| Don Cheadle Does The Talking About Petey Greene |
 Don Cheadle looks to be ubiquitous in 2007 with three major releases: "Talk To Me," "Ocean's Thirteen," and "Reign Over Me," which premiered in March at NYU's Skirball Center   Cheadle as Ralph "Petey" Greene  "Talk To Me" is Kasi Lemmons' fourth feature film behind the camera  Cheadle as Petey Greene and Chiwetel Ejiofor as WOL-AM's programming director, Dewey Hughes Through Cheadle's chameleon-like performance, the 40-something actor captures Greene's character and gives him a sympathetic reading in an uncanny replication of his unique style. Cheadle is supported in his re-creation of this explosive era with the help of such talent as Cedric the Entertainer ("Nighthawk" Bob Terry), Vondie Curtis-Hall (Sunny Jim Kelsey), Mike Epps (Milo Hughes) as well as Taraji P. Henson playing Greene's wife Vernell and Chiwetel Ejiofor as fellow prison inmate Milo's brother, Dewey Hughes--the station's program director, Greene's friend and partner. From Greene's first day at the station onward, he relied on the more straight-laced Hughes to run interference at the station. Besides playing Greene, Cheadle also served as executive producer for this film, putting his passionate committment to ideas and values into play. But the Kansas City-born Oscar nominee ("Hotel Rwanda") doesn't neglect the fun side of his craft--as Basher Tarr, he's also part of Danny Ocean's crew in the Ocean trilogy (check out "Ocean's Thirteen"--it's smooth). Hell, as far as this Rat Pack-inspired film goes, Cheadle has even played Sammy Davis Jr. himself in the 1998 HBO film "The Rat Pack." Beyond his acting roles, Cheadle chooses to put his money where his values lie by working on a book on the crisis in Darfur entitled "Not On Our Watch," focusing on numerous other social issues and speaking out about such concerns as the genocide in the Sudan. Q: How did you prepare to do the character of Ralph "Petey" Greene? DC: Drink! A lot of drinking. [smiles wryly] Q: What did you drink? DC: Anything that was put in front of me. No, the bible is the script... the script is the bible rather. Whenever you're doing a "biopic" and trying to condense 15 years or 12 years into 90 minutes, there's going to be omissions and revisions. Characters are going to be re-invented and combined and all of these things are going to happen. I tend to try to see the research materials, read research about the person, but I try to read between the lines. I don't try to say, "this actually happened and this should actually be in the movie," because I'm aware of what we're trying to do. We're trying to tell this one story in this particular way. But for me, as far as the character goes, you want to get as much a sense of who this human being was as you can. It was great to have [the real] Dewey Hughes around. He was somebody that was a great touchstone we could talk to. And to have some archival of Petey Greene [was helpful], some archival audiotapes of him, but most of that stuff got erased and recorded over and thrown away. Q: Director Kasi Lemmons said she wanted you in this film regardless of what part you wanted to do--that you could've played either part. It seems the crew involved in this film were either Petey or Dewey people. Why'd you choose Petey? DC: They paid me more for the part [laughs]. At one point, I was going to do Dewey. I don't know the exact moment that I went, okay I'm going to play Petey. I think Terrence Howard was involved at one point. He was going to play Petey and I was going to do Dewey. Then my agent or somebody said, we want you to do Petey and he'll do Dewey. And it became that. And then he fell out and Chiwetel Ejiofor came on. These movies go through many iterations. I first heard about this movie from Ted Demme over 10 years ago and he was going to direct it. I would've played Petey then. So you just never know how these things wash out. Q: It's easy to spot a guy like Petey. There's a lot of Peteys floating around. But who was the Dewey kind of guy, who says that this guy has something important in him--Dewey was the kind of person who would give this guy a shot. DC: I think that's what was Dewey's gift. It's like... what was the Chicago Bulls coach? Phil Jackson's gift. He went, "Oh, you and you and you and you, okay, and give me Dennis Rodman." People thought, why are you putting these people together? He's like, "because that's a championship team." I think that's kind of what Dewey had as well. He recognized something in Petey that he didn't have. But [it was something] that he knew the town wanted and that the community would respond to. Dewey's very honest about saying that Petey knew that their dreams were not in concert. Dewey wanted something for Petey that Petey didn't want. They did not want the same thing. He knew that and he pushed back against it. That's why they had their falling out. They weren't friends for a long time. They finally made up but it was a long time that they were on the outs, because Petey felt pushed in a way that he didn't appreciate. Q: Talking about people who can be ambassadors of change in very subtle and powerful ways... in doing the James Brown scene, did you learn something about the important role these musicians had that you didn't feel before? The film showed this aspect of Brown and his power. DC: It was amazing that his coming out to perform could stop a riot. It wasn't the only place that it happened. We just showed it in D.C., but I think in Detroit, he also performed and was also able to calm things down. It's a power that you don't see musicians having today. But again, that's because that sort of spirit, and a need to make a living, which if you put out a shingle on "I'm going to be a musician," that's a hard row to hoe. The need to sort of do that... the line blurs between making a living and being famous and being huge. But you get sort of co-opted by all the mechanism of what that is: the studio, and iTunes, and the TV. I think it dilutes your power potentially. When you're everybody's everything, you're nobody's anything. And again that's what we were talking about with Petey. He was a specific spokesperson, in a specific area, for a specific group of people. And that was really his power. When Dewey attempted to take him into some bigger scale and make him something beyond that, he rejected that, because that was not his dream. He knew where his power was and that's what he was comfortable with. People say it was a tragedy, you think it was sabotage? I don't necessarily think it was sabotage. I think it was someone who was clear about who they were and where their place was, and was fine with it. It's like, my dream doesn't have to be your dream. Q: In terms of working with Kasi as a director, what do you feel separates her from other directors you've worked with? DC: She's really tenacious, but I knew that before we started shooting because of how much stick-to-it-ive-ness she had to even get the film made. It was just her and J. Miles Dale in Toronto, with no crew. It fell apart. Not going [to happen]. She's just like, I'm not leaving Toronto because it's going to happen. I'll just keep going on locations and keep putting my movie together and it'll come back. [There was] this extreme faith she had that it would work. It was great to do this film with a female director because it's such a male story. She would often bring different perspective to things and different ways she wanted to approach stuff, that I don't think necessarily would've happened... that may not have happened with a male director. But just having her there, she's got a really good eye and is very open to the way we all worked, which was really supportive and I think made for a really good result. Q: What do you think made Petey Green so outspoken? DC: That he came up rough, and that he came up through prison. He'd spent a lot of time in jail. The way he got through jail was with his mouth, and [he] talked himself into and out of problems. But that was always sort of his gift. He's always had the gift of gab. To hear some of the stories about him, [Greene] was drawn to that kind of controversy. He just liked that kind of controversy. So he would always put himself as the focus of it. And he wanted people to talk about him. He wanted people to look and talk about him. So that's where he found his gift as being a DJ on a radio station. He brought Howard Stern on this show early, before Howard Stern was Howard Stern and pissed a lot of people off, which he was fine with, because he wanted to know what was cutting edge. Q: How familiar were you with his radio show prior to starting this project? DC: Not at all. I didn't know anything about it. As I said, most of that footage, most of those tapes were erased. Those [radio] stations didn't keep them, and the TV stations didn't either. There's a thing on him on YouTube--Petey Greene shows how to eat a watermelon or something like that. [Watch Video] It's... "Whoa! Did you see it?" It's whoa. It's wild, right? It's great. Q: From the few recordings that you were able to hear--from his cadence, to his poetry or comedy--what did you feel like was most compelling? DC: Just that he was a live wire. And you never knew where he was going to go. His perspective on things always came from off-center--at a degree that was steep and dangerous, yet really precise and insightful, do you know what I mean? You just have to look at that piece on that tape--you can see it on YouTube--and it says it all. That really encapsulates how he talks about racism, about manners, about prevailing attitudes, about everything and just showing how he's going to eat watermelon. Just saying, "I'm going to eat watermelon." It works right off the bat. You're like, "What are you talking about?" To me, [it's brave] to go right to an issue like that, and not to have to sit down and have try to have a dialogue about race relations in the country but just go "I'm gonna eat watermelon and this is how you eat watermelon." He blows up every stereotype. Completely! Goes right to the stereotype. Goes, "here, I'm the stereotype." And do you really believe this? Who's watching this right now going, "Wow, that guy is really…he's cooning. Am I cooning? Or are you cooning?" He really goes right to it. And that's what I think was great about him. He didn't try to talk around the edges of an issue and figure out a different way. He just goes right to the heart of it.  Don Cheadle, best known for his Oscar-nominated lead role in "Hotel Rwanda," channels the outspoken and unrestrained radio host Petey Greene in "Talk To Me"  Cheadle as Greene and Taraji P. Henson as his girlfriend, Vernell  Cedric the Entertainer stars as "Nighthawk" Bob Terry  Perhaps inspired by politically active stars such as Martin Sheen (right), Cheadle has been outspoken about the ongoing genocide in the Sudan  "Talk To Me" comes to theatres in limited release on July 13th, and in theatres everywhere in early August DC: He embodied the kind of spirit that I think would be refreshing today. People who just spoke their mind, whether you agree with them or not. I think people often walk around with a smile on their face. You really don't know what's happening, especially in my town. One of my favorite cartoons was in The New Yorker magazine. The top panel showed two guys walking by each other and it said "New York." The guy was saying "Fuck you" [but] his thought balloon said "hi." And it showed Los Angeles and the guy just saying "hi." That's L.A.--you just never know. People don't say no to you. They just don't call you back. Stuff life that. I think Ralph "Petey" Greene and characters like him, Miles Davis and others like him would say, "get out of my face, I don't like you." [They would] let you know straight off the bat, so you don't have to wonder. Petey, not just in that regard, but anything he felt, whatever it was about, he was going to say what he felt about it. And I think that's refreshing and rare. Q: How do you respond when someone is direct and speaks their mind to you? DC: It depends on what they say. But I always appreciate it. I want to know who you are and where you are – I don't want to have to guess. I think that's what really drew me to the idea of somebody like Petey Greene. Somebody that would just be upfront. I think that when people are that way with us, even if we're insulted, we're like, "Wow, that's rare. He just really told me that I looked fat in this shirt." Q: That kind of candor was intrinsic to the '60s, and so was radio--it was a major force at the time. What was it like to look into that period? DC: It was great to talk to my family about it. Talking to my parents and my uncles and aunts who were of this generation, who were contemporaries of Petey Greene even if they didn't know who he was. And [it was interesting to] get their take on what was happening in the country at the time. Obviously we were coming through, the film spans an era of a lot of tumult in our country and a lot of controversy, and I think he's the perfect person to come through that time. We've seen the P.C.'ing of everything. And I think to our great detriment, a lot of where we are in the world today is because people aren't straightforward and honest. We've been diminished by it in a lot of ways. Q: When you do a standard character like Basher Tarr/Fender Roads in "Ocean's 13" and then have an opportunity to play a realistic, complicated person like Greene, is it important to play characters with a social awareness or sensibility? DC: No, not to me. I like to do characters that are like Petey Greene but I [also] like to do characters that are like Mouse (in 1995's "Devil In A Blue Dress")--completely anti-social and someone you don't want to really be around. Or people like the friendly robber, Basher Tarr in "Ocean's 13." To me, it's not about… I don't have an agenda. I don't sit down with an agenda, other than I want to do films that are interesting and fun and something I haven't done before. It's great if they can address something that speaks to something greater than the film itself. That's not always the case. When that happens, it's a nice by-product but I don't think that's mainly the point of movies. I think the point of film is to entertain. I think that's what we're trying to do. Q: Was his girlfriend in the film, Vernell (played by Taraji P. Henson), based on a real person, or was she a composite of a lot of women? DC: His girlfriend? She's a composite. I mean he was with many, many, many, many women. I think she was a composite of several of the ones that he was with that were important. Q: There aren't many black women on the screen like Henson's character. DC: Taraji's the only woman who I know who's like that. There were other women up for the part when we were casting it. But I was like, "What are you talking about?" Taraji – that's it. There's nobody else to play this part. I'm glad they came around. This girl is off the hook. This is the girl that has to be. You would need someone like her to be with somebody like Petey. Q: How many women have you met in your life like Taraji? DC: One...her. [laughs] Q: Through a degree of persistence and determination of your own, you've expanded into all these projects--movies, media, the talking book and this book project--you're determined to branch out into all these areas. DC: I always want to be hireable. I want to do many different things. The book, "Not on Our Watch" came out of my relationship with John Prendergast, who was at the time senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, and what we experienced in Africa, in Darfur, in Sudan. [The book is] a way to, in one document, try to answer the hundreds of questions about what can we do that I'd gotten since going over there and doing "Hotel Rwanda." In our many, many discussions, I said, we should really write a book about it so we can answer it in one decisive place, in one concise way. I didn't realize I was going to have to do it when I said it. He kept pressing and we finally did it. Q: People looked to Petey for guidance and leadership, for answers to questions they had to the pressing problems in their lives. He had a charisma. You have that kind of charisma and people look to you for answers. How do you feel about that? DC: I wish people would just get off my back! [laughs] I'm not the answer man. I think people ask me specific questions about things I'm involved in because they want to know how they themselves can get involved in them. I don't get asked questions like a counselor, but it's a lot of responsibility anyway. You want to take people seriously. And I want to take those questions seriously. I'm a student of this myself. I'm not an expert on what's happening in Darfur. I'm not an expert on activism. I'm someone who's learning. I'm swimming in the stream with all these other people who are trying to figure out what to do. I don't think there's an answer. But I do believe that from the amount of noise we've been able to make, from the positions that we've been fortunate to hold--myself, George Clooney--that activism, and I'm just specifically talking about Darfur, that we've seen it reach levels that I don't think it would've reached had there not been this kind of light shown on it. So in that regard, I feel very fortunate and very blessed to have anything to do with what might be any solution to Darfur. Q: Did you come up with the idea for "Not On Our Watch" on the set of "Ocean's 11"? DC: I went to China and Egypt, and eventually the UN with George in December. He's been to Darfur, he's been to Sudan. We have a project/organization/foundation, I don't know what we're calling it yet, that we started just a few weeks ago called Not On Our Watch and we've raised about ten million dollars so far and just gave 750,000 to Oxfam last week. And that's George, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt and myself and Jerry Weintraub, who's produced the movie. So the tendrils of this just keep folding in, and I'm trying to braid them all into a rope that we can use to really start flogging this issue and get people to focus and push our government. I believe our government is actually, compared to the rest of the world, doing a great deal. But we need to be doing it in a way that is not unilateral--which we haven't wanted to do--and work with the other leaders around the world, France, China and the middle powers to try and push this thing through because genocide is a crime against humanity. It shouldn't be a crime that's looked at specifically as an American issue, or China's issue or South Africa's issue. It should not be allowable anywhere on the face of the earth. Q: You say it shouldn't be allowable but if you look here in our country, we have serious gang problems in the school system. The violence still happens and no one does anything about it. DC: It's the human condition. I think we're not a very evolved race. You look at our time line versus how long the earth has been here and how long we've been here... we're infants. I think we've got a lot of infantile behavior. I'm not shocked that it's happening. Sure, people getting shot on the street is a horrible tragedy too. [But] 450,000 people... two and a half million people displaced in a systematic way is something that I think deserves an international response, that's all I'm saying. Q: A spotlight has finally been shining on Darfur for some time now. With so much attention, some are concerned that it'll reach a saturation level where we lose attention and it will be yesterday's story even though it hasn't been resolved. DC: That's the battle that we face. And all of you [journalists] play a big part in how that is played out. You have to be strategic. You have to be smart if you really want to help. You have to consider those things. You have to think how do I do this in different ways? We're trying to address it in many different ways to get leadership to respond, and I think we're there in this country. Now the challenge is to get other countries involved. One of the pressing issues right now, a place where we're trying to turn up the heat and get focus, is the Olympics that are coming up in Beijing in 2008, because China's relationship to the Sudan is such that they buy 67% of their oil. It's a four billion dollar industry for the Sudanese people right now. A lot of that money is directly going to buy weapons, bombers, paying for militias and it's underwriting this genocide that is happening. We want to focus on China's relationship to the Sudan and find ways to bring that issue to the light, and to try to press on them to do something. And if they won't, then to press on whoever ends up being the [television] network that's going to show the Olympics--so that they're aware of it. So that they're aware the activist community will be pressing on them. So those 5 rings are going to have blood dripping off them, do you know what I mean, if this continues to go on and China doesn't do anything about it. Q: Is there going to be a documentary as well? DC: There's a documentary coming out at the end of this year. I think in October.
copyright © 2007 Brad Balfour
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