Pushing It

Philly filmmaker Lee Daniels took Sundance by storm. But is he too crazy for you?

by A.D. Amorosi

HEY SAPPHIRE: Lee Daniels won the 2009 Sundance Film Festival's top jury and audience awards for Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire.

Lee Daniels don't need no stinking badges. But he'll take them all the same.

The Southwest Philadelphia producer/director just won the 2009 Sundance Film Festival's top jury and audience awards for Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire. (Its star, Mo'Nique, also grabbed a special jury prize for acting.)

Sure, it's only the third time in the 25-year history of Sundance that the same movie took home those two big awards — and this is only the second film Daniels has directed.

As a producer, he's touched success before. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave Halle Berry a best actress Oscar for 2001's Monster's Ball. The Woodsman, starring Kevin Bacon, was a hit at Cannes in 2004.

And though Push arrived at Sundance without a studio to back it, it's since landed a distribution deal with Lionsgate in partnership with Harpo Films and 34th Street Films, the respective motion picture companies of Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry.

Which is not to say Daniels has had an easy time getting to this point, or that he'll have an easy time after Push's release.

Daniels can be provocative, some would say to a fault.

"I'm a masochistic bitch looking for the truth," Daniels once put it.

Monster's Ball delved into interracial romance. The Woodsman dealt with pedophilia. His directorial debut, 2005's filmed-in-Philly Shadowboxer, tackled incest (and had no shortage of chicks-with-dicks).

That such daring work is aesthetically credible is an accomplishment for any filmmaker in the age of the cash-conscious cineplex. That he's a gay African-American male taking these chances without stooping to Hollywood's malaise of making black characters mere caricatures involved in gangs, guns or ganja is a greater achievement. But having been raked over the coals, critically and financially, Shadowboxer — it found trouble getting even limited distribution — made going forward difficult.

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"I knew Shadowboxer might not go over but was still surprised it got hit like it did," Daniels said two weeks ago from Park City. "My head was in the clouds. I was spoiled by all the acclaim I got for the other films. Had I been European, it would've played different here. People here accept different stories from African-American filmmakers," — that is, stories about African-Americans.

But Daniels is no Tyler Perry. And Push isn't Madea's Family Reunion.

It's a nightmarish story filmed with a lightness that borders on whimsy. In Daniels' hands, the scabrous biographical tale of its author (Sapphire) is stark but also surreal.

Push concerns a mightily overweight, sadly illiterate Harlem teen named Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) pregnant with her second child. Like her first kid, this baby was conceived by her own father. Precious' mother, Mary (comedienne Mo'Nique), is a grotesque, a monster who abuses her daughter physically, psychologically and sexually. "She makes Baby Jane took like Cinderella," says Daniels.

"It's dark, brutal stuff," he says quietly. Then he thinks about it and amends. "The storyline is dark. The way I tell it isn't."

Unlike Woodsman and Shadowboxer, Daniels shot Push in Manhattan. He hated it. It wasn't fun. "I wasn't home," says Daniels referring to Philly. Yes, he lives in New York City now. "But shooting there? There're so many other famous directors doing likewise. You're just one more. They don't treat you well. Yawn." So he shut down production and called in his Philly crew to take over. Lee Daniels is unstoppable no matter what Manhattan film crews or persnickety critics think. "Do people in the film biz think I'm crazy?" he asks, rephrasing a more delicately put question about his image. He laughs. "I don't care what anyone thinks except my mother, my kids and my God. If I cared what people thought I'd be in Hollywood."

Right as he says that, His cell phone goes off — his ringtone is Muddy Waters' "Hoochie Coochie Man" — and Mo'Nique is on the other line. She's headed to Daniels' suite as we speak. So, of course, when she enters his room, Daniels tells her, "This man A.D. just told me that some people think I'm crazy."

Mo'Nique laughs hard. "That's absolute brilliance." "I pretty much think that Lee freaks everybody's shit — from his hair down to his film fare," I tell her. "My opinion is that Lee's fearless, A.D.," says Mo'Nique. "His look, his attitude, his work, it's all fearless. He makes no apologies for his vision. See that hair on top of his head? Baby he ain't apologizing. He didn't comb that. He knows. And he ain't gonna apologize for his work, either."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)