By Jake Coyle, Film Writer
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) --Ron Howard knew Paradise, the northern California town devastated by the most destructive wildfire in California history.
His mother-in-law had lived there and he had visited the town. He had some understanding of its people. Ten days after what became known as the Camp Fire swept through Paradise, killing 85 people and destroying roughly 19,000 buildings, Howard went to see it.
"I've never seen anything like it," he said.
A little over a year later, Howard came to the Sundance Film Festival to premiere "Rebuilding Paradise," a documentary he directed about the aftermath of the Camp Fire, including the colossal cleanup and rebuilding efforts of the close-knit rural community.
"It's the story of a community, not the story of a fire," Howard said in an interview. "It's a story of a very cruel test."
It's the third documentary in four years for Howard, following "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week" and "Pavarotti." But "Rebuilding Paradise" was a more open-ended exercise.
"There was no thesis to prove," Howard said. "It's my first real vérité documentary where you go in with yourself and field producers and some cameras and you just start asking questions and see what the story's going to be."
That included getting close with the residents of Paradise, several of whom came to the Park City festival for the movie's premiere. Steve "Woody" Culleton, a former mayor of Paradise who moved into his and his wife's rebuilt home in December, said the film captured the small-town resilience of Paradise.
"A lot of people came into the town right after the disaster. We were exploited. We were exploited by the (Pacific Gas & Electric Corp., the now-bankrupt utility whose equipment started the fire) and the cleanup crews. We were exploited by the news media who left after a week," Culleton said. "It wasn't that way. Lizz Morhaim and Xan Parker, the producers, they spent the year with us. They were there."
"Rebuilding Paradise" largely evades a discussion of climate change, focusing instead on the strain of rebuilding and the persistence of the town's people. Howard was careful not to draw politics into the film.
"This is not about policy. If I wanted to make a movie about climate change, there'd be all kinds of charts and data and talking heads with statistics," Howard said. "But I think we all sense that for whatever reason this is more likely to touch or lives either directly or through loved ones, these kinds of problems. So what does that mean? Then what?"
National Geographic will release "Rebuilding Paradise" later this year.
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More