- 3 months ago
The director-writer-producer discusses his new movie 'Crown Heights,' which tells the story of Colin Warner and his best friend Carl King. "I was personally moved by these people and wanted to tell their story," he tells THR.
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00:00Hi, this is Mariah Gullow from The Hollywood Reporter, and I'm here with Matt Ruskin,
00:04who is the director, writer, and producer of Crown Heights.
00:08Yep, co-producer.
00:09Co-producer.
00:10A couple of producers with me, but I wrote and directed the film.
00:14Wonderful.
00:15So tell me a little bit about Crown Heights, which is coming out on, you have a theatrical
00:21release on the 25th, August 25th.
00:23Yeah, August 25th in New York and L.A., and then select cities nationwide the following
00:29couple of weeks into early September.
00:32And this is a movie that's based on a true story, so can you tell us how you came to find
00:37this story?
00:38Yeah, I heard this story on a radio show called This American Life.
00:42I love This American Life.
00:43I think they're really wonderful storytellers, and I'm always listening to their radio show,
00:48and I was on a long car trip one day, and I heard they did a full hour about this story,
00:54about Colin Warner and his friend Carl King, and I was totally blown away by the story.
00:59So in the early 1980s in Brooklyn, Colin Warner was wrongfully convicted of a murder that
01:05he had nothing to do with, and his best friend devoted his life to trying to prove his innocence.
01:10So it's definitely a story about a wrongful conviction in the criminal justice system and
01:17New York City at that time, but ultimately it's really a story about friendship and hope
01:22and perseverance.
01:24I came at it really just completely blown away by the two guys at the heart of the story,
01:32and also the woman who Colin ended up marrying.
01:36They're just really extraordinary people, and that was what hooked me.
01:39I didn't actually set out to make a wrongful conviction movie.
01:43It wasn't like the issue, I'm a conscientious citizen of the world, and all this stuff matters
01:49to me, and I think of myself as relatively well-informed, but with filmmaking it wasn't,
01:55the objective for me wasn't to make an issue-driven film.
01:58It was really, I was really personally moved by these people and wanted to tell their story,
02:03and through telling their story, we sort of leave plenty of room for people to create
02:08their own commentary about the criminal justice system and race and really what these people
02:15had to go through and how, unfortunately, they are just a drop in the bucket.
02:21Was it hard to get the family to agree to be part of the project, or were they on board
02:27right away with you?
02:28No, it's funny, so when I heard the piece, this was like five or six years ago, I thought
02:34I was hearing it like the original broadcast, but it was a rerun, they had actually originally
02:40aired the piece five years earlier, and so I was really late to the game, so I called
02:45the reporter and tracked the guys down, and it turns out that the story had been out for
02:50five years, and a studio had optioned the rights, and then another studio picked it up
02:55from them, but nobody ever scripted it, so by the time I came around I was really passionate
03:01about this story, but I was just like this independent filmmaker from Brooklyn, and so
03:06it was like a really welcome change at that point for them, so they felt like they had
03:12sort of struck out with the more traditional route, and were ready to take their, you know,
03:18take a chance on a guy like me.
03:20What kind of research did you do to kind of set the stage for New York circa 1980?
03:25Because, like, this is, as a former New Yorker, this is a time period when New York had the
03:32highest murder cap, it was the murder capital in 1981, I believe, so it's high crime rate,
03:40but a very exciting time for filmmaking, an exciting time to, you know, for culture and art,
03:48so what kind of research did you do to create that world?
03:52Yeah, I mean, so I talked to a lot of people, one of the things that was really cool about
03:56researching the film was that everybody that was involved who was still around, they were
04:02really happy to be able to sort of tell this story, so everybody participated and would meet
04:08with me and do hours of interviews, and so, like, I would talk to some of the witnesses
04:14about, like, what it was like being a kid in Brooklyn at that time, and it was really like
04:19this lawless world, you know, but a really rich culture and a very unique sort of style,
04:25and then talking to the lawyers, they would explain how the, you know, the city was just,
04:31like, essentially a failing enterprise in the early 1980s, and there was a sort of crime wave
04:37unlike anything they had ever seen before, and so the court systems were just, like, totally
04:42inundated, and so there were some cops who were just trying to do their job, and then
04:48there were other cops who basically stopped caring and were just like, look, if you didn't
04:51do this crime, you probably did something else, and it was pretty systemic, so it was trying
04:57to sort of depict the different layers of that, and then visually, there's a photographer named
05:03Bruce Davidson who has a book called Subway, which a friend of mine gave me as a gift like
05:08five or six years ago, and that, to me, is, like, the most incredible time capsule of just,
05:14like, Brooklyn in the 1980s, and so that was a visual reference for us. We were always looking
05:20at that, just trying to sort of, you know, in pursuit of some being, you know, authentic
05:25in terms of the wardrobe and the worlds we were creating.
05:29I noticed we've had Brian Tyree Henry in here quite a few times, and when he shows up in
05:35your movie, it's, he's almost unrecognizable because he really has been transformed. It seems
05:42like the weight of the world is on his shoulders, and it was just interesting cinematically to get
05:47that kind of, you know, the oppression, the oppression of, like, New York heat and bad
05:55neighborhoods and the weight of guilt of somebody who's been sitting on this, you know, call to action
06:02for such a long time, or the guilt of, you know, witnessing something and not being able to speak
06:09up about it.
06:11Yeah, Brian is such an incredibly talented actor. Like, what he does on Atlanta is so different.
06:16He's just such a different, you know, character. But one of the things that really blew me away
06:23about this story was that all of these child witnesses who were railroaded by the police,
06:29which helped convict an innocent man of murder, a lot of them never really got over it, you
06:33know, and it was something that they carried with them. And I thought he really beautifully
06:37sort of brought that to life, you know, in his scenes where you can see how it weighed
06:43on him. And even some of the other guys, this actor, Amari Cheatham, and then this guy,
06:50Ross and Oak McCurdy, who's also super talented. They play the witnesses and the victim's brother,
06:55and they really, I think, did an incredible job of conveying the enormous burden that it
07:05was on them and how it sort of haunted them throughout their lives. And that ultimately
07:10they were, you know, these kids who were railroaded by police when they were, you know, 14 or 15
07:14years old and were afraid and didn't know sort of what to do or how to handle that situation.
07:19And what was it like working with your main character, Lakeith?
07:23Lakeith's great. I love him. He's just, he's such an open, curious, humble, hardworking guy.
07:33He, you know, we met, he was really moved by Colin's story. And then we just started talking
07:39about like visual art, like he was experimenting with all this other visual art he was doing and
07:44his music. And when we started sort of digging into the role, he, you know, I could just, his process
07:51is a little different from other actors I've worked with, but for him, it's just like physically
07:57putting himself in that place. And he's so open and has so much natural talent that really
08:03great things happen. One really cool story is that when we were shooting in the prisons,
08:09he didn't want to go back to like a holding area in between scenes. So we, he asked to be
08:15just kept in a cell, like down the hall from where we were shooting. So he just like stayed
08:21in that space the whole time we were shooting in the prisons.
08:24Oh wow. Um, so your, your movie won the audience award at Sundance. Um, this, was that the first
08:32time that, um, that Colin and his family were able to see the movie?
08:37Um, it was the first time they saw it with an audience. I, I wanted him to see the film just
08:43in case like he freaked out or something. You know, I can't imagine what it would be like, um,
08:48to watch a movie about such a difficult, you know, I can't imagine what it's like going through that.
08:55But just a movie about your life must be such an odd thing to experience. I wanted him to be prepared
09:02before he saw it with, uh, you know, 400 people at Sundance. Um, but they were really happy. He and
09:08his wife were really happy with the film. Um, they really felt like it did their story justice. And,
09:13um, for him seeing it with an audience, I think really, I know it moved him enormously and him and
09:21Carl King were both, I think just really taken aback by how, um, how much people cared about their
09:27story and how interested in it they were and how moved they were by, you know, the way these guys
09:34dealt with such an awful set of circumstances. Um, so we're dealing, we're dealing in a time period
09:41where, um, prison reform is talked about and it's, uh, rapidly changing. Um, we had a president,
09:49uh, our first sitting president who went to a federal prison. Um, and then, and then we have the,
09:55um, we have Jeff, Jeff Sessions coming in and kind of going back to, uh, the, the nineties with his,
10:02you know, with his policy. So have you had any reactions, uh, stemming from your film, um,
10:10just regarding, you know, like the politics of the film? Yeah. I mean, the thing that I'll say
10:15is that the movie feels like it gets more and more timely, which, you know, it's like you first hear
10:22this story and you think, wow, that's, you know, you realize, you know, when I was researching this
10:28film that his story was one of, you know, many thousands of stories, even in New York,
10:35they just started, um, sort of reinvestigating some questionable convictions from certain police
10:42officers who had some sort of, you know, ethics complaints. And they were releasing people,
10:47you know, like within the first few months of this, um, unit they put together to review the
10:52integrity of convictions, they released like 14 people. And the, um, you know, people that were
10:58interviewed in the New York Times when they were profiling this were saying that this is obviously,
11:03you know, um, a systemic problem that goes way beyond one or two, um, bad police officers or,
11:11you know, a handful of wrongful convictions. So it felt really relevant then. And then, you know,
11:17as we were making the film, um, they continued to sort of uncover more and more wrongful convictions.
11:23And, um, it felt, you know, increasingly, increasingly relevant. And then, um, it was really encouraging to
11:31see that, um, you know, there were certain steps being taken to try and roll back some of the really
11:36harsh sentencing practices and kind of looking at nonviolent drug offenders through a different light.
11:42And it almost became this bipartisan thing for a period. And now to see it being much of that,
11:48those small gains being rolled back is super discouraging. And it just makes the film, again,
11:54feel even more relevant.
11:55Mm-hmm. Yes, because the film takes place and, uh, begins in 1980. And if you kind of look at a graph of,
12:02um, uh, people, Americans incarcerated, it spikes from 1980 all the way up to today. It just goes
12:10kind of disproportionately up. Yeah. Um, so in researching the film, you know, when I was writing,
12:18I read a book called The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, which is sort of the definitive work
12:23on mass incarceration. Um, and I, you know, I think it started before the Reagan administration,
12:32but they really ramped things up. Um, and it carried on through the first Bush administration.
12:38And then a watershed moment that she described is when Bill Clinton, who wanted to be perceived as
12:44a Democrat who was tough on crime, sort of continued along, um, that path of building more prisons,
12:53um, harsher sentences, mandatory minimums. Um, so it was really sort of a, across a political spectrum,
13:00uh, just an American, you know, problem that escalated, yeah, from, you know, the 80s up until,
13:07you know, very recently and, and clearly things are being rolled back as we speak, you know?
13:13Mm-hmm. Um, you have a statistic, uh, in your film that is, um, that there, there's a possibility that
13:21all 120,000 people who are incarcerated could be, um, innocent of their crime, the crimes they were
13:30committed in. Where did you get that statistic from? Yeah, so, so the Innocence Project, um, published
13:36this, um, that there's 2.4, approximately 2.4 million people in prison in the United States,
13:43and it's estimated that up to 5% of all prisoners are innocent. And if you think about it, that means
13:50that the criminal justice system gets it right 95% of the time. And, you know, based on, um, you know,
13:59just sort of going deep in understanding the details of this story and what the climate was like,
14:05that may very well be generous, you know? They may very well have gotten it wrong, um, more than,
14:11more than that. Um, but that's a figure that, that seems to be sort of widely accepted.
14:15It's a conservative figure, yeah. Potentially, but, um, you know, yeah, the numbers are astounding.
14:22Yeah, yeah. Um, so that leads me to a question. If you could hand deliver
14:27your film to one person, who would you want to see this film? That's a really great question. Um,
14:34I think that I would, you know, honor Colin Warner's wishes, and he always said to me that
14:40if he, one of his sort of big hopes for this film is that, um, families of people who are wrongfully
14:48incarcerated, who are still serving sentences, um, that if they see this film and it inspires them to
14:54keep fighting and not give up, um, then all of this would be worth it for him. And so I would,
15:00you know, my hope is that some people who are struggling with the situation that he and his family
15:06struggled with, um, would see this film and find some renewed sense of, um, inspiration to keep
15:12fighting. Lovely. Um, why do you think people are captivated by this kind of story?
15:18Um, you know, I think that this film in particular, it's, it's about people first and the issue is
15:26secondary. Um, and so, you know, I think one of the things that was really great to see at Sundance
15:32was that it kind of spoke to audiences of all stripes, um, because it's such a human story,
15:38right? So, um, you know, you have a guy who couldn't accept something happening to his friend,
15:44the injustice of that, couldn't live in the world, in a world where that was okay and, and never gave
15:50up on his friend. And you have a guy who spent 20 years in, you know, the worst environment imaginable
15:56and came out of it with his humanity and his dignity intact. Those are really sort of, I think,
16:02transcendent human things that are inspiring to, you know, anybody with a beating heart really.
16:08Mm-hmm. Um, what kind of story do you want to tell next?
16:14I don't know. Um, I, you know, I'm interested in all sorts of stuff. I love crime films. I want to make
16:20a crime, like a just straight up really entertaining crime film. What's your favorite time period to
16:25kind of dive into? Is there, do you have a particular? I love, I've been reading a lot of crime writing,
16:31true crime writing from New York City in like the late 80s and early 90s. It's a really sort of rich
16:38period for, um, organized crime in New York. Um, and do you have any favorite films that stem from that?
16:47From that world? Um, I don't know. There's a, I'll say that, um, in making a movie that is partially
16:54set in a prison, uh, there's a movie called A Prophet, which is a French film by Jacques Odiard that was
17:00like, you know, just one of my favorite films of all time and such a beautiful film and something that
17:05we looked at all the time. Wonderful. Well, Matt Ruskin, thank you so much for dropping by today.
17:11Um, the movie is Crown Heights and it's out on Amazon on August 25th, uh, in theaters, limited release,
17:19and then wider release after that. Yep. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Appreciate it.
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