Adam Leon:<\/strong> That was the core idea. In fact, we’d say very early on that we wanted to do something about the joys of youth rather than the perils of it, set in this environment where I think you’d normally expect the opposite of it. That grew out of my experience growing up in New York and my experience co-directing a short film where we used non-professional actors from the Bronx. Getting to know these kids was great… and so was working with them again, and knowing that they had often tough lives and that we didn’t ever want to sell that out, (but that) they were just kids, they were just teenagers.\u00a0Hopefully we’re being authentic, but also just a little bit more upbeat, in telling an adventure set in that world. That was the idea from the beginning.<\/p>\n ShockYa: In regards to the visual look and feel of film, your shots are very composed. The movie is about tagging and graffiti, but\u00a0doesn’t concern itself with the stylistic excess you might\u00a0expect in an attempt to convey the\u00a0edge and hipness of that endeavor.<\/strong><\/p>\n AL:<\/strong> I’m very interested in the separation between storytellers, the story and the audience, and that relationship between those three things, but at the same time I also feel that — while there are\u00a0some\u00a0directors that I admire very, very much who work in a looser, rougher handheld style —\u00a0I have found overall that sort of (style) becoming a tired shorthand to indicate that, “You’re really there, this is really rough!” That’s kind of a trick that in some ways draws attention away from the characters themselves, and how they interact with the space, to create motion through camera movement, which isn’t really storytelling through camera. That, to me, feels more like manipulation through camera movement. In some ways the movie is about upending expectations, and so you might expect a certain type of music or tone, and we go (the other way).<\/p>\n ShockYa: What’s been your most interesting or unique experience traveling with film?<\/strong><\/p>\n AL:<\/strong> Definitely going to Cannes, which is something that we didn’t expect at all. We had a lot of fun, because I think we were able to go in without feeling as though we belonged. We couldn’t believe that we were able to go —\u00a0we felt very blessed and lucky and that put less pressure on us. We felt like, “We\u00a0don’t need to win a prize, we’ve already won by getting to be a part of this.” It’s just an amazing place. And then the other festivals around the world, it’s been a thrill\u00a0—\u00a0whether again in France, in Deauville, or Belgium or London. And it’s been to Argentina. To see audiences that are very far from New York or the United States connect with the characters and have fun and be laughing [with]\u00a0this really culturally specific movie puts a smile on your face.<\/p>\n ShockYa: Were there other films that you saw as specific influences or touchstones for this movie?<\/strong><\/p>\n AL:<\/strong> Growing up on a healthy diet of New York City filmmakers there’s an influence there, but I was very purposefully not watching too much of that before I made the movie. But there is this one movie called “Little Fugitive” from the 1950s about these working-class kids who go to Coney Island. And it’s really shot on the street, and feels very much of that only-in-New-York variety, about a group of kids [for whom it isn’t] always easy. It has a lot of heart to it. I was already working on the script for “Gimme the Loot” when I saw it, and it was a great motivation in how they nailed it —\u00a0if they did that 50 years ago with 16mm film cameras, then we can go out there and do it now. I don’t know if we lived up to that, but that was something that we looked at.<\/p>\n ShockYa: You’re white, your two protagonists are African-American, and while race doesn’t play necessarily an integral role in the film there’s definitely a strain of racial and\/or class specificity to the movie, if not quite outright tension. Were you\u00a0sensitive to the fact that you were telling a tale that could at least be perceived as quote-unquote “a minority story.”<\/strong><\/p>\n AL:<\/strong> Right, I don’t think it is that. First of all, the two lead characters are African-American, and it’s a part of who those characters are, there’s no way around that — just like being a girl is integral to Sofia’s character. I think that you don’t go into this blind. I was hoping the movie would have the kind of success that it’s had so that I would be asked questions like this very early on. And I think it comes down a very specific thing with this movie, and then a broader point — the specific point is that the guy who plays Malcolm, I really liked him and wanted to do a movie with him. I felt that he was ready to do a\u00a0feature film, as was I, so I developed the project with him. And the project came\u00a0about very organically. I feel that the story itself — while\u00a0race is very important to who they are — isn’t necessarily a\u00a0story of racial identity.\u00a0It’s not about Stokely Carmichael, for example. It’s a New York story, or really more than that just a teenage story — so you just go in and try to give as much dignity and heart and authenticity and honesty to all of the characters. …And the way that hopefully we accomplished that was by research and discussion and really leaning on the actors and the entire team.<\/p>\n
![\"Adam](\"http:\/\/www.shockya.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/Adam-Leon-Give-Me-The-Loot.jpg\" "\\"Adam")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"