PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL “PUSH” BY SAPPHIRE directed by Lee Daniels, written by Geoffrey Fletcher, with Gabourey Sidibe, Mo’Nique, Mariah Carey and Paula Patton. A Maple release. 110 minutes. For venues, times, and trailers, see Movies.
Author Sapphire’s arm must be bruised from all the times she’s been pinching herself.[rssbreak]
Not only does the screen adaptation of her book Push hit screens this week, there she was last September next to executive producer Oprah Winfrey at the movie’s rammed TIFF press conference.
A dream come true for sure, no?
“I can’t say it was a dream come true because I wasn’t even dreaming this big,” Sapphire says in an exclusive one-on-one interview after the presser.
She’s an intimidating character – striking with her shaved head, absolutely sure of her vision. And she speaks her mind, for sure.
Precious: Based On The Novel “Push” By Sapphire tracks an abused – pregnant by her father – illiterate and obese black teen plucked out of her high school to attend the Each One Teach One remedial program, where Sapphire herself once taught. As the tragedies keep piling up, you might wonder, “What else could possibly happen to this girl?” When I describe this reaction to Sapphire, I get a near slapdown.
“Now, I just want you to reflect on who you are and your socio-economic class, because there are people who came to me and said, ‘You didn’t tell it like it is. It’s worse than that – most people don’t even get as far as she did.'”
And that’s especially true today.
“Every program in there that Precious encounters in 1987, including Each One Teach One and the halfway house where the older woman mentors her on childcare, were all dismantled under Clinton, who wanted to end welfare as we know it. So the safety net that was there for her, as minimal as it was, no longer exists.”
Director Lee Daniels describes Sapphire as hard to get.
“I had to stalk her,” he says, about his pursuit of the rights to Push. He’d been after them since before he produced Monster’s Ball.
“Lee likes to joke about how long it took him to option the book,” Sapphire admits later. “I just couldn’t see it as a film. I didn’t want Push to be a feel-good story, an educational rags-to-riches type of thing. I wanted it to show the psychological repercussions of trauma. I didn’t want that glossed over.
“When I finally saw Monster’s Ball, I was blown away, and I thought, ‘Maybe he could do this.’ And when I saw Shadowboxer [which Daniels directed], I could see how far to the edge Lee was willing to go.”
Ultimately, Precious doesn’t go as far as the book. Information the reader gets early on in Push is saved in Precious until a knockout scene near the end.
“To start the movie as the book does would have been too much,” Sapphire allows. “I remember reading in Alice Walker’s Possessing The Secret Of Joy about the act of clitoridectomy. I actually put it down, lay down and slept and then willed myself to finish. A movie audience can’t do that.
“That’s why the fantasy sequences are so vital. It takes a day to a week to read a book. You’re in a film for two hours. The film would have been like battering without the fantasy.”
Interview Clip
On fighting and losing the battle for the title Push:
susanc@nowtoronto.com
