Transcription

• Beverly Hamilton

  There were some things in that Color Purple movie that people really were offended by. People were not woke. You know, we didn't have that word then, but everybody was still in the closet. You know, because I live in a small town, and people knew that I was in the movie, they were not ashamed to confront me about it.

• Shayne Brakefield

  The Color Purple, I can honestly say, is the reason I'm still alive today, without question.

• Tim Kirkman (Host)

  Welcome to Reel Lives, a podcast about movies and the people who love them. In each episode, we focus on one film and hear stories from people about the ways in which the film made an impact on their lives. My name is Tim Kirkman, and today we're talking about The Color Purple.

• Clip

  I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field and don't notice it.

• Speaker #4

  Are you saying it just want to be loved like it say in the Bible?

• Clip

  Yeah, Celie. Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance and holler. Just trying to be loved.

• Tim Kirkman (Host)

  In 1985, Steven Spielberg was the king of Hollywood blockbusters like Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. So it shocked everyone when he took a massive risk to direct The Color Purple, an adaptation of Alice Walker's brutal, devastating novel. The gamble paid off. The film was a massive critical and commercial hit, earning 11 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, though... it did set a record for the most nominations without a single win. At its core, the movie centers on Celie, a young black girl in rural Georgia in the early 1900s whose life is defined by severe trauma. Celie bears two children by a man she believes is her father, both taken from her, and she's forced into an abusive marriage with an older man she knows only as "Mister." Mister completely isolates Celie from her beloved sister Nettie, And it's the sister's desire to reconnect that becomes the heart of the story. Yet, this is ultimately a story of survival. Through the strength of other women, like her fierce stepdaughter-in-law, Sophia, and the sultry blues singer, Suge Avery, with whom she forms a deep romantic bond, Celie finds her hope, her community, and her voice. This film is also deeply personal to me. During my senior year of high school, Spielberg brought Hollywood to my rural North Carolina county. Alongside established star Danny Glover, the production featured two complete unknowns at the time, Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey. The production transformed our town, turning paved roads into period-accurate red clay dirt and hiring locals as extras. When the film was released, I became completely obsessed, watching it in theaters at least six or seven times, and each viewing was an opportunity to find people in the background that I recognized. My history teacher, or a neighbor, or people from church. It was also my first memory of understanding the art of cinema. How Spielberg would transition the sounds of African drumming from one scene into the sounds of rainfall into metal buckets in the next. And I loved the music by Quincy Jones. I wore out the cassette soundtrack. But my favorite thing was to take a drive with my friend Ann out to the Huntley Farm in Anson County. We would ignore the no trespassing sign, jump the fence, and walk the grounds of some of the film's most memorable locations. The big farmhouse, the church, the juke joint, the fields, and all the time wishing I had been part of the magic.

• Beverly Hamilton

  I was talking to my dad one day and he said, what are you going to do when you graduate high school? I said, I'm going to be a movie star. It just came out of nowhere. I didn't think I had the looks for it, but I thought that I could be a great actress. My name is Beverly Hamilton. I live in Monroe, North Carolina, and I played Sophia's sister in The Color Purple movie. If I start talking too much, you let me know. I was a nursing student at South Piedmont Community College. Someone had put posters out advertising for extras for The Color Purple movie. And they were looking for women that were six feet tall or taller with a dark complexion. And I said, oh, my God, someone's looking for me. So I took the information and I came to the audition, which was on a Sunday afternoon. There was probably 300 other women that were there. I walked in like I owned the place. And because I was a student. At that campus, I knew how to get in the back door. So I went around to the back, skipped that line that was all the way out to the street. And I just sat down and I met the casting director. And he opened the door. When he opened the door, he looked at me. He says, come here. And so I came over and he took me into the room. And he asked me had I read the book by Alice Walker, The Color Purple. And I told him yes. So he said he was going to pretend to be Harpo. He wanted me to pretend to be Sophia. And he gave me some lines. And I did the lines. And he recorded it. And he says, you have the part. Just like that. You know, some people say, I'm going to Hollywood. But I felt like Hollywood came to me. He walked with me back out in the little cafeteria area where everybody was waiting. And he made an announcement. He said, whoever's here for the part of Sophia, you guys can be dismissed. When I walked out, I went and got in my car and I went home. And the first person I told was my husband and my kids. And then I called my mom and I told my mom because I thought she would be proud of it. But she never was a person who seemed to show pride in different things and to, you know, make a big deal of things. She just wanted everything to be just kind of even keel. And that may be where my personality came from in trying to shock people in seeing the most that I could do and the best that I could do, because maybe I was always trying to impress my mom, but you couldn't impress her. (Music interlude) I look at movies different now than I looked at them before. You know, I was just looking at the end result. Behind the scenes, it's not glamorous. I spent about 10 hours per day at the set, and I was in three scenes. One scene I was in was when Oprah got married, well, Sophia got married to Hopper. I had on a purple outfit and a purple hat.

• Clip

  You may now salute the bride.

• Beverly Hamilton

  And they just would instruct us of how we were supposed to present ourselves toward the camera. They'd tell us, stand like this, look at such and such person, give him a grimace or things like that. And so we would do that over and until Steven Spielberg exhausted himself from doing that particular shot. He's a perfectionist, I found out. There was a storm that came up one day and he stopped everything that was going on and started filming the storm. Turned all the cameras away from the set and he filmed the storm. What the sky looked like. The wind in the trees, in a field, you could see the dust kicking up and twirling. You know, he was feeling things like that. He was just really taking it in. Being in the country, he just wanted to feel it. But he was so humble. He was such an humble, spirited person. And he cared a great deal about his work and what he did. The only thing I thought was completely different about the folks that came from California was that all of them were vegetarian. And as soon as they would get a break from working, they would put on some tennis shoes and take off running. They loved to run. So then there was another day that we did. It was when Oprah came home from prison during Christmas. And so she was just seeing her kids and she hadn't seen them in, I don't know, six or eight years. And she wasn't able to stay because. The mayor's wife that brought her home decided she couldn't drive herself back home, I guess because of the weather, snow or something. And so she wanted Oprah to go back with her. But I was on the porch doing that scene in the house.

• Clip

  Because I don't know y'all no more. Oh, no. No, I know you can't.

• Beverly Hamilton

  You know, I had a husband and four girls. I had to go to work on July 22nd, and that was my baby's birthday, and it was also Danny Glover's birthday. We'd go on break, and they had this little truck set up where we could all, you know, come and have lunch and stuff together. And everybody ate together. You know, the crew, cameramen, Steven, everybody. Danny Glover sat with me. They gave him cake, and so he shared the cake with me. The other part that I was in, we went and picked up the children that belonged to Sophia, took them away from Home Depot. So we got in our costumes and our hair and stuff done and they loaded us up on a wagon and it wasn't but about 102 degrees that day and we had on wool clothes and I was holding one of the little girls and she was very uncomfortable she was crying the whole time and I kept trying to console her but there was no consoling that child she was just miserable and there was um horseflies you You know what a horse fly is? A big one. Flying around the tail of that horse. I'm country. I'm country. I'm straight up country, but I'm not that country.

• Clip

  No care for the baby. Yes, indeed. Here it is. Go to your daddy now. What you want me to do with it? Try feeding her and then try fixing up this here mess you done made here. I can smell the rain coming. Miss you, you got yourself some new curtains here. I'm gonna try putting them in the bedroom to see what's going on. Living room's already got itself some flowers. What you looking at? It's gon' rain on your head.

• Beverly Hamilton

  When I went to the seventh grade, I went into an integrated system. Before the integration, We had Marshville Elementary, which was all white. Forest Hills High School, and there was a school in Wingate, but all those were white schools. The black school was only East Union school that was K through 12. So that's where I was. Our teachers told us that they were going to integrate the schools and that we were going to have better books and better tools and that we would have an equal education that we had not had before. And so we were very excited for the integration to happen. And all the kids got along fantastically. At first, maybe everybody was trying to keep peace and make everything go as smoothly as possible. And so they just did their best to promote that. We never had any racial problems. I had and still have, you know, lots and lots of friends from high school.

• Clip

  Miss Millie, always going on over the cup. You children are so clean. Would you like to work for me? Be my maid? Hell no. What did you say? Hell no. What did she say? Hey, can't you pump that crude a little faster? Gal, what did you say to Miss Millie? I said, hell.

• Beverly Hamilton

  And we had a counselor, Ms. Gwen Baucom. She would call us into the office and sit us down and talk to us about where we were academically. And she would also talk to us about where we wanted to go to college. And I had never had a guidance counselor So I love Ms. Gwen Baucom. I had a teacher, Ms. Kiker, that taught English. She loved my writing and she taught me a lot. But I always made really good grades. I love math. I took algebra early on, biology early. I tried to go into a regular, I think it was called consumer math class with Ms. Turner. She gave me the end of year test the first day. And by the time she got back to her desk, I had finished it and handed it back in to her. And she said, take this and go see Ms. Gwen Bauckham. You're going to algebra class. The only thing I didn't like was history. There wasn't anything in history that was about me or anybody that I knew or anybody that looked like me. But, well, you know, we go to the library and we had to do book reports and do research. We were able to choose any kind of books that we wanted, and I remember reading Amelia Earhart. It made me understand that there was a lot more possible in life and for women. Who knows that pushed me toward reading more or writing more, but I was just kind of driven. You know, there was just something inside me that just, if I started doing something, I just had to do, I had to do it the best that I absolutely could do it. And I don't know where that came from, and I don't know when it started. But I think I was trying to impress the teachers. You know, I would always try to blow their mind. You know, it's like, bring it, you know. It's like, you give me this new watch this, I'm going to show you what I can do with this.

• Clip

  You got kids? Yeah. They was my mom and pa. Never know the child to come out right. Unless he's a man, well, children gots to have a pa. Your pa love you. My pa love me. My pa still love me. Except he don't know it. He don't know it.

• Beverly Hamilton

  And, you know, my Mom never saw the movie. Everybody had copies of the movie, you know, back then, having VHS. And I asked her, I think I brought it to her house. And I said, The Color Purple, I said, I don't think you've ever seen it. And she said, no, and I'm not going to see it. She said, don't put it in. And so that was the end of that. As a young girl, I felt ignored and neglected by my Mom. And I couldn't understand what the disconnect or distraction was. You know, what was she focused on if she wasn't focused on the kids? When you knew that she was suffering or that she would accept you coming and hugging her and that wasn't going to happen. So as I was going through nursing school and my psychology classes and different things like that, then I understood my mother more. And I knew that she was... that she had some depression issues. I spent a lot of time with her as an adult, and she and I would talk a lot, and I would try to help her, although she didn't know why I said the things that I said to her, but I kind of used my psychology on her. And I hope I gave her some peace of mind. But at my house, I had full intention of my kids always hearing the words, I love you, because I never heard it. And so my kids still tell me that when they call me, they say, I love you. And my grandkids say, I love you. And I say, I love you more. Because that was something that, for some reason, my Mom couldn't say.

• Clip

  Because don't nobody love me. I love you. You think I's ugly. No, I don't. You ugly. You sure is ugly. You still ugly. Amen. Amen. Oh, Miss Celie. That was just a salt and sugar. Me being jealous of you and Albert. I think you're beautiful.

• Beverly Hamilton

  I was very proud of that movie. Because I think that it made a huge statement. Now everybody can see how women have been treated. And maybe they'll take a second look at even what they do that is negative and that's hurtful to women and to girls. You know, to young girls even. Because, you know, when Whoopi in the movie was a young girl and her mom was sick, the fellow who was taking advantage of her and having children with her, was not her father, that was her stepdad. And she was just a child, I think 14 or 15 years old, and having babies. You know, people think that that's not happening now, but it's happening now. If a woman or a young girl is in a situation like that, I think a movie like that tells her you're not the only one. So, you know, don't isolate yourself. Just fight. Just fight.

• Clip

  All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy, I had to fight my uncles, I had to fight my brothers. Girl child ain't safe in the family men's. But I ain't never thought I had to fight in my own house. I loves Hoppo. God knows I do. But I kill him dead before I let him beat me.

• Shayne Brakefield

  I didn't remember seeing... Black people on the big screen. That's the first time I remember seeing that and seeing them, these women portrayed so powerfully and beautifully. I've seen it about 30 times. My name is Shayne Brakefield. I'm an actor and a licensed massage therapist, and I live in Lexington, Kentucky. I grew up in Southern Tennessee. directly in between Knoxville and Chattanooga. I saw the film in January of 1986. I went with my mother and her best friend. It was the first film that I can remember that I was captivated the entire time. And not really being able, of course I couldn't articulate at nine years old. It's the first film that I remember just crying. I could not stop crying. I felt such joy. My mom and Barbara, her best friend, they were crying throughout the whole movie like I was. And looking over at my mom and my sister going like, why would anyone be mean to Celie? She didn't deserve that. No one deserves that, you know? But she made it through and I can remember being so joyful. And we talked about it because it was a 10-minute ride home from the cinema to where we lived. And we talked about it the whole time and about how we all felt, they felt, that no one in their community, in their circle, in their family would see it or understand it or appreciate it. I grew up hearing the N-word and hearing a lot of really racist and hateful rhetoric in regard to people of color and gay people all around me. In school, family, friends, except for my mother, Thank God. for my mother. And I can remember my mother pulling me to the side and always saying, don't ever say that word. And I knew I had this innate, innate understanding and feeling in elementary school when people call me a faggot or they kick me or, you know, or they come up and punch me in the back of the head or the way my father would treat us. And Danny Glover's character, Mister, I grew up with a father that I had similar traits and the way that he treated my mother and me. It was that innate understanding of being called ugly, fat, ugly. You'll never amount to anything. Being called that by my own father.

• Clip

  Who do you think you is? You can't curse nobody. Look at you. You're black. You're poor. You're ugly. You're a woman. You're nothing at all. You do right by me. Everything you even think about gonna fail.

• Shayne Brakefield

  My mother was always taking me to the cinema with her, even to films that I probably, you know, had no business seeing. Luckily, having a mother that wanted to read and see these stories, and that was sympathetic and empathetic to the plight of people that didn't look like her. She passed that down to me as well. I also related to, as we know, what Celie went through, not just the physical and emotional abuse, but sexual abuse. Not by a family member, a friend of the family. And all of these things that were going on inside of my, you know, little nine-year-old nervous system had no idea what was happening. What I had was books and movies like The Color Purple and books like The Color Purple Being an effeminate little guy and very sensitive, always had my nose in a book, very much like Celie does in the book and in the film. That was my way of dissociating, getting lost in my imagination and or watching movies or just going outside and playing and making up characters and voices and things like that. Just being very creative that way. I was able to see myself in her to see like, oh. There's someone else that maybe they understand what I feel, even though they don't look like me. this nine-year-old little white gay boy you know it's like it really is like i i've never had anyone really ask me about this so i'm trying to put all my thoughts together when i look back the people in my life that were kind to me and that accepted me that didn't harm me sexually physically or emotionally were women so also seeing that these women looking after each other and caring for each other.

• Clip

  I know what is like, Miss Celie, to want to go somewhere and can't. I know what it like to want to sing and Have it beat out you. I want to thank you, Miss Celie, for everything you've done for me. I remember that day I was in the store with Miss Millie. I was feeling real down, I was feeling mighty bad. And when I seed you, I know there is a God. I know there is a God!

• Shayne Brakefield

  Before The Color Purple came out, I had seen on HBO Whoopi Goldberg's one-woman show that was on Broadway. I think she played five characters. Watching that, and then that's why I was like, I want to see the color purple because Whoopi's in it. And I was like, she's beautiful. She's intelligent. She's powerful. She's funny. I want to be like her. I want to, as an artist, I want to do what she does because she can make people laugh and she can make people, you can rip their hearts out. Between that HBO special and anything Carol Burnett ever did, that's why I wanted to be an actor. Then when I... Realized when I became a teenager and I was in the drama club in high school and then went to college. And then I moved to New York City in my late 20s, studied at the William Esper Studio and then improv acting at Upright Citizens Brigade. I never had any aspiration to be famous or to be wealthy. I just wanted to be the. best I could be at the craft of acting. I started going to a therapist two or three times a week. We started working, you know, on me and the things I'd been through and processing that, but we went back to my grandparents and my parents and trying to understand what made them the way they are. My... Dad, unfortunately, grew up with parents that were not affectionate, were not kind, really, to him. There was a lot of alcoholism on the side of the family. And as we know, that alcoholism and depression and mental unwellness, emotional unwellness often goes hand in hand. And then understanding that and knowing that my father also started drinking at an early age. So it helped to... understand that and in understanding it i have a great deal of compassion and empathy and grace for my father now um and i did it for me more than anything to understand like oh this is how this happened it's not because there's something wrong with me it's not my fault thank god therapy and and all forms of art uh helped me to understand uh my father now i have a lot of compassion for him from a distance. And I know that there is a terrified and angry little boy inside of him that did not get the love that he deserved, that we all deserve. There is that little Sealy in him that did not get love and seen. And that breaks my heart for him because he deserved more. Anytime something as a child, as a teenager in my early 20s that I was going through, I always held on to that film. It came at the right time into my life. It has stayed with me. It is so precious to me. I have a huge poster from when the film came out that my mother got me, and I have it framed in my bedroom. I've named my cats Sealy and Shug. I never gave up hope because of it, and I can say that with absolute certainty.

• Clip

  I'm poor, black. I may even be ugly, but dear God, I'm here. I'm here.

• Tim Kirkman (Host)

  This episode of Reel Lives was written, produced, and edited by me, Tim Kirkman. The executive producer is Mary Beth Greeley. The original music was composed by John Crook for Space Factory. Thank you to my guests on this episode, Beverly Hamilton and Shane Brakefield. And very special thanks to Kim Hargett, Lakeysha Medlin, Margaret Pigg, Sarah Horn, and the Marshville Museum and Cultural Center in Marshville, North Carolina. That link is in the show notes. Follow Real Lives on all the usual social media platforms. You can support the podcast by subscribing to the Real Lives Substack. Our website is reellivespodcast.com. That's R-E-E-L livespodcast.com, where we feature original artwork specially designed for each episode. If you like what you heard, tell your friends, post a review, and give us some stars. Reel Lives is produced in collaboration with Transylvania University. We'd love to hear from you. Drop us a line. Let us know what movie you'd like to hear more about, or maybe even talk about. Until next time, see you at the movies.