Alison: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. A new movie Story Ave follows one Bronx teenager through a tumultuous year of trauma, artistic discovery, and is quest to find his own perspective. Kadir played by one of my next guests, Asante Blackk is a teenager whose disabled younger brother has died, and he feels an intense guilt because he couldn't save him. His grieving mother is emotionally absent and might blame him on some level. Kadir begins to act out, starts cutting class from his competitive high school. He also puts more effort into becoming an official member of a graffiti crew that, for better or worse, gives him a sense of belonging.

Kadir is a talented artist who loves to draw, but he's caught between two paths, focusing on his talent and trying to go to an arts college or committing fully to his crew in an environment that can sometimes turn violent. One night as directed by his crew's leader as a show of loyalty, Kadir attempts to rob an MTA worker named Luis, played by Luis Guzman. The robbery doesn't exactly go as planned, and they end up in a restaurant late at night, and Luis treats Kadir with kindness and tries to push him to focus on his art and stay off the streets.

The result is a tender relationship that in many ways is the crux of the movie as they learn more about each other's lives, dreams, and secrets. Story Ave is a debut feature-length film from Bronx-born and raised, co-writer and director Aristotle Torres. Welcome to the studio.

Aristotle: Thank you so much for having me.

Alison: The movie is in select theaters in New York, and also with us is lead actor, Asante Blackk, who you probably know from TV series like This Is Us or When They See Us, and most recently, the movie Landscape with Invisible Hand. Asante, hank you for being with us.

Asante: Hello, hello. Thank you for having me.

Alison: We want to let you know that Story Ave, the filmers received SAG-AFTRA Interim Agreements, so the cast, Asante is, sorry. Excuse me.

Asante: I'm not a scab.

Alison: You're not a scab. I wanted to say that, you're not a scab. I'm doing the full disclaimer. The cast are permitted to do promotion accordingly. Okay. Just wanted get that out the way.

Asante: I didn't want to have a SAG mafia coming for me. You know what I'm saying? They be dangerous out here. They deep.

Alison: I got you, man. I got you. The Bronx, what is it you wanted to capture at the Bronx, Aristotle?

Aristotle: Yes, I'm from there. Raised me. It made me the man and the artist I am. I wanted to represent the authentic experience of growing up and coming of age in my formative years. The dichotomy there is really interesting. Some of the most talented, influential artists have come from the Bronx, but on the other end, there's a lot of negative stereotypes about the Bronx so I just wanted to represent a place that I think is beautiful, the people that inhabit are beautiful, and make that as authentic as possible.

Alison: Was there a specific kind of kid or a specific kind of artist that you knew in your life who's in this film?

Aristotle: I've certainly never robbed anyone at gunpoint, and I've never been in the game.

Alison: Glad to hear it.

Aristotle: But I think where I was able to pull inspiration from my own life is I understand what it's like to feel alone. I understand what it's like to feel like you're meant for something greater than what's in front of you, but you don't know where to begin. I know what it's like to be artistic and maybe those attributes aren't as admired, valued in a neighborhood like that. It's like if you don't play sports, so you're not handsome, there's not a lot of groups for you. Anyway, yes.

Alison: Asante, your character to me, and maybe this is just because I'm a mom of a teenage boy, seems sad a lot. He seemed, and he's mad a lot, but he also has a deep sadness in him. As an actor, where do you go when you have to be sad like this? Have that deep sadness.

Asante: You just go to the wealth of your life experience. We're all human beings at the end of the day. You're not a good artist if you're not able to look yourself in the mirror and everything that you've been through. The sadness that Kadir was going through in that movie is something that I very much so related to. I've never lost somebody that close to me in that tragic of a way before. Similarly, to what Aristotle said about being able to understand the emotion, I know what it means to lose somebody. I know what it means to feel guilty. I know what it means to-- on the basis of where those emotions come from, I can relate.

I don't think that it has to be anything all super deep when it comes to how I connected or how I tried to enact a certain method. It is really just empathizing and understanding that Kadir is going through a lot right now. That's something that, as humans, we all have to from time to time.

Alison: The empathy is the big part. You made interesting artistic choice in this Aristotle. We know that the younger brother Malik has died and he's had a certain disabilities and that's Kadir's nightmares, but we never really know what happens to way later in the movie. We're cinematically given clues. When did you decide that that was going to be the pace for the reveal of his death?

Aristotle: Very early on, one of my most famous favorite filmmakers is Paul Thomas Anderson. One of his biggest lessons is you never want the audience to be ahead of you because if they're five minutes ahead of you, it'll take 15 minutes to get them back. Story Ave takes place from the perspective of Kadir. This is his story. Everything you see depicted on screen might not even be reality. That's just his perceived reality. What I knew to be very clear was I'll never be able to direct anything more horrifying than what you're imagining.

For me, as a filmmaker, the art isn't even necessarily the movie. It's these type of conversations. It's the back and forth. When you create a story like that where you leave a little bit of open-endedness, every viewer in that theater has a different experience and then they can start a dialogue. That's what I'm protecting as a filmmaker.

Alison: A consequence of Kadir's brother's death is that Kadir and his mom aren't good terms as something. She's in deep grief. She's not exactly there from Kadir from his point of view. How is his relationship with his mother affecting him?

Asante: It's very painful. I think that he feels abandoned in more than one way. He feels abandoned not only by his mom, but by himself. Just because I think that there's a certain thing that you go through after any traumatic experience where you dissociate from yourself. Not being able to have that support system around him that he grew up with, really made him start to question who he was. That's why we see Kadir start getting caught up in these graffiti crews and making decisions that aren't necessarily productive towards the artists that he knows that he can be.

The relationship with his mother is one that takes a lot of hard work to reconcile. They both just went through something that is extremely painful, extremely hurt. They carry a lot of hurt with them. It's almost as if they have to separate to go on their own journeys of rediscovering who they are individually so that they can come back together and start fresh in a way, plant a seed for a new relationship knowing that they are new people now after this tragic event.

Alison: We're talking about the film Story Ave, which is now playing in New York theaters. I'm speaking with the lead actor, Asante Blackk; and writer and director, Aristotle Torres. I'm not giving anything away because this happens early in the book and it's in the trailer. Kadir has got to go through a loyalty test to be in this crew. He is got to go rob somebody at gunpoint, and he meets Luis, MTA worker. Kadir-- he's not made for this. This is not natural for him.

Asante: You realize he wasn't built for it.

Alison: He's just not. That's not who he is. It's just not who he is. In this moment, this MTA worker, Luis Guzman plays the character. He shows him kindness from the jump. He's just really shows him almost warmth in this moment. Why does Luis respond this way to Kadir and why did you want to have to be right away? It's not like he's got to earn it either. He's just like, "Right away." He is like, "I'm going to help you, kid."

Aristotle: Yes. I think the character Luis is really interesting. Without giving anything away, I think the way I perceive Luis is he's a guardian angel with dirty wings. He has his own trauma and he has his own relationship, needs, and expectations of building his relationship with Kadir. That's the process of the film is as we question why Kadir and why Luis decided to do this, we're also simultaneously learning more about him and his intentions.

Alison: Asante, Luis Guzman is a legendary actor. What is something that you learned from working with him?

Asante: Oh, man. Can we say that one more time? Luis Guzman is a legendary actor. Thank you very much. Talk about the depth of work that he has been able to provide to just the craft of acting, through his immense career. I think that just off of that fact alone, the biggest thing that I learned from him about staying true to the art is humility. He is not the person that you would expect him to be with everything that he has been through, everything that he has overcome when it's come to his artistic journey.

He's the kind of guy who didn't start out as an artist, actually started his professional life in social work and found his way to the theater and into film, and has a true sense of manhood by way of service. By way of knowing that in order to be an upstanding man, you have to understand how to practice compassion and caring for other people. That's the core of his work. That's why we clicked so easily on screen is because not only did we have compassion and care about each other enough, but it also translated to the characters of Kadir and Luis, right?

Luis is able to extend himself in that way from the jump because Louis knows exactly what that is in real life because he's always been that guy who is humble, who knows that he's here serving a greater purpose, who knows that it's not about him, he knows it's about being able to do the best that you could do in the moment. Honestly, I think that that's the core of the whole film.

Alison: Was Luis always attached to the project? How did he come aboard?

Aristotle: Yes, so it was really interesting. I wrote this role for Luis Guzman. He's a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. He's our hero. To be able to work with him on my first film was definitely a goal. To give you the short answer, he was the first actor attached, but it was tumultuous to get in touch with him. It was 18 months of my agents and managers trying to contact his people, and his representatives were like, "Luis's not considering any Indies right now." He was on the precipice of doing Wednesday, and he was doing really great work.

It just so happened that a mutual friend of ours, by the name of Ruben Rivera posted a photo of him and Guzman at the Knicks game, and I DMed Ruben like, "Oh my God, I have been trying to get in touch with this man for over a year. Can you please tell him that I have the script for him?" 48 hours later, I was Facetiming with Luis and he was crying, saying, "I have to do this script." To extend onto Asante's answer about his integrity, that's a testament of his character.

Alison: Social media did something good?

Aristotle: There you go.

Alison: [laughs]

Aristotle: For once.

[laughter]

Alison: Mark it, everybody. My guest is Aristotle Torres as well as Asante Blackk. We are talking about the film Story Ave, which is playing in New York theaters. I'm not going to give anything away, but I will say that Luis, the character helps Kadir understand, or at least come to some terms with his brother's death, that it wasn't Kadir's fault. What changes for your character when this realization happens?

Asante: Ah, man, I think that there's a level of acceptance of the losses of life because it's really easy to blame everything on yourself when you don't quite have that understanding yet of just the nature of the way that this thing goes. The way that I see it, Luis is almost like a transitionary angel in a way. He's saying it's okay to cross into this next phase, and you won't be able to cross into this next phase, next chapter of where you're headed, who you're supposed to be, if you don't let this go, let that guilt go.

Because it's not your fault, and it's not something that you want to forget, but it's not something that you want to hold onto and shape you out to become a person that you're not to continue to make stupid decisions like you've been doing. You've been cutting class, bro. What you doing, bro? Get your portfolio together, bro. You know what I'm saying? Go to school, bro. Anyways, yes. Really, see yourself for who you are. Don't see yourself for the trauma that you've been through for the bad mistakes that you've encountered in your life.

Pain is forever. It's about how you're able to master that pain and how you're able to move forward with it. Luis, in his own way, has been able to realize that and help Kadir realize it too.

Alison: All right. We're going to leave plot there so we don't give anything else away. We'll move a little more into filmmaking. The movie is in narrow aspect ratio, so for our listeners, explain why you chose to do this and what it does to the cinematic quality of the film.

Aristotle: Sure. I think sometimes when you have elements of slang and hip hop and graffiti and streetwear, it's very easy to be like, "Oh, this is a Black movie, or this is a hood movie, or this is a hip hop movie." That's not the movie that I wanted to make, and I wanted to shoot Black and Brown faces like old Hollywood. I'm inspired, obviously, I love the Scorsese and the Tarantinos and the Finchers and the Nolans, but the people who really taught me how to be filmmakers are a filmmaker as like Terasawa, and Ozu, and Fellini, and they had a more intentional approach to shooting faces.

I felt like we rarely see that with our faces. Similar to the Bronx, and similar to the subculture of graffiti, I just wanted to handle this with care. That was my thinking in terms of what my grammar was. Then in terms of the aspect ratio, I had a moment of clarity at some point through pre-production where I realized these characters look up, they don't look side to side. I think from a thematic standpoint, that tracked, but I also think from an emotional standpoint, Kadir is feeling some claustrophobia with his own emotions and his own internal struggle and arc. It just all made sense.

Alison: Asante, what's something that you got to do with this role that you haven't been able to do before? Something that would be stretched a muscle for you?

Asante: Smoke. [laughs] Yo, smoking on camera is hard. I got to be real. Yo, everybody in old Hollywood makes me look so sexy. I'm over here coughing my lungs out. You know what I'm saying? I'm supposed to be this young kid who's never-- Nah, I'm joking, I'm joking [crosstalk]

Alison: No, you're not joking. It is hard. [laughs]

Asante: Hey, listen, it's not as easy as it looks. Okay? It's not easy. All right? [laughs] No, but I would say probably the biggest thing really being able to dive into a whole different world of artistic expression when it comes to graffiti. That was a world that I wasn't really familiar with and one that had a lot more depth to it than I had realized originally before signing onto the project before coming to New York and kicking it with these two amazing graffiti artists, [unintelligible 00:17:46] and Dread Life, and Aristotle and our producer, Lizzie; and Alex, who plays Moe and we're all just outside walking the streets of New York looking at different murals, checking out different tags, really getting a sense of the history of graffiti. Yes, that was super dope.

Alison: What's something that if you're from the Bronx, it's a if you know, you know, Aristotle, when you're watching this, that you knew you had to get in the film, a couple of Easter eggs?

Aristotle: I mean, there's so many

Alison: [laughs]

Aristotle: There are so, so many. Getting a Cuban sandwich at [unintelligible 00:18:21] that's a standard--

Alison: Chef kiss.

Aristotle: Yes. For our experience. I highly recommend that you go see our movie and then get a Cuban sandwich right after.

Asante: Yo, I had never had a Cuban before this movie, and now I am obsessed, yo.

[laughter]

Asante: They are so good. Oh, thank you so much, Aristotle.

Aristotle: Got you, brother.

Asante: [laughs]

Alison: So glad you had that experience. If there's someone listening right now, Aristotle like, "I got a story, I got a film with me, I want to, this is what I'm meant to do." What piece of advice would you give them at this point?

Aristotle: Yes. I would say movies are miracles. You need a very high level of confidence in yourself and the ability to bypass rejection. There were 107 no's before I got one yes. 107. I think to make a movie, it's something you need to do and it can't be something you want to do. If you're sitting in your bed at night alone with yourself and you're saying to yourself like, "I have a pain in my stomach, there's something I really need to say," then I think you have enough ammunition to go into it. If you're like, "I want notoriety or I want instant gratification," you won't make it because you will get rejected at every step of the way.

That's a broad stroke, but I would say more than anything is really studying writing. I think the ability to write a script gets you into rooms that you normally couldn't because it's the hardest part. Actors, directors, producers, we get finished scripts, but writers get blank pages.

Alison: The name of the film is Story Ave. I've been speaking with lead actor, Asante Blackk, and writer and director, Aristotle Torres. Thank you so much for joining us.

Aristotle: Thank you for having us.

Asante: Thank you.

 

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