“The Color Purple” director Blitz Bazawule is living out his American dream. The Ghana-born hip-hop artist known as Blitz the Ambassador never expected to helm a film produced by Quincy Jones, Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey — at least not this early in his career. “Before I ever knew of any mediums, of any art forms, I drew and painted as a kid,” he says. “To make a film you gotta know how to write. You gotta know how to photograph or paint or frame. You gotta know music. You gotta know how to score and have cadence. It’s a multi-disciplinary art and it’s perfect for anyone who oscillates between mediums, so this is something that I always had in mind. Did I have one of the greatest titles of all time and the greatest producers of all time in mind? No.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
Bazawule reveals he was “quite intimidated” to bring the Broadway musical adaptation of Alice Walker‘s novel to the big screen. “I didn’t have the experience,” he admits. “I had made a $40,000 independent movie in Ghana. I went back and I read Alice Walker’s book again, just trying to figure out if I had a way in. I found what I was looking for on the first page, first line. Anyone who is writing letters to God must have an imagination. If there’s one thing I know, it’s imagination…Once I figured that out I thought, ‘I think that’s it. I can truly, confidently say I will be contributing something new to Alice Walker’s brilliant canon.'”
“The cast is everything,” Bazawule says about Fantasia Barrino, Danielle Brooks and Taraji P. Henson. “They are ultimately the heartbeat of this narrative. Fantasia was doubtful about participating in this film. She didn’t want to do it. It was very hard for her to do it on Broadway and she felt like she would be revisiting a dark past in her life. I was persistent and I showed her the version we were going to make, which was a sprawling imagination for Celie and she jumped at it. She could relate to what it felt like to be in a dark place and have to imagine her way out of the darkness. Her rebirth is more startling than we could have ever imagined.”
He continues, “Danielle Brooks, who had played it on Broadway as well, came with such incredible vigor. Taraji, who was doubtful that she could sing, embraced the challenge and, to me, gives some of the biggest and most show-stopping performances in this movie.”
“The Color Purple” is a decades-spanning tale of love and resilience and of one woman’s journey to independence. Celie faces many hardships in her life, but ultimately finds extraordinary strength and hope in the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood. The Warner Bros. film opens nationwide on December 25.
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