You do what you are able to do, says Cheadle. That s my responsibility as a human. But as an actor, you know, I don t always want to represent all that is good and noble.
Sometimes you just want to, you know, get down a little bit. Cheadle does some serious getting down in Talk to Me, opening nationwide July 20. Turned out in flamboyant outfits occasionally topped by feathered hats that make Cheadle s Boogie Nights wardrobe look sedate, Cheadle plays Ralph Waldo (Petey) Greene, a real-life ex-con and street hustler.
In the mid- 60s, Greene hustled his way into a job as the morning DJ on WOL-AM in Washington, D.C., a rhythm and blues station with a large base of African-American listeners.
The irreverent - to say the least - Greene quickly became a voice for the black community and a local media superstar - even though he was barely known outside his hometown. I had never heard of the guy, says the usually press-shy Cheadle. As executive producer of Talk to Me, he felt a stronger commitment than usual to get the word out.
But when I started to read about him, I thought: Oh yeah, this could be interesting. To me, he represented a whole lot of forgotten or half-forgotten guys who played a big role in the sea change of African-American culture in that period. The guy walks out of jail and into a kind of celebritydom that he s not ready for, and that s interesting.
But he can t lose what he was, and he doesn t want to, you know? The movie s set in the `60s and `70s, but the argument continues today in black communities, you know? If you work the traditional routes to success - education, straight job, straight clothes - does that somehow make you a sellout?
And if you fight back against the prevailing standards that contribute to the racial injustice in this country, does that make you a troublemaker or a revolutionary? The movie s very funny, he says, but it has some serious things on its mind. I think it has a lot to say not just to the black community, but to the white community as well.
I hate it when any movies gets labeled a `black movie or an `urban movie because that s a barrier right there. Movies are in color, but they shouldn t have a color. Cheadle became interested in Talk to Me a few years ago when he learned about Greene - credited with helping to end the riot in the wake of the assassination of Dr.
in 1968 - from Ted Demme, a producer and director who died in 2002. Cheadle helped drive the product to the screen, hooking up with director Kasi Lemmons. Cheadle s co stars are Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays Dewey Hughes, the radio exec credited with discovering Petey, and Taraji P.
Henson of Hustle Flow, who plays Petey s outspoken girlfriend. Martin Sheen, Cedric the Entertainer and Mike Epps have smaller roles. Cheadle is preparing to take on a biography of jazz legend Miles Davis.
He will star in the movie and hopes to begin filming next year. He s an incredibly fascinating character, a genius that not only contributed to the evolution of jazz but to all music, says Cheadle, who has acquired rights to Davis so-called autobiography, in which the trumpeter s recollections were curiously close to those in biographies by others. I think he couldn t be that bothered writing about his life.
He was too busy still living it. Tagged as: don cheadle | film interview | talk to me You do what you are able to do, says Cheadle.
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