'Honor' director answers questions

By Jennifer Umaña
Daily Forty-Niner

On the first day of production for the film "Men of Honor" there were about 40 men sitting in a room, with all their eyes turned to director George Tillman, Jr. They were looking to him to have answers to all of their questions. But he did not have all of those answers.

He remembered some words of advice his father once gave him: "If you don't know what you're talking about, just pretend."

That worked. The film is set for release Friday.

From the men who brought audiences the 1998 feature film "Soul Food" here is something fresher for moviegoers to chew on: the almost completely true story of the first black U.S. Navy diver.

The film stars Cuba Gooding Jr. as Carl Brashear, whose struggle in the 1950s and '60s to become a diver in the Navy is brought to life on screen. The film also features Robert De Niro as Billy Sunday, the man who discouraged Brashear but eventually became his ally.

Tillman and producer Robert Teitel first met 13 years ago as students at Columbia College in Chicago, and have worked together on films ever since. They achieved commercial success with "Soul Food" and then renamed their production company to State Street Pictures, the company behind "Men of Honor."

Tillman and Teitel took some time out last week to discuss the making of the film, Carl Brashear and more.

Brashear had been approached many times over the years by people who wished to tell his story, but nothing ever came of it.

"He didn't understand why all these people would come to him and nothing would happen," Teitel said.

There were 10 to 15 scripts floating around about Brashear and one came to the attention of Tillman and Teitel in 1997. Once they met Brashear they knew they had to do it and the feeling was mutual.

"He always says in his speeches that when he met us he knew we were going to make it," Teitel said. "For some reason he felt different than all the other times."

When Teitel and Tillman said that they went to meet him, the one thing that stuck out was that Brashear harbors no bitterness about the situation, Teitel said.

"This man has no bitterness toward the Navy or any of those guys who made him go through that," Brashear said. "Today, through all those events and so forth, he speaks so proudly of the U.S. Navy. He loves it. He would do anything for it."

Brashear did not simply tell his story and then let the filmmakers take it from there. He was a definite presence.

"He was always around from the get-go," Teitel said. "He was on the set probably 70 percent of the time. A couple of times it was really emotional for him. I remember the first day of shooting. We were on the farm in Kentucky and he looked at that house. It was so similar to where he grew up. It was almost identical. He just got all emotional. Anything related to his family, his father, stuff like that, was really tough on him.

"But for us it was great to always have him around and for Cuba to always go talk to him. He was just always there for us."

Many of the actors in the film came on board because they liked the story even though they had to take pay cuts because of the small budget, Tillman said.

De Niro read the about five years ago and had expressed interest in the project, but the studio still suggested Sylvester Stallone as a backup for Sunday.
Tillman is satisfied with how things worked out.

De Niro is "getting known for a lot of his comedies," Tillman said. "But I'm happy because we got the classic De Niro. We got the mean De Niro."

Billy Sunday, De Niro's character, is a composite of two men who heavily influenced Brashear's life. One was a Master Chief Navy Diver who was a racist. The other was a Master Chief Navy Diver who motivated Brashear by telling him that if he quit the Navy he would kill him.

"With the great acting of Robert De Niro he could put those two guys together and make the transition so subtle you don't even really notice it," Tillman said.

Other characters in the film were not exactly real people.

"I hate movies were these guys are made up out of nowhere and are put in the movie just to move the story along," Tillman said. "The great thing about Carl's story is that these guys existed in one form or another."

Some of the scenes were also fabricated, which Tillman readily admits.

"As a filmmaker, you've got to be competitive in a marketplace of action," he said "At the end of the day I think it's an important movie but it's a very commercial movie. And we all know you got to make money in this town. It felt very commercial, but it fit the movie because I really wanted to make a Hollywood old-fashioned film."

As a filmmaker, Tillman said he hopes to continue making movies that matter.

"It is time for African-American directors to do films that show African-American characters as they are, as the lead, but do it in such a way that it is marketed to everybody," he said. "So that everybody can come out and do it. So that we can have more films like that where you just don't put it in specific neighborhoods -- you can put it in 2,000 theaters."

Tillman also feels that films should bring audience members a multitude of emotions. When Tillman saw the film "Cooley High" he watched the audience laugh, cry and clap at the end.

"I feel like those are emotions that you should put an audience through," he said. "That's what I do. I think I do it really well -- I always have that criticism that 'Maybe you're too emotional.' I'm not trying to run from it. I totally embrace it."

Twentieth Century Fox

Cuba Gooding, Jr., left, discusses a scene of "Men of Honor" with director George Tillman, Jr.