You can’t break the ties between us!An interview with Glover

Cubanow:The Digital Magazine of Cuban Arts and Culture

An interview with Danny Glover

By Esther Perez

<http://www.cubanow.net/>

I met Danny Glover in the midst of the 3rd World Social Forum in Porto
Alegre in January of 2003. We met late in the evening, in the middle
of celebration, dancing, and live music. We sat behind the concert
stage together, enjoyed the music, conversed, and he gave us this
wonderful interview

Where are you from, in the States?

— -I’m from San Francisco, California. I was born in San Francisco,
California, and I still live in San Francisco, California. Except for
the fact that I spent some time in New York doing theatre, I’ve lived
for the most part in San Francisco, California. I’ve resided in
Portland, Oregon, briefly, and I go back to Portland, Oregon. But my
main home, my main base is San Francisco, California.

What do you prefer acting in: the theatre or the cinema?

— -Well, in my early growth I did a great deal of theatre, primarily
theatre. My strongest body of work is the work of Athol Fugard, the
great South African playwright whose work I began doing in 1975-76. It
represents my basic theatrical foundation, and it certainly provided
me with a vehicle to learn the craft of acting. I think its critical
for artists to work with writers, to learn the craft itself, to learn
to use themselves in a different way. And acting, I believe, is just
about this: its about learning how we use our physical selves as well
as our spiritual and metaphorical selves.

And the cinema?

— -Well, it almost becomes, in some cases, an inevitable transition.
You can make the choice not to do films, but normally when you’re
working and doing theatre, and depending upon what stage you are,
whether in New York or Los Angeles, someone going to see you and
you’re going to audition for movies, because its difficult to make a
living doing theatre in the United States. Your could do it by doing
regional theatre, and theres great regional theatre, but theres a
point when you’re doing regional theatre that you build up such a
reputation on the circuit that people hire you and hire you, and you
often do the same kind of plays, often by the same writers. Perhaps
for some period of time, because of my body of work with Athol Fugard,
I did as many of his plays as any African American actor at that
period of time, in the late 70¹s, early 80¹s. Whenever Fugard¹s work
came up someone would ask me. In fact I’m going to do a revival of one
of his plays that I did 21 years ago in New York, later this year, in
the spring.

I guess you established a connection with Cuba through Cuban cinema.

— -My first connection with Cuba was when I was about 12 years old,
right at the time of the Cuban revolution. My parents were postal
workers and they were very much involved in the union. And at the time
of the Cuban revolution, African Americans were very supportive of
that victory. There were many African Americans with leadership
positions who were very proud of the victory of the Cuban revolution.
So that was the first time that I heard of it, and heard of the names
of Comandante Che, and also Comandante Fidel.

Could you go a little deeper into that sense of pride?

— -Well, I think there were several things that were happening in the
midst of the Civil Rights movement that whenever there was a victory,
people who had been dispossessed and exploited held a general
celebration. Granted also that in the early stages the mass media of
the established press supported the Cuban revolution. So you had these
wonderful, positive images of Fidel on the Ed Murray show, or in
Harlem. There was a strong sense of that in the African American
community. Just in the same sense that people were very supportive of
the Civil Rights movement, those victories in the Cuban revolution
became associated with victories in the Civil Rights movement as well.
So I think there was this kind of natural coalescing that occurred at
that particular point in time. And certainly, as I said, the press
welcomed that victory, and in a sense thought that maybe they had the
possibility of anointing Fidel in a certain way. Now, after that,
after the missile crisis and so on, maybe African Americans began to
associate that revolution with something else, something negative. But
that was only tempered by the kind of information they received from
the established press, and the attempt to demonize the Cuban
revolution at the time. its very interesting, because you often found
the same thing in terms of leadership among African Americans. We know
that in 1963, during the Civil Rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King
was at the apex of that movement, and that he was its most cherished,
its most charismatic leader. But by the time he began to denounce the
Vietnam War and began to talk about issues around poverty and around
inequity in a different kind of way, then there was a campaign to
demonize him. And once you begin to demonize someone in the way that
King was demonized, he¹s open for tremendous abuse, not only verbal
abuse, but also some of us believe that was the reason for his
assassination.

And how did your connection to Cuba develop from then on?

— -The fact is that I never lost sight of the Cuban revolution, even
as a student. We almost had a motto as students that if there was
something the U.S. government was against, then we were for it,
whether it was Chairman Mao, or what was happening with Nkrumah in
Africa, or wherever: if it was something that the U.S. government had
demonized, then we wanted to support that in some way. And certainly
that was the beginning. I never lost sight of the Cuban revolution.
Unfortunately, I never got a chance to be a part of the Venceremos
Brigades that went down to Cuba from the U.S., but at the same time I
found another fertile ground to understand and see the possibilities
of the Cuban revolution when I began to watch Cuban films around
1974-1975.

Do you remember which were those films?

— -Well, I don¹t remember all of them, but I certainly remember The
Last Supper, one of my favorite films. I remember seeing The Last
Supper and seeing it over, and over, and over again. And that must
have been around 1975. I’m not good on titles, but there are so many I
saw at the time. And this was about the period when I had really made
the decision that I wanted to be an actor, in the course of doing the
other work that I was doing: being involved in the African Liberation
Support Committee. And certainly we all of us supported the Cuban
government’s intervention in Angola, and its going to the aid of the
Angolan revolution in 1975- 76. We all supported that. We’d all been
hugely supportive of the struggle that was waged by the Angolan people
and the Mozambican people as well as the people of Guinea-Bissau,
Zimbabwe, South Africa. We were hugely supportive of that in 1973,
1974, and on, until the eventual collapse of the Portuguese
dictatorship in 1974, which led to the independence of all those
colonies in 1975. That was part of what I was involved in as someone
who was not still an artist, but someone who worked in community
development. I worked in community development for six years in
programs that Dr. King expressed a lot of hope for: the poverty
program. And, at the same time, he felt that these programs were
eviscerated by the campaign and the money spent on the war in Vietnam.
I was involved in the poverty program. It also represented something
else. We can all look at the historical significance of what happens
in our lives. By my involvement in the poverty program I became the
second generation in my family to work in some sort of government
service. My parents in 1948 came into the post office as members of
that wave of African Americans that came to integrate the post office
and federal government employment. So my people, African Americans,
for the first time became employed in some sort of municipal capacity
in the federal government, the armed forces were desegregated. So I
represent the second generation, when I came to work in civil service
as an employee of the city council of San Francisco in 1971. And I was
there for six years, from 1972 through 1977. And by then I’d decided
that I wanted to work as an actor .

When did you travel to Cuba for
the first time?

— -I came to Cuba for the first time in 1993. I came to the film
festival. I had been invited many times to come by an old friend, a
very dear friend, Harry Belafonte. But it seemed as if I was always
working on something, and I never took the time. Sometimes you are in
the midst of a career, you are in the midst of raising a family, and
you don¹t take the time. And that¹s all there is. But in no uncertain
terms I had watched from afar what was happening with the revolution.
I often talked to friends who visited Cuba over the years. So my first
time was the film festival in 1993. I’ve been to the film festival, I
think, four or five other times.

Is there anything that appeals to you in Latin American films?

— -What I’ve realized in some sense is that theres a certain spirit
and that spirit resides in a history of struggle, in a history of
resistance. And in some way, when I’m looking at Latin American films,
and Cuban films as well, I get a sense of that. They in some sort of
way move me. I’m moved by the way in which the stories fill me with
the sense of possibilities and hope. It is something that says, that
tries to be, in its most humble way, because you have to be humble to
try to tell the story of the human experience. You have to really be
humble to want to tell the human experience, to be naked in telling
the human experience. I’m clear that what I want to see is hope, I
want to see people demonstrate to some degree this sense that they
have within their power to change the world, and within their power to
tell their story. I want to see that. And so, when I’m looking at
films, Cuban films, I’m looking at how I can ­ and I’m going to use
a word I don¹t like to use—, how I can highjack what they do. That¹s
what I’m trying to do. How I can learn from that experience, how I can
learn from what I see, and appropriate what I see in my thinking, in
the way in which I approach art. Because I believe its imperative
that art becomes meaningful. its all right to be entertained, but it
has to be meaningful. It must tell us something that we didn’t know.
It must awaken us in some way. Art, real art must awaken us. And when
I look at Cuban films, I’m looking to be awakened, and to be
strengthened in that awakening.

Do you believe its a good idea to publish an on-line cultural website
in Cuba for the English-speaking public?

— -I think it is, because any way in which we could denounce this
embargo by having a dialogue we must do it. And that¹s what we’re
doing, in a sense, in no uncertain terms. We’re telling the U.S.
government that you cannot tell us who to talk to, you can’t tell us
who to reference, you can’t tell us which stories we should talk
about, and that¹s what I think we will do in promoting a cultural
magazine. You can’t in any way break the tie that is among us. You
cannot separate us. We are connected in a way, and this is our attempt
to say that we are interconnected with the Cuban people, that there is
experience that connects us to the Cuban people. And that it is a
reciprocal interconnection. And I think for the most part about having
this cultural magazine, by talking with people about their
experiences, we say in a sense that we love humanity and that we love
all expressions of humanity.

What kinds of projects are you involved with in Cuba right now?

— -Gail Reed is doing a documentary on the Cuban health system and
she’s asked me to narrate it. I hope to narrate that. I’ve been
wanting to do & shy; there’s no secret about it- a film in Cuba for
almost 20 years now. theres a way in which I think we, African
Americans, have to expand our idea of ourselves as a part of this
whole global family. And in doing so, we have to find other ways to
engage the world community in film. I’ve always wanted to do that, in
African films. If you told me you wanted me to make a film in India,
I’d go to India; or if you asked me to make a film in Brazil, I’d stay
here. How can I not make a story of my relationship to the rest of the
world? And so, in that sense I would love to make a film in Cuba,
without a doubt. I’ve been wanting to make one for almost 20 years.
Someone approached me in 1985 when I was rehearsing a play and told me
about the story of an African American who went to fight as a part of
Teddy Roosevelt group at San Juan Hill and defected, and remained in
Cuba. And the Cuban director was trying to do the story, and he wanted
to talk to me. But it never happened. I would love to see us take the
step. We have to continue to remind ourselves that we are a part of an
extraordinary experience that goes beyond the limitations placed upon
us in the United States. That we have a duty and a relationship to
other places in the world, specifically to places where there are
other people of African descent. So, I would love to try to find ways
to bring Cuba to the Folkway Festival in Washington. And maybe theres
an opportunity to visit Cuba and talk to Cuban film students about
films, to learn from them. I’m excited about those possibilities.
Lastly, I’d just like to know your dreams and hopes about the future
relationship between Cuba and the United States.

— -I would hope that the more that we extend ourselves, the more that
we create the kind of people-to-people relationship, we would have a
true understanding of what the Cuban people’s aspirations are, instead
of some fabricated lie that¹s been fabricated and propagated for the
last 40 years. And that we understand and respect that they have the
right, the inalienable right, to decide how they want to take care of
their affairs, how they want to live on this planet. That¹s what I
hope more than anything else. That we learn to respect that, in the
same way that we say that we respect that for our own selves.

Porto Alegre, Brazil, January 2003