From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. You can also hear this show at KCRW.com.

The story of the movie Precious has had a long and hard-won battle to get from being made

to getting into the Sundance Film Festival where it achieved the virtually unprecedented task

of winning both the audience award and the grand jury prize.

It's been playing at festivals around the world.

It's also won the hearts of Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey.

Its director, Lee Daniels is here, talk about.

Lee, first of all, congratulations, and thanks so much for being here.

Thank you very much for having me here, Elvis.

First of all, I need to get you to tell you the audience a little bit what's about before we start

talking about some of the particulars of the film.

Yeah, it is about a African-American teenager girl who is in Harlem,

who is illiterate, learning how to read,

and is abused by her mother verbally, physically, sexually,

and is sexually abused by her father and is pregnant by him for the second time

and she and her and her breaking away from that environment to learn how to read and to have her kids

back her mother sort of keeping the kids for the welfare system so she can get a check to learn how to read and to have her kids back.

Her mother sort of keeping the kids for the welfare system so she can get a check.

And also about her finding family, and all of the foods you've been involved with,

from Monsters Ball as a producer to Shadowboxer to this film,

have all been about people trying to build a family out of nothing.

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