Mariah Carey in a movie but not the star of that movie? There must be
something special about Precious, a film based on the American writer
Sapphire’s astonishing novel, Push. With this searing drama already blessed
with the support of chat-show queen Oprah Winfrey, for once Carey is not
taking centre stage. “I’m not the star of the film,” she trills. “I’m a
supporting player. It wasn’t about ‘Let me try to be the world’s biggest
actress.’ ”
Not that Carey could ever compete with the title character, even if she wanted
to. Set in Harlem in 1987, the film follows Claireece “Precious” Jones
(newcomer Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe), a morbidly obese black 16-year-old who
lives with her physically abusive mother, Mary (US comedienne Mo’Nique).
Repeatedly molested by her father, she already has one child by him, is
pregnant with another and has contracted HIV. As wrenching as it sounds,
when it made its bow at the Sundance Film Festival in January, Precious
swept the board, taking the Grand Jury prize for drama, the Audience Award
and a special acting prize for Mo’Nique.
Since Sundance, the film played in Cannes to equally enthusiastic audiences,
was screened at the White House, won the People’s Choice award in Toronto
last month and is now being talked about as a possible Best Picture Oscar
nomination. But as far as the soft-spoken director Lee Daniels is concerned,
all he was concerned about was the reaction of Sapphire. The former teacher
(real name Ramona Lofton) based her 1996 debut novel Push on experiences in
the classroom. “Many, many famous people wanted the movie,” Daniels reports,
“and she was offered tons of money for her book rights.” In the end, she
refused all offers, selling him the rights for $1.
Yet even Daniels was surprised by what happened next. “When I showed her the
film, she cried in my arms,” he says. It’s not an uncommon reaction. As
brutal as the film is, with Precious’s only escape from her nightmarish
existence the fantasy sequences when she envisages herself as a movie star
or supermodel, it’s also alive with hope, humanity and humour. In the story
the illiterate Precious tries to educate herself against the odds, enrolling
in an alternative class run by a teacher named Blu Rain (Paula Patton).
Others out to help her include welfare counsellor Mrs Weiss (Carey) and a
hospital orderly (Lenny Kravitz).
Of course, it’s Carey’s casting that will cause the most surprise. Curiously,
Daniels originally planned to feature Helen Mirren, who’d played a
cancer-suffering assassin in his debut film, Shadowboxer, in Carey’s role.
“I know Mariah the same way I know Helen,” he says. “They both have hearts
that beat. We both hang out and curl up in bed, and dream, and talk, gab and
gossip. I figured if I’m going to make a bold movie, I’m going to make a
bold casting choice, and that was Mariah. Mariah was hungry to show that she
could work, because she was so damaged by Glitter.”
Ah, yes. Glitter. Carey’s highest profile role to date, in which she played a
singer desperate to make it in the music biz, was roasted by the critics on
release in 2001. “I don’t think it’s the worst thing ever done. I don’t
think it’s the best thing ever done. If I could go back in time and not do
it, yeah, I would definitely not do it,” says Carey. “But nobody until Lee
really gave me that chance to shed every single layer of me — the singer,
the personality — and go in and really be a new and completely different
character.”
Precious certainly does that. With mousy brown hair, workaday clothes and no
make-up, the 40-year-old Carey is barely recognisable, compared to the
honey-coloured diva, dripping with jewellery, who sits in front of me. As
her friend, film director Brett Ratner, who has shot several of her videos,
told her after seeing the film: “You broke every Mariah rule that there is!”
In other words, bathing her in fluorescent lighting, shooting her with
unflattering camera angles. “It was very difficult to strip away all the
glamour and just go for it,” she confesses. “I had to lose the entire Mariah
Carey persona.”
She even considered doing a Nicole, and donning a prosthetic nose. “But
because I have such sensitive skin, it started to eat away at my face,” she
grins. “I was all red and swollen and I tried to put a little blush on and
Lee caught me, and he said, ‘No! You’re not having anything!’ ” Carey claims
she understood why her director was so demanding. “He wanted unglamorous,
not pretty at all,” she says. “He wanted it to be a complete shedding of
skins, becoming this other woman. I have a different walk. My speech is
completely different. Even the tempo of the way I speak. It was like
removing masks, as opposed to putting them on.”
As a huge fan of the book, it’s swiftly evident that this was no
vanity-project for the Glitter-damaged Carey. “It changed my life when I
read it,” she purrs. “It was such an intense book, you put it down and
you’re just staring off into the distance. You’re drained from it.”
As a result, the Long Island-born singer, who has just released her 12th
studio album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, felt that bringing it to a
wider cinema-going audience was crucial. “I think it’s important that
everybody — particularly young females — see this.”
If anything points to Carey’s impressive performance, it’s when Mrs Weiss goes
toe-to-toe with Mary and Precious about their destructive relationship. “At
the end, we all just hugged each other and cried,” she says. Sidibe, a
receptionist who had never acted before playing Precious, concurs. “It was
so difficult to shoot that scene. We did three or four takes, but each time
we didn’t know what was going to happen. It was like fighting. Whenever Lee
said ‘Cut’, we would just sit there, almost dead inside.”
While Carey’s involvement is vital for luring audiences, she’s not the only
celebrity lending her support. On the posters, it reads “Oprah Winfrey and
Tyler Perry Present”. In the case of Perry, his involvement came after
Daniels — who also produced dark dramas The Woodsman and Monster’s Ball —
was berated by his own mother. “She kept saying, ‘Why can’t you make movies
like Tyler Perry? What’s Monster’s Ball? What’s The Woodsman? So what if you
win Oscars. Make movies that my church-folk can see.’ So I decided to bring
him aboard, to bring awareness to a film that I wasn’t sure that
African-Americans would embrace.”
It’s a legitimate concern — though if anyone could help it would be Perry,
whose latest film, I Can Do Bad All By Myself, was a No 1 hit in the US. As
Daniels says: “I’m a black man. I’m a black film-maker. But the types of
films that I do are not embraced by my community. And so I did this movie
for my community. And to certify that it was going to be seen in my
community, I asked Tyler to see the film.” Like Perry, Winfrey also agreed
to be an executive producer after she saw the film before Sundance. “I felt
that she would really identify with the story,” Daniels says.
In some ways, Winfrey’s involvement recalls The Color Purple, the 1985 Steven
Spielberg adaptation of Alice Walker’s seminal novel about an abused,
uneducated girl, in which the chat-show host starred. In time, Precious may
well be regarded as equally important. A story of suffering and struggle,
its inspirational tone has a universal message. “Look, I complain all the
time. I have to get on this plane and it’s business class! I can’t bear my
kids! I have to clean the dishes!” says Daniels. “But we’re so blessed in
this life and we worry about the wrong things. I think that’s what I’m
trying to show.”
Precious will be shown on Oct 23 at 6pm, Vue5 and 6.45pm, Vue9, Oct 25 at 1pm,
Vue5, and Oct 26 at 3.45pm, Vue7. The film goes on general release on Feb 5
2010
The Oprah effect
More powerful than advertising, Oprah’s Midas Touch remains coveted by
businesses, charities, even politicians. An appearance on the Oprah Winfrey
Show made the likes of Ugg boots, Spanx underwear and Kindle household
names. After Hurricane Katrina in 2006, Oprah’s appeal received $11 million,
and the following year, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign saw her first
political endorsement. Economists at the University of Maryland estimated
that Winfrey was responsible for between 423,000 and 1.5 million votes in
the Democratic primary — covering the difference between votes for Obama and
Hillary Clinton.
Louise Cohen
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