Nightjohn (played by Carl Lumbley) teaches the alphabet to Sarny (played by Allison Jones). In the pre-Civil War South, slaves who dared to teach or learn reading and writing were severely persecuted.
by Bill Cain, SJ
DAY 1: After eight months of writing and months more of rewrites, here we are in South Carolina--finally filming Nightjohn! Three key hirings by the project's producer, David Manson, have gotten us the green light for production: Charles Burnett has agreed to direct. Beau Bridges has signed on to play the slave owner, Clel Waller. And Carl Lumbley, who initially turned down the project without reading it because he didn't want to play a slave, has, after reading the script, agreed to play the charismatic teacher, Nightjohn. With those heavy hitters in place, the production has been thrown into high gear. We now have 24 days to shoot a very complicated period piece set in the pre-Civil War South, and there is general agreement among the crew that it cannot be done. And once we have all agreed it can't be done, we set about doing it.
We are trying to tell a little-known story about African-American men and women who dared to learn to read and write when the penalties for such learning were, in many places, horrific. And yet, in spite of such penalties, by the end of the Civil War over 10 percent of the enslaved population could read and write. It is a story worth telling. Can we tell it in 24 days in a way that does honor to these forgotten heroes? Here we go . . .
DAY 3: We are on schedule, though it is painful for me as author when the first question every day is, "What can we cut?" It's a tough adjustment from theater, where the author's word is law, to film, where, if the producers don't like the script, they go out and get themselves another writer. Fortunately, there seems to be a consensus that the script represents a shared vision. The big issue now is language. I have opted not to try to recreate a historically accurate dialect. It is suggested, forcefully, that this is a betrayal of the source material. Is it? I wonder. I want the story to be immediately accessible, and I'm afraid antique language will make it quaint. Discussions are blunt and painful. One of the things that make filming Nightjohn hard is that everyone is so personally committed to getting to the truth of the story. Ironically, it would probably be easier if we cared less. But we don't, and passions run high, even on small details of the story.
DAY 5: Sarny, the character we will follow from beginning to end of Nightjohn, is being played by Allison Jones, an extraordinarily talented eleven year old who has never acted before. It becomes clear to me that one of my major jobs will be helping Allison prepare for each scene.
(There is some poetic justice in this, since to be here at all I am playing hookey from teaching grammar to sixth graders at St. Ignatius Academy in the Bronx.)
Allison, of course, knows about slavery, but explaining to her the specifics that are in the script is painful. It reminds me of beginning The Diary of Anne Frank with a class of eighth graders at Nativity Mission School in Manhattan only to realize that they had never heard of the Holocaust. Explaining such a thing to a child is daunting; I see Allison struggling every day to make sense of a history that is horrendously unjust. How could such things have happened? Sarny, her character, asks similar questions throughout the script, and Allison brings her confusions and her awakenings to her character every day.
Location filming carries risks; Beau Bridges, who played slave owner Clel Waller, gets protection from the rain
DAYS 8, 9, 10: Rain, rain go away! We have been trying to shoot in cotton fields outside Sumter for days, and it always rains! So here we are, cast, crew, and 50 extras from a high school, standing in the mud and hoping for a break in the clouds. Local farmers, who have been driving by to watch the filming every day, enjoy our predicament. They roll down their windows and shout, "Don't you know you can't pick cotton in the rain?" No, we don't, but we're learning.
We lose time moving inside to shoot a key scene--a fight in the slave quarters over whether Nightjohn should be allowed to teach Sarny. The decisive moment comes when the community elder, Old Man, played by Bill Cobbs, reveals by reciting the alphabet that he himself once started to learn reading. He also reveals that his missing fingers are not the result of an accident at the forge but a punishment for being caught reading. He plays the scene with his whole heart, filling the cabin with his rage and fear. Unfortunately, some of the best takes are compromised by Bill's getting the alphabet wrong. At the end of the sequence, when I congratulate him on his work, he tells me that it's easy to play a well-written scene. I say, "Bill, I can't take credit for writing the alphabet." He says, "No, but I can for rewriting it!"
DAY 12: Once we get a sunny day (and runaway mules are caught and harnessed), we move into the fields to shoot exteriors as quickly as we can. The extras, by now, have become part of the family, and I look forward to seeing them every day. Maggie and some of the other older women know all there is to know about picking cotton since they spent their childhoods in the fields, working for "The Man" for pennies. They become our tutors and have a good laugh at the white actors' expense, watching their first attempts at the hard work of picking cotton, saying, "Those boys better get picking or they won't be taking home a dime by the end of the day."
DAY 13: Good weather continues, so we stay outdoors and film two scenes that take place at opposite ends of the film: the selling of Sarny's mother and then the selling of Sarny, the final scene. Both scenes are complicated, involving a huge crane for the camera, extras, and the same two mules that ran away during the cotton fields sequence. We are all being extremely technical, but once "Action!" is called and Sarny's mother is taken down the road, technique is forgotten. I find I am weeping. When "Cut" is called I look around and see I am not alone. The reality of the situation has caught us unawares and has cut through the mechanics of filming. This insane evil happened. Here. If it is true, as Dr. King said, that unearned suffering is redemptive, then we are standing on holy ground indeed. But there is no time to stop. We watch as history repeats itself with the selling of Sarny. And again we weep.
DAY 18: By now we are all tired and getting punch-drunk with the long hot days and longer cold nights. At magic hour, twilight, we are shooting a jumping-the-broom sequence, part of a celebration of an illegal marriage in the slave quarters. The joyful scene gets carried away with itself; the actor playing the groom grabs the director and drags him into the wedding dance. It ruins the shot, but before long, everyone is dancing, leaving the assistant directors to shout us back into order. It was a good and much-needed celebration of very hard work.
DAYS 19, 20: In a terrible rush, we face the most dramatic scene in the film. The slave owner has discovered that Nightjohn has been teaching reading and proceeds to punish him, just as Old Man foretold. Constant adjustments for camera leave very little time or space for acting, but Carl as Nightjohn works full out in every take. At the end of the first day Carl and I share the panicked feeling that we are not getting the soul of this most-crucial scene because we have to work so fast. The next day Carl turns frustration into laserlike focus and strikes gold as, at the end of the grueling scene, he commissions Sarny to take his place in the community as teacher. At the end of the day, I look for him to congratulate him, but he's already left his trailer for the hotel. As I walk away, disappointed at having missed him, a car stops and Carl jumps out. "Well," he says, "at least I got a shot at it." I say, "You did more than that, Carl; you hit the mark. Bull's eye." We embrace and prepare for the final sequence of the film--Sarny's triumph, which takes place in a church.
Author Bill Cain, SJ, who turned Gary Paulsen's novella Nightjohn into the movie script, was on location for the inevitable on-the-spot rewrites. Here he helps Allison, who played Sarny, with her lines.
DAYS 22, 23, 24: The church stands as it did during the period of slavery, and it is a revelation to me. Built on two levels--a ground floor for whites and an upstairs gallery for enslaved servants--there is no connection between these two levels within the body of the church. It is the theology of slavery set in stone.
It is here that Sarny must face down the slave owner, calling on everything that Nightjohn has taught her. It is the longest and hardest scene that Allison must play. During the scene, Beau Bridges as the slave owner tears into her powerfully. Then, as soon as each take is over, he sits down with her and talks her gently through the next shot. This is above and beyond the call of duty and typical of Beau.
Our final moments in the church are devoted to filming a hymn that is sung as a tribute to Sarny, whose courage and learning have averted a tragedy for the black community. During an early take, the first assistant director, a tough lady I call Tank Girl, breaks down. Her tears are due in part to sheer exhaustion but also in part to the truth of the playing.
In a later take, Lorraine Toussaint, who plays Delie, Sarny's surrogate mother, improvises a kiss blown to Allison. Without missing a beat, Allison returns it. The kiss feels like a blessing on the whole enterprise.
After many battles in the editing room, the film gets its first showing the closing night of the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles. The final scene in the church brings down the house. Reviews from all over the country are excellent ("A jewel"--New York Times), Carl gets a much-deserved Cable Ace nomination as best actor, and the National Black Programming Consortium names Nightjohn Best Drama of the Year.
More important, as cast and crew gather for a screening at the Directors' Guild in Los Angeles, we face each other with pride and joy. In 24 exhausting, thrilling days, we have told the story we set out to tell, the little-known story of a teacher named Nightjohn. And we hope that in some very small way we have continued his tradition of teaching by telling his story.
Page maintained by R VandeVelde, vande@math.luc.edu. Updated: Mon., March 17 1997