Whereas Kwedar and Bentley make a formidable crew, they’d not have made the movie with out the assistance of producer Monique Walton (“Bull”), who believes of their equitable profit-sharing system.
Through the Chicago Critics Movie Pageant, RogerEbert.com spoke with Kwedar and Walton in individual about trusting actors, deciding to movie in an actual jail, and casting Paul Raci.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
How did you get the ball rolling on Sing Sing?
Greg Kwedar: Eight years in the past, proper earlier than my first movie, “Transpecos,” premiered at SXSW in 2016, I used to be producing a brief documentary for a pal inside a most safety jail in Kansas. And it was my first time ever going behind the wall. On a tour of the power, I handed by a cell, and a younger man was elevating a rescue canine. It stopped me in my tracks as a result of I noticed the therapeutic that was taking place in each instructions between this man and this animal, and all my expectations about jail and incarcerated folks have been flipped on their head. Loads of these expectations had been propped up by the film I’d seen.
I used to be simply determined to know if there was anybody else on the market making an attempt to do issues otherwise in jail, and within the lodge room that evening, I bought on Google and actually typed in who was doing issues otherwise in jail. On the prime of the search subject was Rehabilitation By means of the Arts (RTA) in New York. They have been lined in massive press, like The New Yorker, The New York Occasions, NPR. They’d performed all of the basic performs from Shakespeare to “A Few Good Males” and “On the Waterfront.” However there was this Esquire piece of one of many solely originals that they had performed for 2 nights solely at Sing Sing a couple of time-traveling musical comedy known as Breaking the Mummy’s Code, and there was simply one thing in regards to the tone of it, of this like Madcap comedy in such a darkish and oppressive place that felt like life to me. Tonally, it was additionally like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” meets a Michel Gondry movie or one thing. It simply felt like an invite to find extra.
However there have been much more years in between. Monique got here on type of late, comparatively.
Monique Walton: Six years in we met by probability. We have been each in Austin and we had by no means intersected till we met via the Austin Movie Society. We have been in a position to hang around, and I realized about how he and Clint made “Jockey,” and we had simply made “Bull,” and we have been speaking about this concept of a community-based strategy to filmmaking and what it meant and the construction of the film and the way a lot he made it for. A pair of months after we frolicked, Greg and Clint invited me to reasonable a panel they have been doing on the mannequin they made “Jockey” on, after which afterward, they pitched me “Sing Sing.” They have been like: We haven’t any cash but. We’ve got a little bit of a draft of a script, however we’re taking pictures in two months. You recognize, what do you assume? You wanna bounce in?
