Taking Dogma out of Genre with Five Star’s Keith Miller, Primo Grant and John Diaz

Many years ago, a fellow named Nietzsche came along and declared all philosophers before him dogmatists and, therefore, failures in their work. A dogmatic approach—consisting of binary oppositions and hierarchical systems—may work among the religious and other types, but for those thinkers really trying to put a finger on the way things (and people) function, dogma must be challenged at every point. Director Keith Miller deviates from the prototypical approach to filmmaking and questions rules about genre with a movie that is part documentary, part narrative, and goes even further by refusing to confirm or deny exactly which parts are “real” or “performed.”

In Five Star, Miller’s sophomore effort, Primo Grant plays himself in many ways—a member of the Blood gang, a doting father and a loyal family friend. His relationship with a young kid in his hood, played by John Diaz, is complicated in a way that surely mimics relationships in Primo’s “real” life. Five Star insists on blurring these lines, not necessarily as an artistic approach, but as an honest attempt to reflect a reality where we are all already performing.

Paste caught up with Miller, Grant and Diaz to talk about the making of Five Star and their unique take on the gangsta flick.

Paste: Keith and Primo, can you both talk about working on the short piece Gang Bangin 101 together, and how you decided to transition from that to a feature film?
Keith Miller: That was a conversation that happened by chance through the lead in Welcome to Pine Hill, who used to work in the same place where Primo worked. I had a camera, and we had a one-hour conversation that I edited down to Gang Bangin 101. I found that conversation very interesting and when I edited it, I felt like it turned out good, and he liked it. We saw a lot of promise there for a future collaboration.

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Primo Grant: The day we actually met and shot that piece was the day right after my birthday party that I’d celebrated at the Sugar Hill Club. A friend of mine who used to be a bouncer there, Shanon Harper, called me and said, “I’ve got this guy here, and he wants to do a movie on gangs. Do you want to be involved?” I said, “Sure.” I met Keith, and we talked for a long period of time. We met up a couple of times and we just talked. We shared life experiences and we came up with the concept of a movie that he’d already been working on. It was an honor just to be involved in it.

Paste: Primo, this also became a family project for you in a way, and it made for some really great scenes, like the one where all of your kids are working on their cards for you. How did you talk to them—your children and your fiancée—about being in the film, and how did they respond?
Grant: It definitely turned out to be a family project. My fiancée has always been supportive of any dreams I had. She’s a rock—the best woman I’ve ever known. I love my children to death, and having them know that daddy’s gonna be in a movie just added on to the hype of their dad already being their superman. It was awesome. And it brought that authenticity, as opposed to trying to act with children that you’ve never met. So it was just awesome that they were involved.

Paste: John, you had some strong moments with Wanda Colon, who I thought was great to watch as your mother. Can you talk about working with her, and how Keith directed you in some of those scenes?
John Diaz: Keith kept it real simple, but Wanda—she’s a character all on her own. Wanda wasn’t acting [laughs]. Wanda was really being my mother. If you saw my real mom, you’d see the connection right away—how similar they are, and how much they care. So it was really easy to have that connection with Wanda. When she first came to audition, she was talking to me about college and she was just doing motherly things. We weren’t even auditioning yet, and Keith was like, “She’s your mother.”

Paste: Keith, one bit of dialogue that really stood out to me was the conversation about becoming a man in the Jewish tradition, versus becoming a man as a Blood. There’s this great alignment between gang culture and religion that we rarely think about. I read that James Joyce’s work had some influence as well, so I was wondering if you could talk about how your own understanding of Primo’s world and experiences as a Blood might have shifted over time, and if your views on religion had anything to do with that.
Miller: The bar mitzvah scene was a very intentional addition because of the ages—the alignment of the 12- or 13-year-olds supposedly becoming a man. But it was also a gesture to show how much I am outside of the [gang] culture as the director.

The question that is often asked of Primo is, “Why did you turn Blood at 12? Why did you do such a bad thing?” I think it seems completely not understandable, until you hear someone explain it. It’s still maybe not that good, but it’s a choice that you could see someone making. I think that there’s one thing that people look for in these situations, whether they’re brotherhoods, gangs, clubs or religious groups—it’s a communion with other people.

As far as the part about James Joyce, there’s a passage from chapter five of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man where Stephen Dedalus is on the beach, and he looks at a woman and just kind of walks away. It’s really the moment where he becomes a man. [With the beach scene in Five Star] I was trying to get John’s character to that point.

Paste: Primo, this film has been praised for its unique authenticity, and obviously you’re a big part of the draw. How involved were you in coming up with these storylines?
Grant: Me and Keith worked together and took the steps to actually produce and direct the film. We talked and shared memories. One thing in particular is the opening scene, where I speak about my son and not being there for his birth because I was incarcerated. That is a very true scene, based on actual events that did happen. And he actually took [other] events that happened in my life and expressed them the best way possible, and incorporated it into the story.

Paste: John, this is your first feature film role. What would you say you learned working on set with Keith and Primo that you’ll take with you to any upcoming projects?
Diaz: Working with these guys, I learned that you really just gotta enjoy the moment. Whatever you do, whatever adventure it is—if you’re filming a movie, or shooting a music video, or you’re a bouncer at a club—you just have to enjoy the moment. You’re not promised anything in this world, so enjoy every step.

Paste: Keith, one of the most exciting aspects of this story is that it’s partly fictional and partly documentary. Why is it so important to you that the lines between certain genres be blurred, or done away with altogether?
Miller: It’s important to me not to be dogmatic about genre. It’s, for me, an attempt to make these movies engage very much with real life and a social and political world beyond the screen. By doing that—by declaring it fiction instead of documentary—I feel like, at least what happens to me in those situations, is that I’m put on alert to be a little bit more in tune with the movie. I hope that it feels like what’s happening within the frame of the movie bleeds out into the everyday world, so that you feel like, “This is real, this is happening.” So that way, there’s a continuum from what’s on the screen to beyond the screen.

I don’t necessarily believe in or adhere to those distinctions, and being proactive by putting in things that are not clearly [documentary or narrative fiction] helps. And it’s interesting to see how many people have played a kind of “Where’s Waldo?” with the narrative and the real—and how often they’ve been wrong. There are moments in a movie that feel too staged, even if it’s a real situation. And also, people discount the amount of performing that takes place in everyday life.

Shannon M. Houston is Assistant TV Editor and a film critic at Paste, and a writer for Pink is the New Blog and Heart&Soul. This New York-based freelancer probably has more babies than you, but that’s okay; you can still be friends. She welcomes almost all follows on Twitter.