ADG Perspective

January-February 2019

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Barry and I talked a great deal about what Fonny's art should be. It's described nebulously in the novel, but always seems centered around the figure, the human body. The novel casts Fonny as a wood carver, but I wanted to connect Fonny's art to a freer energy, to his curiosity and to his life on the streets of the city. To that end, his art was devised as an assemblage of found objects, as well as the carving of raw wood all splattered with paint. This led to open and expressive sculptures that often found Fonny hammering together and chiseling wood, trying to find life in the materials, or create life by juxtaposing them. Stefan James (the actor playing Fonny) was set up to work with local artists in order to help him develop skills so that he would appear at ease when making art on camera. Real sculptors were hired to create and to loan work to populate his studio home. But after all of this, there was still something missing with the art that was collected. A mature version of his work was needed that, at the end of the film, would show what he had grown into. The solution was ultimately found in the art of Valerie Maynard. Kris Moran, the set decorator and longtime friend, somehow found her work in Baltimore. It was perfect. It felt like Fonny's work in a way that we couldn't explain. It reflected pain and beauty. Hurt and Pride. It was simple and right. It was also vintage and made in the time of this story. Barry agreed and we proceeded to make a deal with Maynard to use a few of her pieces. In the course of that process, we discovered that it wasn't that we had found her art, but that it had found us. Valerie Maynard was a friend of James Baldwin. She knew him in Harlem at the time that this story was being conceived (it was written later in Paris.) In fact, her sculpture had in many ways been his inspiration for Fonny's art. Hers was the sculpture that Baldwin was seeing as he was describing Fonny. Furthermore, Tony Maynard, her brother, is believed to be one of the specific inspirations for Fonny, himself. An African-American man who moved to Greenwich Village when Baldwin was spending his time there and was wrongly arrested, then sent to Attica. Barry knew of Tony's story but not as much about Valerie, though I believe he was aware of her. When we figured out what we had stumbled on, we sat there very quietly for a long while before we tearfully hugged. It was Valerie's work that inspired the character in the novel and it was her actual sculpture that ended up as Fonny's art in our film. The light that emanated from this collision of art realities enabled me to see that we had stumbled onto a true creative path and that our film was destined to be something very special. That perhaps, from some great beyond, Jimmy still had his hand in this telling of If Beale Street Could Talk, and that we were just here to help. ADG I I. BLEECKER STREET. EXTERIOR LOCATION. SET PHOTO. Mark Friedberg, Production Designer Robert Pyzocha, Oliver Rivas Madera, Art Directors Erica Hohf, Assistant Art Director Kris Moran, Set Decorator

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