One thing that makes
Focus Features handling of
Talk to Me sad and aggravating is the company's decision that there isn't a mainstream market for the film.
Anne-Marie and I saw
Talk to Me at
Salem Cinema, the single screen, independent art house in Salem, Oregon. We, of course, have no problem supporting Salem Cinema, but Talk to Me is not a "small" film. It boasts a name, Oscar-nominated actor, Don Cheadle, and an up-and-coming actor in Chiwetel Eijofor. The director,
Kasi Lemmons, has
at least one notable work to her name. It features Martin Sheen in a small, but important supporting role. The production design and period detail is excellent, and it features superb integration of live action with vintage TV footage. Money was spent. And yet, somehow, not only does it take a month, give or take, for the film to finally get to our little part of the world, but it plays a small theater instead of a larger auditorium with a state of the art sound system and perhaps, even, digital projection. I can only conclude that the good folks at Focus Features, with some agreement from
Regal (where we saw previews for the film earlier this year), the resident corporate giant, decided that the largely white mid-Willamette Valley audience would not come out for a film about African-Americans, no matter how smart and nuanced its treatment of race is, or how well made (aside from a strangely sentimental and drawn out final act that is; of course, the sentimental turn simply underscores the movie's mainstream credentials). These choices do nothing but give credence to Petey Greene's (Cheadle) about turn on the "Tonight Show" stage, though I strongly suspect that this message is more ironic than intended.
Originally posted on:
Short-Circuit Signs