by Dov Kornits
What’s your personal connection to Bob Marley?
“My dad, like many other folks, had it in the house. He was a musician, so he played bass and guitar and he had a bunch of guitars around and always Bob around the house for sure. I didn’t realise until making this film, I had to go back to the beginning, what were my connections, and I started thinking about those and my dad, who named me after Marcus Garvey, who Bob had studied. I was just finding these connections for myself. Maybe the writing was on the wall early, why hadn’t this movie been made? I heard they were trying to make this film and it hadn’t come to life. And here I am, getting a script sent to me, ‘and by the way, we have the rights to the music and the family’s involved’. It just felt like the time was on my side. And of course I started thinking … I was born the year Bob died. There’s all these weird sort of kismet connections, I would call them. It was a way for me to connect the dots. It was a way for me to find my way into this and try not to question it too much. Sometimes the universe says, ‘this is where you’re supposed to be and it’s your time, my friend’.
How do you try to put on your stamp onto a project like this? Are you in charge on a project like this?
Of course I am! I came in as a co-writer. I had received the script and I essentially said I wouldn’t sign on to the project unless I had the opportunity to rewrite the film. That was step number one, getting the script to the place that I thought it needed to be before we went into pre-production. And part of that was choosing what part of Bob’s life we were going to depict in the film. The period from 1976 to 1978 were the choices we made in the script. As a director, part of the job is shaping the movie, going into the blueprint, creating the architecture for the film. That took a better half of a year. And part of that was trying to say, ‘okay, well what is the backbone of the movie?’
“Discovering Rita’s relationship to Bob was not in that script. And so being able to say, ‘hey, there’s a whole missing component here that needs to go into this movie, because that’s the heartbeat of the film’. Once we were able to get that right, then everything else we could fill in. No, I can’t make a movie on my own. That’s impossible. There are certain things that I needed support with in building this film. And language is a huge part of that. We’re shooting essentially a foreign language film. And so, I needed the support of the Marley family. I needed the support of the community to help bring that language in a way that was very specific to Bob, very specific to Bob’s journey. Later, it was establishing what were the stakes of the film, what was the story that we were trying to tell? What was the timeline we were trying to crack and why? And then once we got that, then of course it’s shaping from there. So that was a huge part of putting my stamp on the film, the vision in the film. How do you cinematically bring a vision to life? There’s no videotape of that. That’s a creation, that’s a visual creation. There’s no videotape on how Bob created music outside of his stage performances. So, those are things that we can take certain liberties on in the filmmaking process, the shooting, how it happened, where it happened, all of those things. We can take versions of the truth and make our version of the truth work in cinematic form, and that’s part of the director’s job. And obviously, performance is a huge part of that. Casting is a huge part of that. And then relying on your actors to help bring out the best of the characters that we’re trying to depict in the film.”
You came to filmmaking quite late in life. What made you click that this is the future for you?
“Well, truthfully, I was naive. I had a job, and my brother [Rashaad Ernesto Green] was making movies and I thought, ‘man, how cool would it be if we can travel the world and make movies together?’ That was the 27-year-old in me who was thinking that at the time. So, let me apply to film school and I thought I’d be a writer and producer. I wasn’t thinking about directing, I was thinking about supporting my brother, but I went to a writing directing program and I got bit by the directing bug while I was in film school. That’s sort of what happened to me. I started doing my coursework. It was like handing in your homework, I have to hand it in, and my homework got into Cannes. When that happens, maybe I got something here, kid…
“I didn’t believe in myself at that point. I really didn’t, not to say I got lucky, but it was a little bit of luck and it was a little bit of naivete and just going with it. I think I had instincts, or I had taste, but that doesn’t keep you there very long. You have to work on those things. And so, I was able to kind of say, ‘okay, well if I’m actually going to do this, I have to work on this and I have to learn this and I have to go after it’. I started just making more and more short films. The way to learn directing is by doing it. I’ve been on the field for the last seven years. I’ve directed four movies, three television shows…
“I’ve just worked a lot because, and every great filmmaker that I’ve spoken to, whether it’s Ridley Scott or Spike Lee, they all stay on the field. They’re all working constantly. And I think they don’t take a lot of time between projects. They’re constantly exercising their muscle, whether that’s in commercials or television or short films or music videos or whatever they’re doing. They’re constantly exercising them. I’m trying to learn from the greats, or at least the greats that I want to be like Scorsese or Scott or those are the guys that I would love to one day, 35, 40 years from now, someone will hold my name close or even remotely close to them. If I’m on the bottom basement of that, I’ll be happy just to get close. And so, I like to be on the field. I’m learning. I’m still learning. I learned a lot on this film. It was amazing. And yeah, I just hope I’m getting better every time.”
What about the business of being a filmmaker? Have you been disillusioned at all by it, it can be quite a brutal business, right?
“I don’t know if it’s quite Game of Thrones, but it’s like House of Cards. It’s definitely got a House of Cards vibe for sure. Growing up a competitive athlete, there is a bit of shot-mentality sometimes, especially when you’re on the field. I just try to use it not towards anybody else, but in how I move like a sniper or something… You’re constantly trying to sharpen your skills. You are trying not to get shot. You are trying not to get hit, and you’re trying to hit your target without using too much ammunition. You learn that as you go. When you’re young, you’re just shooting everything and you’re just trying to get anything that hit. You’re trying to hit anything. And so, you just want to get on the field. And now that I’m growing a little bit, I’m more strategic in how I use my ammunition.”
@filminkBob Marley: One Live director Reinaldo Marcus Green spoke with FilmInk’s Dov Kornits♬ original sound – FilmInk
Can you discuss the decision not to subtitle the dialogue in the film?
“The studio was not keen on subtitling, neither were we. But I think clarity for them might’ve meant something different. For me, I knew that if you understood every word of this movie, we would’ve failed. Because you don’t understand every word that Bob says. If you watch an interview, you understand what he’s saying, but you don’t understand every word he’s saying. For me, the mental math was, if you understand every third word, you get it. If you understand every fourth word, you’re confused. So, it was: how do we get it dialed in to every third word? It took the post-production process to figure that out. We were in five and six territory for a long time… We had to come back and scale back.
“But that’s part of the authenticity of the film, trying to land somewhere in a place where you get it, you get it through behavior, you get it through emotion, you get it through the music. And, the stuff that you don’t understand, you’re not concerned about, you’re not feeling like you’re missing information. That’s where people get confused. If you feel like you’re missing information, you’re upset about that because then you feel like you’ve cheated. But if you feel like you got flavour, you gave me seasoning… ‘I don’t know what that was, but it tasted delicious…’ That’s what we’re going for. ‘I don’t know what it was, but it tasted delicious’.”
Bob Marley: One Love is available to buy or rent on Digital