“This is NOT a slave movie,” Debra Martin Chase declares, her passion for her latest production, Harriet, crackling through the phone. “This is a movie about freedom and empowerment. This is a movie that says we cannot control the circumstances into which we are born, but we can control what we do once we get here.”
After weeks of what she jokingly calls a “high-class grind,” traveling to film festivals and promotional screenings across continents and U.S. cities in the run-up to the film’s official opening in L.A., Martin Chase is taking this one last call, her one last interview, before she packs it in for the night.
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It’s 24 hours before the film’s premiere and her goal for the evening is simple: Put her feet up, get quiet, and get ready for the bright lights and big adventure of the Nov. 1 kickoff. But even a few hours of “prelaxing” is going to be easier said than done.
The fact is, Martin Chase will not—cannot—bring herself to go quietly into this good night until she makes her point to potentially “slave fatigued” moviegoers out there about what Harriet is—and isn’t.
“Listen, I saw Twelve Years A Slave its opening weekend,” she says. “It needed to be made, I thought it was brilliant, and I was thrilled that it won [the Academy Award for] Best Picture. It was absolutely deserved. But I won’t ever watch it again, because I can’t. It’s too painful.”
Source: See ‘Harriet’ This Weekend! Or Stop Complaining That Our Stories Don’t Get Told
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