The road less traveled

  Will Wallace (John) and Nicole
Smith (Talia) star in "Rocky Road," opening this
Friday.

By Mary Dang
Daily Bruin Contributor

From the initial concept, originating in the streets of San
Francisco, to the actual filming down in Los Angeles, the making of
the independent movie “Rocky Road” faced many
roadblocks.

“Rocky Road” is not only aptly named due to the
movie’s rough creative process, but also for the racial
tension pervading the story. Based on the real-life interracial
relationship between director Geoff Cunningham and leading female
actor Nicole Smith, “Rocky Road” deals with the clashes
between their families and culture.

Born and raised in an alternative community called Shannon Farm
on the outskirts of Charlottesville, Va., Cunningham was influenced
by the 1960s American hippie culture. Smith is a first-generation
West Indian whose family emigrated from Barbados to Brooklyn, N.Y.
The couple drew from their relationship’s real-life instances
of cultural conflict as onscreen material for the film.

Despite their differences, they shared a love of making and
watching films. In fact, the film “Rocky Road” was
heavily influenced by Stanley Kramer’s “Guess
Who’s Coming to Dinner” another interracial
drama-comedy.

However, there are critical differences in the two films and how
they address interracial relationships. Cunningham defines his
modern take on the 1960s film by using a different voice to
approach the same subject.

  Will Wallace (John) and Nicole Smith (Talia) star in
"Rocky Road," opening this Friday.

“Fundamentally our movie is focused on (being) told from a
woman’s perspective which makes it unique in an interracial
movie, and that it’s told from a black woman’s
perspective, which nothing else (like it) is done,”
Cunningham said. “All the interracial stories are really told
from a white male perspective or a black male perspective, if you
want to look at “˜Jungle Fever,’ which I thought was a
very negative interracial movie.”

Another difference both of these movies have is the development
of characters, especially the portrayal of bigoted white men such
as Bill, the white boyfriend’s father.

“Some older men are going to hate me for the Bill
character. They are just going to hate him,” Cunningham said.
“They are going to say anything they want about the movie,
but the fundamental bottom line is the Bill character hits at the
core of racism today, which is on one hand very overt but on the
other hand there are all these subtle gray areas. I have heard
critical liberal men say these things, and putting those words in a
character who’s obviously racist makes them fundamentally
question what they have to say.”

The movie had its beginnings in the Castro district of San
Francisco when Cunningham and Smith were verbally abused by a poor
black man. It was this incident that encouraged Cunningham to write
“Rocky Road.”

  Photos from Integrated Production The parents of Talia,
Michael (Bob Wisdom) and Yvonne (Valeri
Ross), meet John’s parents in the movie "Rocky Road."

“I wasn’t really aware before about the extreme
prejudice,” Cunningham said. “I mean, there are certain
cities where you can live where you think you are safe, where
you’re not aware of it, especially if you are of a certain
income level, and then when it happened to us we were like,
“˜Whoa. Okay, this has got to be happening to a lot of other
people.'”

The 1997 Cameron Crowe film “Jerry Maguire”
influenced Cunningham and Smith to move to Los Angeles and start
filming “Rocky Road.” Inspired by the
protagonist’s transformation and drive after losing
everything, Cunningham and Smith took the same attitude in making
their film.

Instead of shopping their script around to Hollywood studio
heads, they both decided very early on to make the movie
themselves.

“We started to realize I had never been a lead in a
movie,” Smith said. “Geoff had never directed a movie.
Who’s going to pay for a first-time director and first-time
actress, pretty much first time everything? I think if this was
going to get done we had to do it ourselves the way we wanted
to.”

Cunningham and Smith were concerned about the treatment of
“Rocky Road’s” content. Cunningham was skeptical
about putting his film into the hands of studio bigwigs, which also
led to making the movie independently.

“I don’t see the studios being able to tackle this
subject in depth, and they wouldn’t touch with symbolism and
irony the same way. Just because we deal with race as a political
issue, the studios don’t want to touch it,” Cunningham
said.

In order to creatively preserve the film’s integrity,
Cunningham and Smith shouldered other film duties as producers. In
contrast with the idea that shoestring independent movies are made
quickly, Cunningham and Smith spent large amounts of time in
production.

“As an actor I worked on it for three weeks,” Smith
said. “As a producer I have been working on it for very long.
I don’t think I was aware that as a director you pretty much
live, breathe and eat your film for like two years, probably if not
three or more. That’s been probably the hardest thing for me
to deal with ““ how long this process is in getting the movie
from production or pre-production to actually being a finished film
on the screen.”

An increasingly added pressure in getting the film done was also
the personal link between Cunningham and Smith, who were engaged
while making the movie and married soon after post-production.

Cunningham and Smith’s relationship may have been a
catalyst in producing “Rocky Road,” but it also
provided a number of obstacles.

In creating the movie, Cunningham and Smith experienced the same
problems involved with all independent filmmaking, if not more.

Now that the film is finished, they are able to look back at the
whole experience of “Rocky Road.”

“The best part is that we did it together and the hardest
part is that we did it together,” Smith said. “I think
the hardest part is to separate the couple from being producers and
doing this movie. It’s been a challenge.”

FILM: “Rocky Road” will be on
limited release on April 12 in the Los Angeles area.