Coronado Film Festival to Honor Star of Sing Sing Redemption Drama – San Diego Union-Tribune

Rachel Sherman

Between the jingle of keys and the beeps of the walkie-talkie, the men watched.

The occasion was a pre-screening of the A24 film Sing Sing in June this year in the prison where the film is set. The men saw a fictional version of their lives.

The correctional facility’s chapel, which had been turned into a movie theater, was crowded with studio guests and inmates wearing green hunting pants. As the sun rayed through a stained glass window depicting Christ kneeling before the cross, spectators fanned themselves with paper plates.

Clarence “God’s Eye” McLean was jailed for the first time since 2012 in Ossining, New York, when he served more than 17 years for robbery.

While imprisoned, MacLean played Hamlet in a makeshift prison auditorium. Now he was free and returned for his screen debut. He entered the chapel with a grin and a triumphant leap.

Directed by Greg Kvedar and based on the work of the nonprofit Rehabilitation Through the Arts, Sing Sing follows the production of the prison troupe’s first comedy, a fever dream of a play involving time travel, ancient Egypt and Shakespeare. MacLean and recent Oscar nominee Colman Domingo star as the inmates, while Paul Raci (also an Oscar nominee) plays their no-nonsense director.

On Saturday, November 9, the Coronado Island Film Festival will present McLean with the festival’s annual Industry Impact Award at the Leonard Maltin Industry Tribute Gala at the Del Coronado Hotel. This award recognizes McLean’s work as a consultant and spokesperson for the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program. After leaving prison, he worked as a youth counselor, creative arts specialist, and gang intervention specialist at Lincoln Hall Boys Haven in Somers, New York.

On Sunday, Nov. 10, McLean will also attend a screening of Sing Sing at the Coronado Village Theater and participate in a Q&A following the screening.

The surprise of “Sing Sing,” released in July, is not that its characters are shown in all their humanity in a genre that is usually played for violence or laughs or both, but in the composition of the cast. The most important revelation came after the credits: 13 of the actors—the majority of the cast—are ex-convicts who themselves participated in a rehabilitative theater program.

To get into their roles, the actors had to not only mentally return to who they once were as prisoners, memories that most were eager to leave behind, but also literally return to prison.

The film was shot in the summer of 2022 at the now-decommissioned Downstate Correctional Facility in New York’s Hudson Valley. There was no air conditioning, which is typical of most New York State prisons.

“The first thing you notice is the air and the lack of it,” Domingo said in an interview. “Within these walls I really felt like I couldn’t breathe. This is by design. You’ll get lost.”

Most of the actors thought they would never return to a correctional facility, let alone wear a green prison uniform. Many haven’t worn this color since its release – not even in a pattern.

And sadly, most of the actors themselves were detained or processed through Downstate, the very facility that became their film set, a haunting reminder of their past selves and an opportunity—a calling, some said—to send a message. .

“You’re basically going back to hell,” McLean, 58, said in a June interview. “I’m going back. I’m going to hell voluntarily.”

McLean said the prison pants he wore as a suit were a little more itchy than he remembered. But the responsibility of the mission outweighed his discomfort. He had a goal: “A chance to give those people who are still in the position that I was in, in these cells, just a little bit of inspiration and hope and to say, ‘Look, this doesn’t have to be your life forever.’ Mine has changed; maybe yours can change too.”

Kvedar offered Domingo the role of John “Divine G” Whitfield, one of the founders of the theater program who claims, like the real Whitfield, that he was wrongfully convicted of murder. There was no script or set schedule, and only McLean was involved in the project. Kvedar wrote in his diary “Colman Domingo as the Divine G,” so the fact that Domingo was interested could be considered a manifestation of sorts.

Kvedar presented his vision and source material: John H. Richardson’s 2005 Esquire article, “Sing-Sing Madness,” about the creation of the play, manically written in four days by teaching artist Brent Buell (Rachi).

Domingo was there, but he only had one available filming window: the 18 days in July between finishing The Color Purple and returning to the Rustin set. Kvedar took it.

“We made this film as if it would be our last film,” Domingo said.

Rachi was also in the game – “from the first 30 seconds,” he said. “If anything, it was a spiritual event,” added the actor, who worked for decades as an American Sign Language interpreter in the courtroom. “Everyone had the spirit to get the job done.”

Domingo agreed: “We did this together in a very loving and fair way.”

He meant it literally.

Under the parity model established by Kvedar and his writing partner Clint Bentley, the entire cast and crew received the same salary, from Domingo to the production assistant. In addition, everyone shares shares.

“The only difference between who more or less owns our film as an artist is time,” Kvedar said, referring to how much time they spent on the project. “We have over 80 members profiting from our half of the film, and they have that equity for life.”

Over the course of two months and several video calls, Kvedar and Bentley met with Domingo, McLean and Whitfield, who was also released from Sing Sing in 2012, to write the script, framing the fraternity’s story against the backdrop of a single theater program. comedy in its 28-year history.

“The playfulness of this wacky, weird game in such a dark setting felt so cinematic,” Kvedar said. “And the juxtaposition of those two things felt like a kind of life to me.”

On the set, the actors exchanged advice. Domingo switched McLean from projecting his voice on stage to a more intimate dance with the camera; McLean criticized Domingo for behavior that was unrealistic for prison.

“We will hold each other accountable for our own experiences,” Domingo said. “They were experts in a way that I wasn’t. It was a great combination for us.”

To provide support during filming, producers hired a therapist who specialized in working with prisoners and their loved ones, but filming together was often cathartic.

“The harsh reality of where we were and what we were talking about was always with us,” Raci said. “This wasn’t a Hollywood movie set; This is the real thing.”

In Sing Sing, the Metro-North Railroad runs through the 75-acre facility, a surreal reminder of a world just out of reach.

Sitting in the second row of the chapel, McLean rested his red cap on his hip. To his left were the visitors with whom he had arrived; to his right are the people of Sing Sing with whom he once sat; in front of you, on the big screen.

“I always knew I wanted to act,” he said, adding that he never thought he would act in films. “I thought I’d do it somewhere for free.”

Coronado Island Film Festival Leonard Maltin Awards Gala

When: 18:00 November 9

Where: Crown Room, Hotel Del Coronado, 1500 Orange Ave., Coronado

Tickets: $275 and up

Online: festival.coronadofilmfest.com

Sing Sing red carpet, show, questions and answers

When: 10 am November 10

Where: Village Theatre, 820 Orange Ave., Coronado

Tickets: US$17

Online: festival.coronadofilmfest.com/2024/10/24/sing-sing/

Originally published: October 30, 2024 11:43 PDT