The real Antwone Fisher is a screenwriter, a poet, and a man who has seemingly come to terms with his devastatingly abusive beginnings. Soft spoken, intelligent and extremely candid, Antwone Fisher overcame tremendous odds and both his life, and the movie version of his life, are filled with hope and triumph.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Antwone Fisher while he was in San Diego promoting the "Antwone Fisher" movie. Here's what the man behind the movie had to say about his personal journey from foster care to Hollywood, and working with Oscar winner Denzel Washington and newcomer Derek Luke:
ANTWONE FISHER
Now that the movie has been released, do you still believe opening yourself up to millions of moviegoers was the right choice?
Yes, I do, because for one, it gave me a new career. And two, I found that it was cathartic for me. It was a healing experience, and it's still that way. It seems to have helped a lot of people with their own lives.
What was the biggest obstacle for you, as the screenwriter, in summing up your life in a 2-hour time frame?
Learning the structure and format of a screenplay and the rules of screenwriting. I wrote the movie, and it took me some drafts to learn how to write one. Some people go to school for 4 years to learn how to do it. I did learn after about 40 drafts, I learned how to do it. That's why I decided to write the book. You can't have everybody that was meaningful in your life, in your movie, so I decided to write “Finding Fish.”
Your book is able to go more in-depth than the movie. Is there any person who was left out of the movie that you really hated to not be able to include?
No. Since I'm a filmmaker, I understand that movies are different. You have to let a movie be a movie and let a book be a book. The most logical person to have chosen in my life to tell this story was the Commander, the Navy psychiatrist, because we have to talk back and forth. I could have chosen my 4th and 5th and 6th grade teacher - who was one person - but then I would not have been able to tell my older life. So he was the better person and he did a lot for me, as well as some other people. The Navy itself - the rules and having to live in that structured environment - did a lot to mature me and make me a better person.
Is the character that Denzel Washington plays a real person, or a conglomeration of a few different people?
He's a real person but I had to have him do some things that a few other people had helped me do. He also serves the purpose that he served in real life, and he also does things that other people did for me - just like the girl. Since you can't have that many characters, you combine people.
Have the real people who influenced you seen the film?
Oh yeah!
What did they think of it?
They loved it. It's a great reward to find out that you said something and did something for somebody, and then later learn that this person went on and did something big and didn't forget you. In fact, this person said you were a part of what helped them get to where they are. It makes you proud and it makes you feel like your life is worth more than you knew.
The story actually takes place from the late '50s thru the mid '80s but the film's timeframe is more contemporary. Why was that done?
I was born in 1959 but for the movie's sake, we decided [to change it] so that children - kids - would find it contemporary. If we did it like I grew up in the '60s and '70s, then some kids might say, “Well, that's an old story.” And people might say that a long time has passed since then. But we wanted it to be current so that people would identify with it more.
How accurate was the portrayal of your foster parents?
I was kind to them in the movie and the book. I was kind to them. They are worse.
How did you survive that?
Me? Some children go through worse. Just not long ago you saw in Newark some children were starved to death and the police brought one child out dead in a plastic container that the person had left him in. It's a shame the things that go on, you know? I'm one of the lucky ones. I believe that my foster brother fared worse than I did.
I'm not confused about my position in all this. I'm just grateful that I had an opportunity, that I have gotten help, and that now I can share my story with others so they can see that there is hope and that there are good people in the world.
Has there been any backlash from the foster care system? Have you heard anything from any foster care organizations?
I think most foster care organizations understand that there are a lot of problems and a lot of things that need to be worked out. It is a hard thing, but I think the movie and my book helped to raise the awareness. I think that there are some people who would be foster parents or adoptive parents but haven't considered it or really investigated that. Maybe some people will, that's what I think. The foster care system needs help from people.
Derek Luke has said that it was important to make a movie about your life to do 'clean up' for a generation. Do you agree with that statement?
There have been a lot of movies about young people who have had difficult times, and what they do is destroy themselves and other people. There have been so many movies like that. This is probably the first movie about a young person who had a difficult beginning and did not do the wrong thing. Maybe this will open the door for more.
What's your personal message you're trying to convey with the film?
That there is hope even when you have the hardest beginnings, and there are good people in the world. Kids really need people. If you watched the movie and you saw Derek Luke in his anger, you know why he's angry. If you took Malcolm Kelley's (the actor who plays Antwone Fisher as a child) scenes out of the movie, no one would have any compassion for Derek. They'd be angry at him for being so disruptive and wouldn't have any compassion for him. But because we know what happened to him, then you have more compassion. That's just like kids that you meet, you never know what they've gone through. Some kids have been through more in their young lives than a lot of adults. Not that you have to open yourself up to danger, but encouraging words sometimes…I would live on those encouraging words. When people would compliment me, I would go over and over [those words] in my head. My foster brother could never do that, he needed the real thing.
Did the finished movie live up to your expectations?
I think it's a beautiful movie and it makes its point. I feel fortunate that 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight, [producer] Todd Black, and Denzel Washington thought enough of this struggle to actually make a movie, because it's not really popular to make movies like mine. It's more popular to make those entertaining movies that flash and there's a lot of excitement. A movie that does a social service is not all that popular but it does help a lot more. Perhaps Hollywood will be open to making more movies like this. Not that they have to inundate everybody with these kinds of things, but it's a reality check.
Although you knew Derek Luke prior to the film, he didn't use you to get an audition. Would you have helped him get an audition had he asked?
Yes, I would have helped him because I like Derek. To be honest, Derek is a very talented person so he went in there and did a great job on his own. But he did have a hand-up because he did know me, and he had the screenplay long before other people who were auditioning. I gave it to him some years before auditions even started. He was using the screenplay in his acting classes. So, you get to an audition and you're familiar with the scenes and the dialogue and that does give you some advantage. Not only that, Cuba Gooding and a lot of established young black actors were in the running - they were auditioning - but Denzel decided that it should not be an established actor. That opened up the opportunities for Derek even more. And I introduced him to Todd Black, the producer, so it wasn't like magic. But people like magic stories so we can let that one live (laugh).
Do you think he was the right actor to play you?
Certainly he was.
Was it easy for him to play you since you two had been friends before filming began?
We knew each other for some years before that so he didn't suddenly have to pay attention to me. He knew me. But the thing was, it was most important for him to do a good job. No one knows who I am so it doesn't matter whether he copied my mannerisms or not, because no one knows me. For Will Smith to play Muhammad Ali was different because everybody knows Muhammad Ali. If he came in and acted like Will Smith, then people would be disappointed because he's not being Muhammad Ali. It's much harder to do famous people.
Was it difficult for you to be on the set and watch some of the more emotional scenes being filmed?
I wrote it so that was one hurdle. Derek's parts were not bothersome to me, to see him perform his parts. It was Malcolm Kelley's parts that were hardest for me. In fact, some of those days I didn't even stay on the set. I would leave when he to do his scenes, or I would just not come to the set that day.
I always write about me as the little boy, not me as the young adult, because I did have decision-making abilities and I did have power. When people are sympathetic toward the older me, the character that Derek plays, you would not feel the way you feel about Derek if you hadn't seen what he went through as a child. It is about the humanity in the young boy. When I write poetry or when I talk about my life in poems, or when I wrote the book, I always refer to the little boy. I have book of poetry called “Who Will Cry for the Little Boy” that was just published. It's all about that. When Denzel says, “We are doing this for Antwone,” we are all talking about the boy that I was who didn't have a voice and who was unprotected. We're not talking about the young adult who Derek played because I was free to make decisions then and I chose to not get help early on, due to my shame. But I did have power to do something for myself. When I was a kid I had no power at all.
Did you ever consider that having an Oscar-winning actor making his directorial debut in a movie about your life would detract from the film and its message? That the movie might become more about Denzel's directorial debut?
I don't know what people think, how they view the movie, or how they view Denzel in doing this movie, but I think him doing it does bring attention to it. Denzel, because of the way he talks about the movie, seems to deflect all the attention away from himself and onto the movie and the subject matter of the movie. You have to have somebody like him in order to get any attention for a story like this. If it was another movie that had a lot of costumes and lights and goings-on, you wouldn't need it as much. But when you have a small movie like ours, the budget is very small and you have a bunch of unknown people in a small studio (not big Fox, but little Fox - Fox Searchlight), you are really like the little engine that could. You don't have a big budget, you don't have big movie stars - we have Denzel who is a big movie star but we don't have an ensemble of huge movie stars - and big lights and big songs, and big money. We don't have any of that. What we have is Denzel and apparently, it's enough.
This was a movie of firsts - your first screenplay, Derek Luke and Joy Bryant's first starring roles in a feature film, and Denzel Washington's directorial debut.
I don't think that we planned it this way but sometimes when you are working on these things, you find golden things inside of it that you never realized were happening. It was just another one of the great stories that are authentic surrounding this project.
You just won the 2003 Spotlight Award from the Creative Coalition for promoting the power of art in changing lives. How important is that award, and how important are awards, such as the Golden Globes, in general?
It was really important to me to receive the award because art was always how I found peace. When I was a kid, I could afford watercolors so I would paint with watercolors. It was something that I could express myself in - my paintings. I was good in art and people praised me for it. When they would have art contests in school, I would always win. Not always, but most of the time I would win. I remember one time I represented the school with a watercolor painting that I did. It was in competition with other schools and they had them all on display at some city building. I didn't win but the fact that my name was downtown on a painting that I had painted - I was about 11 years old - gave me a lot of pride.
I think awards, in general, are really nice to get if you can get them. But if you can't get them for whatever reason, you have to be in it for more than that. I'm always satisfied, especially with this particular project, because it's a huge thing just to have a movie made, period. But then to have a movie made about your life that you're happy with and that you can see that it helps others, then it's a great reward for me.
