Don Cheadle

Just when it was going on from reading it in the papers. Then a year or two prior to doing this movie I saw a Frontline piece that went in-depth into Rwanda. That gave me a lot of insight. When I saw the script I was all primed for the story. Terry was able to tell a story not about the genocide but a life story about a man and his family wrapped in a thriller. At the same time it was a very personal story set against this backdrop without it being overwhelming. Telling Paul’s story may have taken us through some events that may have been too big to deal with.

I think it’s amazing how few people know what happened. Even in Africa many people were not aware of what happened. It’s like not knowing what happened in Montana when you live in New York. They were dealing with their own things like Mandela and the end of Apartheid. That’s what was consuming the media’s thoughts about Africa at the time. There was no way America was commit troops to the situation because Somalia had happened recently which was PR disaster. Also there are no diamonds or oil there so what’s the upside for them and the Hutus were aware of that. They knew the only way to get everyone out was to kill some soldiers and when they killed those ten Belgian soldiers everyone pulled out.

It was a difficult challenge. I guess that’s the challenge every time out because there are slightly different aspects. The fact that Paul is alive and we are talking about historical events is something that we want to get right. But it’s always a lot of work for me. I always want to raise my game, doing better every time and refining what I do as an actor.

I have no idea. But the great thing about Paul is that he deflects all those hero questions. That helped in the playing because what he did was keep whatever task he had, in front of him. Someone else once asked Paul what he was drawing on. He said that he didn’t plan anything; he just took it one task at a time so he didn’t think about the larger picture. Everyday he thought he was going to die. So that helped me not play him as a Superman.

We were like the little film that could. We had a very small budget compared to the scope of this movie. We had 17,000 extras so sometimes it was this grand sweeping film and other times it would be just five people shooting in a room. It ran the gamut and was very challenging day to day because of the weather and we had a few riots. In South Africa things happen but it’s also a very exciting place to be because the film industry is just starting to kick off.

It was also difficult because we never had one day of just sun or one full day of rain to shoot. So we would have to truncate scenes or scramble to work around that.

Yeah but I didn’t have much time to see the country. When I first got there my whole family and I went on a safari for five days. Then I came to Johannesburg and started rehearsing and working with Paul. The day we wrapped I flew back to LA and had to start another movie two days later.

Yes, Paul describes it as being a selfish decision wrapped in a selfless cloak. He knew he would never be able to live with himself had he left those people to die. It would haunt him for the rest of his life if he left 1000 people to the mercy of the militia. He would have preferred to die there.

There are those scenes where Paul can’t believe what’s happening. I had seen some real footage unfortunately, and it is totally unbelievable what we saw. People were using stacks of bodies as roadblocks and kids sitting on stacks of bodies drinking beer. Governments knew what was going on because there were embedded journalists there.

Personally it’s inspired me to get involved. We’re showing this movie to the United Nations and Amnesty International is involved. I have a meeting with a couple of congressmen, Donald Payne and Ed Royce, who chair the Subcommittee on African Affairs. However when I’m playing the role I try to be in character but I feel a lot of shame in the fact that things like this happen all the time. This film has inspired to really find what out what’s happening. I’m going back to Africa next year.

Great, Nick is out of his mind. I learned a lot of lessons from him.

Lessons about acting, lessons about the business and how to navigate your way through these things. I may do it differently but he’s an old soldier so I soaked up all of that.

Not necessarily, it’s not by design. I do different movies for different reasons. I have young kids so that’s always a large component of my decisions. I came back to the Ocean’s because that’s the gang, Steven [Soderbergh] and I do a lot of things together and I think he’s a genius.

Yeah it’s an Elmore Leonard novel. It’s about a high diver who goes to Mississippi and witnesses a murder from a diving board.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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