Reinaldo Marcus Green: ‘King Richard’

The Treatment

KCRW

Arts

4.6 • 639 Ratings

🗓️ 4 January 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week on The Treatment, Elvis welcomes director Reinaldo Marcus Green, whose latest film is “King Richard,” which takes a closer look at Richard Williams, father of tennis greats Venus and Serena. Green’s other films include “Monsters and Men” and “Joe Bell.” Green tells The Treatment about the personal connection he felt to the story, growing up with an eye on playing major league baseball. He says it was important that the film show the pride the Williams family felt in their home in Compton, California. And Green says he believes Richard Williams was ahead of his time in his approach to not pushing his daughters to the edge of burning out.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.
0:14.5	Welcome to the treatment, the home edition.
0:16.6	I'm Elvis Mitchell.
0:18.1	My guest today made an enormous splash for this feature, his debut feature, Monsters and Men at Sundance in 2018.
0:25.7	He's followed up with Joe Bell and his newest feature, which I guess we probably all heard about by now, is King Richard starring Will Smith.
0:32.5	My guest is Rinaldo, Marcus Green. Rinaldo, thanks so much for being here.
0:36.1	Elvis, thank you for having me.
0:37.8	And let me ask you about doing three features that basically are so close to sort of real
0:43.8	life, the last two and based on actual true events, but even Monsters and Men clearly has
0:50.2	a basis in the real world.
0:52.1	And there feels like there's almost this kind of sort of schism
0:56.3	between dramatic truth and real truth that you're getting at in your films. Yeah, look, I watch
1:01.9	a lot of documentaries, and I think I always have, I always responded to real life stories.
1:07.7	You know, it's just, it's just what I like. It's what I gravitate towards. And, you know, I was a history major in college. I read lots of nonfiction. So I think just by virtue of response to that type of material, I've always responded to that. And I think it has permeated itself in my filmmaking in a lot of ways is just my interest level in sort of real-life subjects.
1:29.2	It's interesting you talk about history because, you know, that line between history and perception is also a really big part of the way all three of these films will play.
1:41.0	I mean, characters talking about what the quote-unquote history is and then talking
1:45.2	about being in that moment. That's really interesting to me because I think it makes you unique
1:50.1	in this way among certainly contemporary filmmakers. Yeah, I think, you know, you are kind of what
1:55.8	you read sometimes and I think it's part of who I am. It's part of the things that I gravitate towards.
2:01.6	And I don't think about it necessarily as a one-to-one when making movies, but I think somehow
2:06.9	it can't escape me. It's part of the DNA in some ways the fabric of who I am as a person.
2:14.1	It's an extension of myself in the filmmaking process.
	...

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