Kansas Filmmaker Kevin Willmott Remembers Isaac Hayes

Kansas Filmmaker Kevin Willmott Remembers Isaac Hayes

By Jason Harper in Q&A

Wednesday, Aug. 13 2008 @ 10:18AM

By JASON HARPER

In 1999, Lawrence-based filmmaker Kevin Willmott released a little joint called Ninth Street . You may remember it -- it starred a musician and actor of no small stature who died recently: Isaac Hayes.

Set in Willmott's hometown of Junction City, Kansas, and also starring KC jazz singer Queen Bey as feisty tavern owner Ma Baker, the movie centers around the lives of poor African-Americans eking out (or not eking out) a living off the wild nightlife that happened on the main drag of the small town west of Topeka. It's set during the Vietnam War, and most of the business comes from visiting soldiers and the local ladies willing to love them for money.

Hayes plays the part of Tippytoe, a truth-telling, tobacco-spitting working man. Willmott and co-star Don Washington, by contrast, play winos Huddie and Bebo, respectively, who do little besides sit on a couch and analyze their ruined lives and surroundings in dialogue that ripples with humor and pathos -- the dialogue throughout the film is phenomenal. As the film's narrator, Bebo gives the viewer access to a rich, rundown landscape teeming with emotionally explosive characters who are struggling desperately to make sense of their lives in an America that's both hostile to them but is also starting to offer hope for change.

Besides the working folk and winos, there's the shell-shocked soldier who feels tragically threatened by his surroundings; the crazy bag lady (Kaycee Moore) who watches war broadcasts in the window of a white-owned TV store until she's chased away; the prostitute (Nadine Griffith) who longs to get away but can't; the ineffectual young pimp (Byron Myrick) who tries to put the older folks in town under his thumb but can't come close to breaking their pride; the aspiring Pentecostal street preacher who rails against everyone's sinfulness and thinks Martin Luther King Jr. should have stuck to his congregation instead of going out and getting himself killed; and there's the white Catholic priest (Martin Sheen in little more than a cameo role), who sees more good than evil in the lost people of Ninth Street.

In short, it's a strange setting for the man who sang about Shaft to work his acting chops. I talked this morning with writer and director Willmott about his memories of working with Isaac Hayes.

Wayward Blog: Where were you when you heard the news?
Willmott: Actually I was just coming back from a screening of my film Bunker Hill in Santa Fe, and Queen Bey called me. She had just heard it on the news, and I was totally shocked.

Did you listen to Isaac Hayes growing up?
Oh yeah, he had a huge influence on me. You know, I grew up in Junction City, and my first memory of him was hearing some old guys in the neighborhood talking about him, and they were talking about his bald head – they were kind of making fun of him a bit. It was really ironic how he turned that totally around. Yul Brynner was maybe the only other guy around who was cool with a bald head, and Isaac turned that whole look into an icon of the ‘60s and ‘70s. …

He was probably one of my favorite recording artists, still is, not just Shaft but all of his music. He had told me one time that people would come up to him and say, “I made my son from one of your albums,” or “I made my daughter from one of your albums” [laughs]. Just those long, lovemaking records that he would make. You never heard anything like that before – soul music with strings, soul music with oboes – and that whole sound was just really new to people. … It’s just an iconic sound.

How did he become involved with Ninth Street?
, you rush out and try to grab it, and you’ve got the towel and you’re wet and you’re half-naked, the whole deal, and this voice on the phone says [in a deep voice], “This is Isaac” [laughs]. He was totally beautiful. He said the script reminded him of growing up on Beale Street in Memphis, and he wanted to do it.

It was a huge thing for us. It really was the kind of thing that took our film up to another level. I’ll always be indebted to Isaac for that. He was one of the first guys to really believe in me. ... He really understood what I was trying to do with it. Isaac grew up the hard way in Memphis, you know? He didn’t have a mother and father, and his grandmother raised him, and I don’t think they had a lot of money. So he was the embodiment of what I think soul music is about. It comes out of the blues, it comes out of hard times and difficult relationships anActually I got in touch with him through a talent agent who was living in Kansas City at the time, Mi-Ling Poole. I was working on Ninth Street at the time, and we didn’t have any money. We were shooting a little bit at a time and struggling through it, and an actor I had who was a friend of mine had passed away, and I was looking for someone to replace him, and Mi-Ling said that she had this contact with Isaac, and would I be interested in Isaac and I said, “Well, of course!” I never, ever imagined that I’d get him. And one morning, I’m in the shower and the phone rings, and, you knowd all those things. So he really understood what I was trying to do with Ninth Street, with the street wisdom and all that that movie’s trying to capture.

Did you offer the part of Tippytoe, specifically?
Yeah, I was trying to get him to play Tippytoe, right. And then he offered to do some music for the film, which was a mindblower.

How did that come about?
We’d already finished shooting, and I think I was driving him to the airport, and I said, “I sure would like to get some of your music in the film.” And he said, “I’d love to do some music for the film.” And I was like, man, I was talking about old music! He said he would do some new stuff, so we got three tunes that he did for the film. And of course that was like manna from heaven. And the thing was, you gotta remember the whole movie cost a couple hundred thousand dollars. At that time, I was shooting things for about $5,000 every time I shot, and so, you know, I had probably spent maybe 40 or 50 thousand dollars on the movie at that time, and here I am getting an Academy Award-winning composer to work with me. So I think that’s a great example of his generosity.

After having already played the character in the movie, he probably really understood what he needed to do with the songs.
Oh, yeah, very much so. People, I think, underestimate his ability to make a soundtrack. People just think “the ‘70s,” but Isaac could do anything, and I don’t think he got many opportunities to do that because he became so identified with the ‘70s sound. But Isaac could’ve done anything.

Acting in the film yourself, you had several scenes with Isaac – how was he to act with?
He was beautiful, man. We had a lot of fun, a lot of laughs. He really enjoyed the part because typically he would only get to play tough guys and detective stuff and bad guys, and this was something he really understood. I think he knew men like this. There were certainly men like that on Beale Street, and he really connected with it. I didn’t even talk to him much about Tippytoe – he just brought it to the film. After that first conversation, I didn’t really worry about it. The way I work with actors is, you get really good actors. and they know what the part is and you let them do their thing, and then you adjust it if there’s something not right. But he really understood it. It was just like you were old men on the corner hanging out, and I think he knew men like that, and he told me it was the best thing he’d ever done.

His character operated a taxi stand, right?
Yeah, he was based on a character – they were all based on characters I’d seen as a kid in Junction City, people that my father knew and stuff. He owned a taxi cab stand on Ninth Street in the film. He was kind of the guy, who, compared to the two wine drinkers that Don Washington and myself played, he had a wife and had his act together and had a positive life. He’s the one who gives the message of the film, which is to accept who you are and that God can love anybody no matter what your situation is.

What will you miss most about Isaac Hayes?
I always hoped that I could work with him again. I talked to him one time about an idea I had called Old School, which was going to be about a detective guy based around him, a blues musician who did detective work for people in the neighborhood. When they’d get in trouble, they’d go to him, kind of a semi-detective. I had a lot of ideas – every time I thought of stuff I always kind of thought of Isaac in some way. I’ll really miss working with him.

But I think Isaac had a lot more to offer. He was a very young man, even though he was 65 -- 65 is, you know, nothing. I think he had a great deal more to offer. I really think he could’ve done a lot more acting and really had another career in his older age, and that’s what I’ll miss the most. And, obviously, his music – I heard he was about to start working on a new album. So that’s a thing we’ll all miss.

And in your film, it was great to see him, a musical genius, play a character that was so gritty.
Yeah, that’s the thing -- I don’t think people got to see that side of him very much. I think that’s why he liked Ninth Street so much, because got to be a little more sensitive and talk about things that he normally didn’t get to deal with in film and in the public arena. He was kinda known as a ladies man and all of those things, and he used that image – I think he was a ladies man to some degree – but I think that was only one part of him. I think the thing he loved about Ninth Street was that it showed that other side of him.

| More...