, yeah. And then everybody says ‘…she’s difficult…’ and ‘…make sure you call her only by her character name while she’s working…’, ‘…don’t call her Ms. Tyson while she’s here. She’s Myrtle…that’s her character…’ so I was like “Oooow! Geez, okay, okay…”
SLO: (laughs)
DG: But she was a sweetheart, I mean, she just, like, I would say something and she’d be like, ‘Mmm-hmm…’ (he fixated his eyes on mine intensely to demonstrate Ms. Tyson’s stare)
SLO: (laughs)
DG: …like looking dead into my soul and I’d be like, ‘So this is what we want to do Myrtle and this is what I’m thinkin’…’ and whoopty-woo…and she’d be like ‘Okay.’….
SLO: Was that weird to do?
DG: Ya know what? The thing about actors is that you don’t over direct them.
As most people know by now, movies are not shot in sequence due to actors schedules, locations, weather, etc. Darren shared with me that one particularly emotional & intense scene between Kimberly & Steve Harris took place on the first DAY of shooting…a scene in which “Helen” slaps Harris’ character, “Charles”. He went on to explain that a directors job is basically to set up a “comfortable environment” and just “guide” everyone and let the “machine” roll.
SLO: What do you plan to do next?
DG: I have no idea. I’m just reading scripts, ya know, and I have some things that are pending and I’m meeting on…
SLO: Do you want ‘Action’ or more of the same genre…
DG: I wouldn’t mind, ya know, like still where I’m at, ya know, as a young director, ya know, you still wanna do a movie that’s gonna be popular so, ya know, a little Action/Action-Comedy I’m not ready to go heavy Drama…yet
SLO: Right…
DG: …’cause the heavy Drama I’m gonna get at this point is not really gonna be…what I wanna do, ya know?
In “Diary of a Mad Black Woman”, Tyler Perry plays 3 characters, 2 of which required3 to 4 hours of make-up and wardrobe. Darren explained that sometimes Perry had his characters interchanging (example, sometimes “Joe” would talk like “Madea” and in a scene that didn’t make the final cut of the film, the “regular” character that Perry played, “Brian” started to display a little bit of “Madea” when it came time to yell.
DG: We were like, ‘Tyler! Madea is comin’ out…Brian…
SLO: (laughs)
DG: …I was like, ‘Lose the Southern accent…
It was approaching my time to wrap up my interview. We were just talking like 2 old friends playing “catch-up”. I had to know what some of the pressures he felt directing his first feature.
DG: Never having directed actors before, ya know? And also, ya know, working with several millions of dollars…and also trying to keep a schedule…
He was also honest in sharing that he was nervous about the melding of the different genres of Comedy, Drama and the love story mix all in one film. He’s pleased with his work and hopes that movie go-ers will be as well.
As I was leaving the room, Darren had one request for me…to tell everyone to go see this movie opening weekend! The importance to go out & support black films that crucial first week is how Hollywood determines whether our films are worthy of being produced. Let’s all make it crystal clear to the Hollywood powers-that-be that black films ARE something that the public wants to see more of.
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