If you took the affecting themes of sisterhood in The Color Purple and mashed them up with the exciting road trip revenge narrative of Thelma and Louise, you might get something like Is God Is.
It's a kinetic movie about twin sisters who set out to kill their abusive dad, who's played by Sterling K Brown.
Their performances are great and you'll recognize a few familiar faces, including Janelle Monáe and Vivica A Fox.
And I think it marks a promising feature debut for an acclaimed playwright.
I'm Aisha Harris, and today we're talking about Is God Is on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
Joining me today is B.A.
Parker.
She's one of the hosts of NPR's Code Switch podcast.
Hello, Parker.
Hello.
Thanks for having me.
Great to have you.
And also with us is Soraya Nadia McDonald.
She's a culture critic, journalist, and the senior criticism editor for The Rumpus.
Hello, Soraya.
Hello.
I am so very excited to talk about this movie with both of you, because there is a lot to chew on here.
Mm-hmm.
As kids, they experienced a traumatic event that left them with permanent severe burn scars across their bodies.
This was at the hands of their father, man, he's played by Sterling K. Brown.
Years later, they receive word that their long-lost mother, Ruby, is on her deathbed.
She's played by Vivica A. Fox.
Ruby gives them a task.
Kill their dad as payback for the abuse and pain he inflicted upon them and her.
So, a warning, we're going to be talking about domestic violence in this episode.
The twins set out to find their father, though first they have to go through many of the people he's dealt with in the years since Racine and Anaya last saw him.
Alicia Harris directed Is God Is?, which she's adapted for the screen from her off-Broadway play.
It's in theaters now and is an Amazon original film, so we should note Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content.
Now, Parker, I'm going to start with you.
I know you've not seen the play, but you've read the play.
Yeah.
How do we feel about this adaptation?
I...
Loved it.
I love that you compared it with, like, The Color Purple and Thelma and Louise.
And oddly enough, while watching the movie, this is an odd comparison, is, like, Scott Pilgrim.
Oh!
Yeah, I can see that.
I'm like, you have to get through these, like the layers of their father's past to get to him.
That's not where I thought you were going.
No, that's great.
No, I know.
But it works.
I think it works.
It was like, we give you this mission in order to get to, I don't know.
That's what I, part of me was thinking about that.
But yeah, I loved it.
I read it around Halloween.
I was given like this list of spooky Black plays to read.
Ooh is god is was on the list and i went like, oh wait, this is gonna be a movie.
This is great, because i have no idea how this is gonna get filmed and i just, if you read the play, you're like i don't even know how this was on a stage, so the fact that it is on my screen and it's like, it's Like, it pops.
There's all this like bright music, the performances like Kara Young, who I am a huge fan of.
I feel like I've seen her in like four things in the past two years.
I think I saw her in like Probably Victorious, Purpose, Gruesome, Playground Injuries.
Proof.
I gotta take it.
I'm gonna see her improve.
She's big on Broadway.
Yes, yes.
I also think she's in, like, I Love Boosters.
I Love Boosters.
She is.
Kara is booked and busy.
She's booked and busy.
She's so dynamic.
Yeah.
And so captivating, like from her voice and the way that, like she comes across because she is supposed to be, I think she's described as like the rough one.
Yes, she's very scrappy.
She's scrappy.
And she's able to show off the multitudes that she has.
Yeah, I feel like if you're putting together a Racine action figure, she comes with her own little tub of Vaseline.
Yeah.
Vaseline and crop tops.
Yes.
Blond braids.
Yes, yes.
And no earrings.
She's just going to have to take them off anyway.
Soraya, how did you feel about this adaptation?
I loved it so much for so many reasons.
I mean, I absolutely just love...
Yeah.
Yeah.
She moves between them, I think, with a lot of ease.
That sometimes escapes playwrights, especially when they are moving from working on stage work to the screen.
TV is a really nice way to break into that and kind of bridge those two skill sets and see where they work and where they don't.
I think moving from plays to cinema sometimes that can be more of a challenge, especially if you're a director and you can get a little bit lost and kind of end up with like a series of sort of uninteresting shots where the camera doesn't really move a whole lot.
You know, you're speaking more in the language of a play than you are with theater.
Even as much as I adore George C Wolfe as a theater director, I think some of his films, kind of you know, suffer from that.
But you're able to sort of hide it a little bit because his adaptation of August Wilson, right?
Like very sort of like serious award-winning black plays.
That are also tend to be set in like very limited spaces.
Right, like with august wilson plays, you're not often moving.
Right, there are rooms, there are houses, there are spaces, but it's not like you're moving too much, whereas here this is a play that travels.
Yeah, she takes advantage, i think, of the sprawl right yeah, the country sprawl.
It's a road trip story.
They're moving in all these different places across the south.
When I interviewed Alicia for American Theater Magazine about translating this story, she talked about being inspired by Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
That too, yeah.
As an adaptation of the odyssey.
Yeah, one of the films that like i just couldn't wait to say, like i was like, oh my god, i was like, finally somebody's like taking shots at quentin tarantino.
There are frustrations that I have with say, Kill Bill or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that I feel like she gets to create some on-screen justice in some ways.
But the thing is like Is God Is even as a play was always described as like this Afro-punk spaghetti Western.
She's extremely dynamic, much like Racine.
Yeah, yeah.
It's just such a confident debut.
I feel like it's just been like percolating inside of her and her brain for so long that when she finally got the opportunity, like she hit the ground running.
And contemporary, in that regard, of the playwright to filmmaker.
In that respect, I think probably be more like a Martin McDonagh of just being able to translate the work to the screen.
I think the fun thing about Is God Is is that it kind of also still embraces the fact that it was a play.
Yes.
If you've read the play on the page.
Some of those pages actually are projected onto the screen in the movie as dialogue and captions across the screen, which is so clever and such an interesting take on crossing both worlds together.
I was like, oh, she's still being true to herself in this fun and dynamic way.
And I just, oh, it's just like it's so good and so rightfully angry.
In a way that I feel like Black feminine rage is something that is not always showcased.
In media.
Or respected.
Or respected or, like, supported.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because people are afraid of us.
Yeah.
Because they know we have a lot to be angry about.
And if you said that to Ray C, she'd be like, yeah, you should be scared of me.
Like, you should be afraid.
Yeah.
I mean, I haven't read the play.
I haven't seen the play either.
So I was coming at this completely fresh experience.
But those moments that you mentioned Parker, about the dialogue appearing on screen, that is actually coming out of the fact that one of the things I love about this movie is the way Harris is really dialing into this relationship between these two sisters and how they are bonded, not just by their trauma but also by Just growing up together and having to lean on one another.
And those moments of the dialogue, they're so intertwined.
They're so simpatico that they can communicate telepathically.
Like they don't have to speak.
And I love those little touches.
I love the way that when we get moments where we're seeing flashbacks Flashbacks can be so hard to do but like hearing someone tell a story and seeing those flashbacks, she kind of goes in and out in the way plays can sometimes do, where it's like you're seeing the action happen.
But then Vivica, A Fox's character Ruby, is telling the story about what exactly happened, because the girls don't actually fully remember exactly how they got their scars.
So she's reminding them and telling them.
And while she's doing that, every once in a while you'll see Vivica Fox, and she looked directly at the screen and she'll mouth the words.
Like I love those little touches of like slipping in and out of both theatrical and cinematic language.
Very stylish.
Very stylish.
I also just like I happened to see this the day after there was a killing in Shreveport Louisiana, where a man police said his name is Shamar Elkins.
He killed seven of his children and his nephew and This was obviously a domestic violence dispute.
And then, just days before that, we had gotten news that Justin Fairfax, the ex-lieutenant governor of Virginia who police said killed his estranged wife, Dr Serena Fairfax, and then himself,
So those were things were top of mind for me while I was sitting here watching this movie.
And they really resonated with me because that's the thing, right?
It's with these movies.
I mentioned Thelma and Louise.
I mentioned The Color Purple.
And part of the reason why I remember them is because they're great movies.
Like, they are very well done and they capture feminine rage.
And sisterhood and all those things in a really beautiful way.
But also they stand the test of time because they're still relevant and, just like subject matter, topic wise.
And the fact that, like this movie could come out just around the time that this is happening, and there will inevitably be more examples of this, because this is just the way the world works.
I think that it's the type of movie that is going to be held up and should be held up with those other films we've mentioned, because it does such a good job, as you said Parker, of like capturing rage.
And I just read slightly, because I do think the media has no problem presenting black female rage, but it's often in service of like supporting these ideas about black femininity as like being animalistic, as being irrational, irrational.
And this is a movie where these women have every right to be angry.
And I'm curious what you think about.
We haven't actually gotten into sort of like what happens After they get this summons from their mother, this mission, this like Wizard of Oz, like bring me the broom.
What I found so fascinating is that it's not just about them seeking revenge, but it's also about the ways people not just men but women sort of support these men off her cover.
Complicit.
Complicit.
Especially when it redounds to their own comfort.
Yeah.
Which is, like, that's Janelle Monae's character in a nutshell, right?
She's playing his current wife, Man played by Sterling K Brown, and she's playing his current wife and She's the one who's gotten quote, unquote the best deal, because she's in this sort of beautiful mansion that looks like it could have been in like a music video or something.
It's like one of those types of things.
But she's still living with a monster.
Obviously.
Yes.
Yeah.
I mean, what do we make of that?
I loved it.
But like, I'm curious how you all responded to that.
I have so much to say.
Alicia knows that there are these films that exist in the culture, that to the extent that there's still some semblance of monoculture that we experienced growing up in the 90s.
And Alicia is also a millennial.
She's 44.
That sort of iconography of the color purple of Kill Bill, of these films that garnered broad audiences and then discussion.
She's playing with those.
One of the things that she told me about casting Sterling was that it was a little diabolical because she knew that he existed in the culture as this very stand-up hyper-competent, loving man.
So smart, so smart to cast him yeah.
But yeah, after i saw it, it made me go back and look up responses, particularly responses from black men to the color purple not the most recent version, right right where you have spike lee.
He's mad.
He thinks the fact that Mr has been rendered on screen is just completely unfair.
And he's not alone in this.
This is echoed by Ishmael Reed, even though the thing that sits at, I think, the heart of the color purple and that has contributed to its endurance, is that it is so clearly about this bond of sisterhood right.
Like, Right down to this clip of Celie and Nettie playing patty cake with each other.
And that is also, you know, when you see these two little girls at the beginning of Is God Is, with their little plaits and their Easter dresses.
And the black and white.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And not help but think of the color purple.
Like I'm very curious, particularly because I feel like I'm seeing more conversations on social media, in part driven by these real life examples of intimate partner violence that are occurring in ostensibly straight relationships, that men are exacting on Black women.
Yeah.
In terms of speaking candidly about the violence that Black women experience.
You know, we have the highest rates of intimate partner violence in the United States, aside from Indigenous women.
And what there is to be done about that, about either sort of just suffering silently or when we do sort of process that suffering, that it has to be done with this great deal of sort of quiet and dignity and being very protective and managing the feelings of usually men.
Who don't necessarily like having these truths not even just be presented on a big screen, but that feeling of being exposed, of having this dirty laundry be aired.
For me, the fact that this film got made is a miracle.
Yes!
We're currently in a film drought when it comes to, like, good cinema.
The fact that we are here with like an original Black female idea on screen that she took full advantage of the resources she got.
And in theaters.
And it's in theaters, too.
A real theatrical release.
And made such a bombastic film that hearkens to the color purple, that hearkens to black cinema.
Eve's Bayou, even, a little bit.
But the 90s are calling.
Down to the wardrobe, right?
To the Tommy Hilfiger and the...
Crop tops and the baggy pants.
Their outfits, the blonde box braids.
Oh, so good.
So good.
Seriously the fact that this film got made and is getting the distribution that it has and that something that we the three of us this is diabolical.
The fact that this isn't no shade, but isn't like Tyler Perry presents Is God Is.
Mm-hmm is a miracle.
Yeah, like that.
It's not being like shoved onto netflix.
It was going to be on amazon later on eventually yeah, eventually.
But the fact that like, i was so excited when i got into the theater because this should not feel like such a novelty, And the fact that it was, and that it has something very strong to say about the way that black women are being treated, the way that's being treated by men, but also by the women who like, uplift these men.
Yeah.
Erica Alexander, too, is.
Erica Alexander was so good.
Another woman like that.
I love the idea of dealing with the sins of the father and having to kind of go through your father's demons to get to the man.
I call her Pentecostal Miss Havisham.
Oh.
That scene is so fun and so silly.
Yeah.
I don't think you're supposed to say all those words.
Yeah, there's so much humor and farce.
It's so funny.
So silly.
Yes.
There's also a lot of pathos.
I just think about...
I don't know like having Sterling K Brown as this evil character and the way that he's able to like weaponize those like Randall Pearson.
Tears where he's like he's doing like this is us crying.
I'll be like, no, you a demon.
No, I will not do that with your pain right now.
It's not even those tears, though.
It's also like he has such a soft kind of high pitched voice, like higher pitched than usual.
And that's that seems like a very deliberate choice.
He's giving sort of like creepy, quiet sociopath.
And I think it mostly works for me.
I did find it a little bit hard at times to fully latch on to that.
But this isn't the first time he's been able to do that.
Like he's played, not to this extent as horrible, but not enough.
People saw Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul.
That's true.
Yeah, he's playing kind of again against what I think most people think of when they think of him, which is like he's like a huckster.
He's kind of not a demon, but he's definitely doing some shady stuff.
I think he mostly works here.
I would love to hear, because we were talking about this before we started taping, but I felt, at least a little bit.
There's so much buildup and so much good stuff that happens that, like the last act, felt a little like not a letdown, but not fully satisfying in the way that I had hoped it would be.
And we don't need to go into details about that.
But I did feel as though some things were left unsaid unfinished, unfinished in a way that I just could.
I was like, oh man, I kind of wish like we had had some sort of payoff, but at the same time there is something sort of poetic about a revenge narrative that doesn't necessarily satisfy in a way that you would hope it would.
I mean, I don't know.
I struggle.
I want it both ways.
It was a little unsatisfactory.
I understand.
I will say that the play actually is slightly different than the movie.
It more works like a full circle moment and there is like some kind of payoff.
So I maybe I now understand that choice.
But I don't know.
I'd like the plays ending better.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's an ambivalence with this one, but also a heartbreak that, I think, makes it that much more sort of unsettling when you walk out, particularly because you've spent the majority of the movie just having these like delicious kikis and really some like brutish violence.
I mean, no more brutish than like prison violence.
Like literally the weapon of choice is a rock and a sock.
Yes.
It's a little challenging.
Look, we've talked a lot.
This is such a rich text.
We didn't even get into the idea of beauty and femininity that this movie is conjuring and trying to interact with.
Oh my gosh.
There's a lot.
We all loved it.
We want everyone to go see it.
That is what we will leave you all with.
More Black playwrights become filmmakers.
Yes.
That's also my wish.
Your conversations will be just so much more enriched.
Absolutely.
Well, look, I always want to give grace to a first-time filmmaker.
And I think we're all banging the drum really loudly for everyone to go see this movie.
So absolutely do go see this movie.
That brings us to the end of our show.
B.A.
Parker, Soraya Nadia McDonald, thanks so much for being here.
This was so fun.
So fun.
And I hope people take your word and our word and go see this movie.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This episode was produced by Mike Katz with Liz Metzger and Hafsa Fathima, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy.
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Thanks so much for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
I'm Ayesha Harris, and we'll see you all next time.
