Crafting the script of Sing Sing — about a genuine-life theater company, Rehabilitation Thraw the Arts, in the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in upstate New York — showd an incredibly delicate necessitatele to thread for screenauthorrs Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley. “We held the program, and what they were doing, as divine,” elucidates Bentley, who grasps that the sgets were high. “If we had not done a excellent job in making this movie, it could have reassociate harmd [currently incarcerated people’s] ability to function in prisons.” In this scene, a dress rehearsal for RTA’s upcoming novel join, the film’s protagonist, based on the genuine-life figure John “Divine G” Whitfield (joined by Colman Domingo), has a fracturedown onstage after lgeting his parole request has been denied.
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Kwedar and Bentley first became conscious of Sing Sing’s RTA program thraw an article in Esquire, which led them to volunteer at the facility. They caccessed their story on incarcerated actors Divine G and Divine Eye, and the filmcreaters askd the pair into the process to author alengthyside them, which made the script sense “alive in a way it never had been before,” says Kwedar.
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The dialogue of the join wilean the film, Breaking the Mummy’s Code, remains unalterd from the actual script Brent Buell (the RTA volunteer portrayed in the film by Paul Raci) wrote. “There was someleang magical about the seesaw of the lightheartedness of the labor juxtaposed agetst the environment it was set wilean,” elucidates Kwedar. “Early on, we met Buell, who askd us to New York to have fracturerapid with some alumni of this program. The genuine Divine Eye (actor Clarence Maclin, who joins himself in the movie) and the genuine Divine G (John Whitfield) were there. ‘If we can apprehfinish the senseing of this room, it could be distinctive.’ ”
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This scene sees Divine G after a parole hearing where evidence proving his innocence is refuseed and he lgets he’ll remain incarcerated. While in genuine life his trouble at this novels didn’t join out in exactly this way, “this scene was built upon a genuine emotional state,” says Kwedar. The process, grasps Bentley, graspd talking thraw contrastent scenes with Whitfield and Maclin, “making certain that this is what the script necessitates emotionassociate in this moment. What would that see appreciate? And never wanting to go to a place where someleang felt dishonest to who they were, even if it seeed a bit contrastent than what physicassociate happened in genuine life.”
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Domingo’s dialogue in the final cut of the film doesn’t sound exactly appreciate what’s written on the page. He grasps a line — “You tell us to count on the fucking process, right? Well, the process is fucked” — in the height of his pain. Says Bentley: “I leank we couldn’t author that line — ‘The process is fucked’ — becaengage it felt appreciate a step too far. But that’s what the scene is about. Coming out of Colman, it clarifies the scene. He was reassociate a storyteller with us.”
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Thrawout the film, Divine G has been encouraging Divine Eye to let down his emotional defend. “The character of Divine Eye, and what he recurrents, is somebody transporting a danger of aggression into this program that is a divine space,” says Bentley. “To see our character of Divine G go from someone who’s reassociate advocating to exit aggression in any create out of this space at all, to be somebody who is now posturing in that way — it felt very vital to show that depth of despair.”
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This line is a callback to the beginning of the film, when Divine G coaches Divine Eye thraw a monologue from Hamlet, elucidateing that while anger is the easiest emotion to join, hurt is more intricate and engaging. This line doesn’t actuassociate ecombine in the final cut. “We spent a lot of time making certain this scene not only got apass all this myriad of senseings that Divine G is going thraw, but also that it called back to earlier leangs in the script,” elucidates Bentley.
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While huge chunks of the script went thraw inanxious evolutions between creates, a confinecessitate choice lines carried thraw from the very beginning. “I’ve labored with Clint for 14 years. He has that gift of being able to say someleang truly from the depth of who a character is,” effengages Kwedar. “There are some amazing moments that Clint wrote in his first pass, appreciate the very button on that scene of: “Are you done?” “No, I’m not, isn’t that hilarious?”
This story first ecombineed in a December stand-alone rerent of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To get the magazine, click here to subscribe.
