Toronto – Don Cheadle bides his time. He watches. He listens. He reads. He takes mental notes. On location, the Oscar nominee offers suggestions that always are taken seriously, often implemented.
It was a study in what is and what will be, watching the actor last summer on the set of “Talk to Me,” a period drama inspired by the rise of D.C radio-TV personality Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene. (The film opens July 27.)
Those who have worked with Cheadle believe it’s just a matter of time before he joins the ranks of fine actors who direct fine films.
Maybe it’s the emotional heft of the projects to which Cheadle is drawn: “Hotel Rwanda” and “Reign Over Me.” Or perhaps it’s the behind-the-camera roles he’s begun taking on. He was a producer on “Crash.” He’s the executive producer of “Talk to Me.”
Or maybe it’s just the way he pays heed to each scene.
“Don Cheadle is a great example of someone who’s very smart, dedicated to bringing stories to the screen with great leads and great packages, and it’s paying off,” said film executive Stephanie Allain last fall when asked about the artistic strides of being made by African-American filmmakers and actors.
For Cheadle, 42, it’s about the joy of “putting stuff together.”
I love seeing all these different elements come together greater, different than what you imagined them to be,” the actor said one morning, still wearing the mini-‘fro and sideburns of his character. “I like all aspects of the creative process.”
Passion for filmmaking
Cheadle’s passion for the filmmaking process, as well as his deep focus as a performer, was as sharp and impressive as his character’s slick brown boots during the waning days of “The Talk to Me” shoot.
Light streamed through the windows of a room in Toronto’s Union Station, dubbed the Video Village because of its jumble of monitors and rows of canvas directors chairs. Cheadle stood before a monitor with co-star Chiwetel Ejiofor and director Kasi Lemmons, eyeing a scene just shot on the other side of the wall.
Greene and radio producer Dewey Hughes (Ejiofor) have walked into the offices of WOL-AM, an R&B station owned by E.G. Sonderling (Martin Sheen). Strewn on the floor,are the clothes Petey wasn’t wearing when he pounded on Dewey’s door the night before. Girlfriend Vernell (Taraji P. Henson) had kicked Petey out.
Vernell’s payback leads to a confrontation between Greene and another disc jockey, Nighthawk, portrayed by Cedric the Entertainer.
After conferring by the monitor, the director and her leading men headed back into the station’s avocado green offices. There, the absurdly amusing confrontation morphs into something abjectly, historically wrenching.
Thanks to Cheadle’s deep understanding of Greene’s fears, as well as his courage, what comes next provides “Talk to Me” with one of the most powerful mood shifts in the film.
“Talk to me is fantastic,” Allain said last fall after seeing an early cut of Lemmons’ film. The producer of Craig Brewer’s Southern melodramas (“Black Snake Moan” and “Hustle & Flow”) then offered a 2008 Oscar prediction. “Don will be nominated. Chiwetel will be nominated. Kasi will be nominated.”
Oscar’s either/or quandaries aside, Cheadle wants the film, set mostly in the politically and racially charged ’60s and ’70s, to entertain.
“People will get from it what they get from it,” he said of the themes of black empowerment and class divisions. “Clearly it touches on very powerful issues and a very powerful moment in the history of our country.”
An ex-convict with a gift for gab and exquisite taste in tunes, Greene became a force in Washington, D.C., as did his producer Dewey Hughes. A father of the “tell it like it is” school of talk-the-talk radio, Greene eventually had a TV program called “Petey Greene’s Washington.”
When D.C. was in flames after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Greene, not typically a cooler head, helped quell the urban unrest.
A recovering addict and a less-than-recovered alcoholic, Greene was a complicated character to love. Still many came to. In 1984, when he died of cancer at the age of 53, his service was one of the most attended of any nonelected official in Washington.
True-life social causes
Cheadle’s inhabited real folk before.
Some, like Paul Rusesabagina, are alive. This comes with its own challenges – and obligations.
Since portraying the hotel manager who saved Tutsi and Hutu lives alike in “Hotel Rwanda,” Cheadle has become increasingly involved in social justice issues in Africa. “Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond,” was co-authored by Cheadle and John Prendergast and published in the spring. He also produced and narrates the upcoming documentary “An Indifferent World” about Sudan.
Other people, like Sammy Davis Jr., whom Cheadle played in HBO’s “The Rat Pack,” are legendary.
“When I played Sammy, I read his autobiography, and you’ve got to read between the lines,” said Cheadle.
“When people are telling about themselves, there are omissions. There are exaggerations. People try to hide there blemishes. It’s very rare that you read a totally naked thing on somebody.”
Greene’s no different, and Cheadle noted “Talk to Me” is not pure biopic.
“Everyone who knew him has a point of view,” he said. “You’re invariably going to get it wrong.” Still, “this story, told by these people at this time in this way is more valuable than not telling it.”
There’s another reason “Talk to Me” carries that familiar “inspired by” caveat – it is a tribute to the romance of friendship.
“They love each other before they realize it, while they’re still arguing,” Lemmons said about Cheadle and Ejiofor’s characters.
“The romance of friendship gets explored. But in terms of black men, you seldom see it this wonderfully drawn out. I know it sounds kind a weird, but I thought of it as a cross between ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ and ‘Uptown Saturday Night.'”
For those who didn’t spend matinee weekends at the Crest, Denver’s long-gone moviehouse featuring African-American flicks, “Uptown Saturday Night” was the first of two Sidney Poitier-directed romps about buddies (Poitier and Bill Cosby) who have a run-in with a mobster (Harry Belafonte).
When one is looking for antecedents for Cheadle’s career arc, the golden actor-director, champion of indie film and social justice is a natural. In fact, Lemmons’ film exhibits the cultural acuity and deft attention to era of Robert Redford’s “Quiz Show.”
But “Talk to Me” is funnier. Much.
A few months ago, Cheadle appeared opposite Adam Sandler in “Reign Over Me,” Mike Binder’s underattended drama about a tormented man (Sandler) and his old college roomie and new best friend (Cheadle).
“Cheadle drove me crazy,” Binder said during the press push for the movie. “He truly was a pain to the point he wanted everything rewritten. But I came to welcome it. He’s really the smartest actor I’ve worked with – not to put anyone else down. He’s going to be a masterful director.”
Cheadle sat in a warehouse near Toronto Lake, a boombox blaring Hugh Masekela. Nearby, actors strutted and struck poses in the crushed velvet, deep purple, and fringed leather get-ups costume designer Gersha Phillips calls “plummage.”
While Petey comes off as peacock proud, the Denver East High alum has a low-key hum.
(Despite our insistent desire, Cheadle considers his birthplace – Kansas City, Mo. – his hometown even though he attended high school in Denver.)
“I’ve always tried to look at the whole story,” he said when asked if being a producer has made him look at his work differently.
“I’m not the one who’s going to come and say ‘Make this more about me.’ I’m the one who says, take me out of this scene; it doesn’t make sense. Give those lines to him, why am I saying that? I don’t want to be the good thing in a bad movie.
“I’m very opinionated and pigheaded and stubborn about the way things are supposed to work. I can be like a dog with a bone.”
He smiled when asked what that description sounds like.
“A director.” He paused. “That’s why I know I have to direct,” he said with a soft laugh. “I have to subject myself to others.”
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com.
