From KCRW, Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. I am thrilled to have for his third time around on the show.

He's been here for each of his

films, Hunger and Shame, director Steve McQueen, who's back with his newest film, 12 Years

of Slave, The Story of Solent North. Steve, first of all, so good to see you. Thanks for doing the show again.

Thanks for reminding me. For the 100th time probably today, if you would tell the audience what

12 years of slave is about.

Twelve Years of Slave is a story about a man called Solubba Northup, who was a free man, a free black man in the north,

who in 1841 was kidnapped and dragged into slavery. And for 12 years, he remained in himself as a slave until 1853.

One of the things, though, that this movie touches on that you've done in your previous films,

is that the way people act around privilege. I mean, privilege, you know, in hunger and shame,

the idea of these guys are sort of dealing with the fact that they come out of worlds of privilege

and they've kind of divorced themselves from it. And Solomon has, privilege is kind of a dear thing

to him, the privilege he has of being free at the beginning of the movie, the beginning of his life,

and have that taken away from him and throwing these situations where he lives to support privilege

is really interesting to me.

I think we all, you know, the privilege we have today, of course, is very interesting in the

way that it was in 1841 when Solomon was kidnapped.

I mean, you know, in 2013.

And, you know, who's paying for our freedom?

Who's paying for our liberty liberty as such I mean today

you know car clothes we're wearing and stuff someone's paying for it our lifestyle so again it's

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