The first question after the first screening of "Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire" at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival was, "Mo'Nique, what will you wear to the Oscars?"
Ever since, the words "Precious" and "Oscar" often have been mentioned together. Lee Daniels, the movie's director, is tired of hearing it. "That scares the bejeezus out of me," he said recently, while in Denver for yet another film festival.
Daniels worries the Oscar talk will be as wrong as everything else the unnamed "they" have said about "Precious."
"When we were in Sundance, they were like, 'Great movie, but nobody's going to buy it.' OK, there's a bidding war," he said. "Then they go, 'Oh, great, how are they gonna market the movie?' OK, in comes Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey. Then they go like, 'Who's gonna see the movie?' Our [box-office] numbers are outrageous. Then they go, 'Oh, we're gonna win the Oscar.' What does that mean?"
"Precious" (which opens today in Salt Lake City) started life as Push, an acclaimed novel by the author Sapphire, a harrowing story of a black teen girl with a host of tragedies: pregnant, illiterate, obese, abused by her mother and raped by her father. (See book review.)
Daniels said he got the job of directing what was then called "Push" because of another movie he directed, the little-seen drama "Shadowboxer," which starred Helen Mirren as a terminally ill assassin having an affair with her stepson (Cuba Gooding Jr.).
"The only few people who loved the movie, ironically, were Sapphire and the investors," Daniels said.
Key to the movie was casting the girl to play Precious. "Most of those girls really were Precious," Daniels said. "Some of the girls that I interviewed couldn't talk, some of them couldn't write. They were the character, man. I would have been exploiting those girls."
Gabourey Sidibe, the actress who won the role, "wasn't that girl. She wasn't Precious. She's bubbly, she's funny, she comes from a solid family," Daniels said. "There was an intelligence behind her that most of the girls [didn't have]."
Opposite Precious is Mary, the verbally and physically abusive mother who makes her life a living hell. Daniels cast the comedian Mo'Nique, with whom he worked on "Shadowboxer."
"I knew it that it was in her body to do the character," he said. "I think comedians have a third eye that ordinary actors don't have. They approach it with a twistedness and a different understanding than a regular actor does."
The movie's Sundance debut was capped by three awards: the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize, plus a special jury prize for Mo'Nique's performance. At the Awards Night party, Daniels got a phone call.
"As I'm winning, freaking Oprah Winfrey is calling on the phone," he said. "C'mon, this is surreal."
Winfrey saw the movie and signed on as executive producer. So did director Tyler Perry, probably the most commercially successful African-American filmmaker working today.
"[Perry] hits a demographic that my films ordinarily don't hit get," Daniels said. As for Winfrey, Daniels gushed, "I can't believe Oprah's my good friend now. ... She's just been there for me. Not just promoting the film, but psychologically there, helping me with navigating stuff that comes up. All of a sudden, I find myself on magazine covers. ... You can get really caught up in it. She puts it all into perspective."
Winfrey's red-carpet appearance helped boost "Precious' " profile at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the movie won another audience award.
Daniels said he's ready to get off the festival circuit and let "Precious" be seen. "How many more film festivals are there? Please tell me," he said, laughing. "Is there a festival on Mars, because they'll have me there."
