Directed by John Ridley
Not Rated / RT: 145 minutes
MEDIA CONTACT: AWARDS CONTACT: Big Time PR Fredell Pogodin & Associates Sylvia Desrochers | Karen Tran Fredell Pogodin | Ryan Langrehr [email protected] | [email protected] [email protected] 424.208.3496 323.931.7300 SYNOPSIS
LET IT FALL takes an unflinching look at the 1992 L.A. uprising tracing its roots back a decade, unfolding its history as a series of very personal decisions and very public failures. The film weaves heartbreaking first hand accounts from black, white, Asian, and Hispanic Angelinos of all classes, caught up in a cascade of rising tension culminating in an explosion of anger and fear after the Rodney King verdict.
LET IT FALL is directed by John Ridley. Produced by Jeanmarie Condon and Ridley. Co-producer is Melia Patria and producer is Fatima Curry. Editing is by Colin Rich and cinematography by Sam Painter and Ben McCoy. Original score by Mark Isham.
TIMELINE OF EVENTS
1982
• Drugs have become an enormous problem, as identified by LAPD, particularly rock cocaine and PCP.
March 22, 1982
• LAPD uses chokehold to subdue James Mincey Jr., a 20-year-old African- American man pulled over for a cracked windshield, and suspected to be on drugs. The chokehold, administered by white officers, leads to Mincey’s death on April 5, 1982 (No evidence of PCP, heroin, cocaine or morphine was found in his autopsy. He was the 12th black man to die from police chokeholds in 7 years).
May 7, 1982
• Chokehold is banned by Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners and City Council.
May 8, 1982
• In discussing chokeholds, Darryl Gates makes racist remark: “In some blacks, when it is applied, the veins or arteries do not open as fast as they do in normal people.”
July 28-Aug. 12, 1984
• Summer Olympics areheld in Los Angeles.
2 June 14, 1987
• Lakers win the NBA championship
January 30, 1988
• Karen Toshima is fatally shot by gang crossfire in Westwood,
April 1988
• Height of Operation Hammer—LAPD’s program of ultra-aggressive tactics to crack down on gang violence (begun in April 1987).
August 1, 1988
• Large scale drug raid by 88 LAPD officers on apartment buildings on the corner of 39th Street and Dalton Avenue. Massive show of force is designed to deliver strong message to gangs. Dozens of area residents are rounded up and many are humiliated or beaten. None were charged with a crime. (The raid netted less than 6 oz. of marijuana and less than 1 oz. of rock cocaine.) These tactics heavily employed racial profiling and targeted African-American and Hispanic youths.
September 18, 1988
• 700 seized in gang sweep in South Central LA and San Fernando Valley in a highly publicized Operation Hammer campaign.
March 3, 1991
• Rodney King is pulled over for speeding and then is tasered and beaten with batons by LAPD officers in Lakeview Terrace.
March 4, 1991
• George Holliday delivers a videotape of the beating he took from his balcony to TV station KTLA
March 15, 1991
• 4 LAPD officers are indicted by a county grand jury for assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force, and two officers indicted for grave bodily injury and filing false police reports. Sgt. Stacey Koon is charged in engaging in a cover-up.
3 March 16, 1991
• Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old African-American girl, is shot in the back of the head by 51-year-old Korean shopkeeper Soon Ja Du, who claimed she was stealing a container of orange juice.
June 18, 1991
• Appeals court rules that 4 officers charged with beating Rodney King could not get a fair trial in Los Angeles County.
November 16, 1991
• A jury finds Soon Ja Du guilty of voluntary manslaughter in Harlin’s death. Superior Court Judge Joyce Karlin sentences the shopkeeper to 5 years probation and 400 hours of community service, but no prison time. The light sentence outrages much of the community.
November 26, 1991
• Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg orders trial of 4 officers—Sgt. Stacey Koon, and officers Laurence Powell, Theodore Briseno and Timothy Wind— charged with beating Rodney King to be moved to Simi Valley.
April 29, 1992
• The 4 police officers are acquitted of beating Rodney King, shocking the city and sparking an outcry.
• Protests on 71st and Normandie. Someone throws a brick at a store window, then another brick at police car.
• Reginald Denney, a white truck driver, is pulled from his truck at Florence and Normandie, and beaten. No police presence is there.
• LAPD Chief Darryl Gates is conspicuously absent, having left his post to attend a political fundraiser in Brentwood
• Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley speaks from the heart—“We have had enough”- -then asks community not to resort to violence.
April 30-May 4, 1992
• Violence spreads and dusk to dawn curfews are enforced in city and country of Los Angeles
4 May 1, 1992
• Military called in to help quell rebellion
May 1992
• Men accused of beating Reginald Denney, dubbed “the L.A. Four”—Henry Watson, Gary Williams, Damian Williams and Antoine Miller--are arrested and charged with robbery and assault
May 24, 1992
• Darryl Gates steps down as LAPD chief.
August 5, 1992
• Four police officers who beat Rodney King are indicted by federal grand jury on charges they violated Rodney King’s civil rights.
September 25, 1992
• Mayor Tom Bradley announces he will not seek re-election, after a record five terms
5 INTERVIEW SUBJECTS • Donnell Alexander—South Central L.A. resident • Marjean Banks—Girlfriend of James Mincey Jr. • Lakeshia Combs—South Central L.A. resident • Marvin Covault—Major General Division Commander 7th Infantry Division • Thomas Elfmont—LAPD Captain 1974-1988/Lt. James Mincey Jr. arresting officer • Tim Goldman—Amateur Cameraman • Bobby Green Jr.—Los Angeles Truck Driver/South Central L.A. Resident • Linda Griego—Los Angeles Deputy Mayor 1991-1993 • Kee Whan Ha—Former President, L.A. Korean-American Chamber of Commerce • Mark Jackson—South Central L.A. resident • Paul Jefferson—LAPD Captain 1968-1992 • Donald Jones—Firefighter, Paramedic, Reserve Police Officer • Henry King—Juror, Rodney King Trial • Jenny Lee—Daughter of Jung Hui Lee/Sister of Edward Lee • Jung Hui Lee—Mother of Jenny Lee/Korean immigrant/Koreatown resident • Michael Moulin—LAPD Lieutenant 1972-1992 • Lisa Phillips—LAPD Officer, 1989-2015 • Robert Simpach—LAPD Officer 1974-2003/James Mincey Jr. Arresting Officer • Juanita Tarvin—Widow of Larry Tarvin • Kevin Toshima—San Gabriel Valley resident • Henry “Kiki” Watson—South Central L.A. resident • Terry White—Deputy District Attorney, Los Angeles • Damian Williams—South Central L.A. Resident • Gary Williams—South Central L.A. resident • Georgiana Williams—Mother of Mark Jackson
Q&A with Oscar-winning director John Ridley:
Q: Why did you want to make this film?
A: I had been trying to make a fiction version of the story of the LA Uprising for more than a decade. I was very fortunate that ten years ago Spike Lee was interested in doing a narrative film about it and he invited me to work on it as a writer. It wasn’t a story about just one person, one night. It didn’t affect just one community. It was a story that absolutely lent itself to narrative film, but it was difficult to get a studio behind it.
6 When Jeanmarie Condon, a news producer at Lincoln Square Productions, approached me with the idea of doing a documentary version, it was very serendipitous. She had no idea I had been working on a narrative version for so long. Documentary is not a space in which I normally work, but it lent itself very well to the type of layered storytelling I thought was necessary to really convey the depth and breadth of this seminal event in the history of Los Angeles.
Q: You chose to identify some of the speakers in your documentary with brief, even vague, associations like “South Central L.A. Resident” or “Amateur Cameraperson.” Then later in the film you fill viewers in on the specific roles each person played in the events of late April, 1992. Why did you take this approach?
A: I wanted to get the audience to invest in every one of these individuals as people. I wanted the audience to care about their stories, and maybe not to see where it’s going. I wanted people not to know, then to feel conflicted.
Q: Your approach had such humanity. You walk in everyone’s shoes. How did you resist focusing on heroism?
A: Oftentimes, when individuals try to shape these stories, they want to identify a hero’s arc. In this circumstance, I thought those were disingenuous demarcations. I didn’t feel like it was a story where ‘We need to make sure the police officers look really horrible’ or ‘We need to make sure we root for folks from particular demographics.’ They are all complicated people and they deserve to be treated as complicated individuals.
Q: What stands out is how you allow people to take the time to recount their stories, the way you let the camera linger on their faces and how you give them time to reflect, and draw on their full recollections and emotions.
A: In my narrative style of telling stories I feel as though every time you cut it really dissipates the storytelling. Obviously, editing in and of itself is its own craft and we wanted craft in the melding of stories. But we did not want to try to clean up the way that people told their stories. If they stumbled, that’s the way people talk. Not everyone has words at the ready, but their emotions are the key. And it should be received the way they’re telling it. We tried to keep those rhythms, and not just cut and paste.
Certainly how we allow those stories to unfold, how we identify people, there’s a choice there, but that was secondary to allowing people to explain what happened, how it happened, how they felt, what they feel now years later and how they’ve carried it with them.
Q: Your editing choices are fascinating. One person might be talking and then you cut to the face of another, for instance. What was the thinking behind these edits?
7 A: Because there was so much focus on people telling their stories, and telling them very directly, there were places where we could have some cinema and deconstruct a little bit. And there are moments where we have two people telling almost the same exact story and you hear the audio overlap a little bit. You see the image overlap a little bit. We wanted to juxtapose. We wanted it not to be just a pure straight-ahead documentary, but a total experience. We needed a balance. We didn’t want the style to overwhelm the substance. But at the same time, we did not want it to be a dry recounting of the news.
Q: Your storytelling style in this documentary feels novelistic. You structure the film in an almost literary way.
A: That was very much the intent with the approach: not to get to the end before the beginning, not to identify Reginald Denny’s rescuer, or the officer in charge of the station in South Central, or the instigator of the uprising. I wanted it to feel like a novel. I wanted it to feel like a story where you’re caught up in these folks’ lives and you don’t know that you should be caught up for any other reason but that they are people.
Q: How did you gain the trust of all the people interviewed?
A: It was really about being able to say to people ‘We’re not trying to strip-mine your personal history.’ It was about spending time with people and saying ‘Here’s who we are, here’s what we’re about. This story is very, very important to us and we want you to know that your story will be treated with respect.’ People understood this wasn’t something we were doing just because this was the anniversary. Certainly that was the driver, certainly that got people to pay attention in terms of allowing us to do this, but people trusted what we were going to do with their stories.
One of the things that I hope I learned early on is that a big part of writing is being a good listener. People were amazingly generous with their stories. For so many of these individuals the time has not passed. The circumstances still felt fresh.
Q: How does your particular style of narrative filmmaking inform this documentary?
A: It greatly informed what we were doing largely because I was uninformed as a documentarian. I relied on [producer] Jeanmarie Condon to make sure there was veracity to what we were doing, that this was news, more than my opinion. When you pick the subject matter, when you’re very careful about the individuals that you choose, there is some opinion that goes in there. But, I wanted to make sure that it held up to scrutiny the way a good documentary should.
I had been trying to do this as a narrative film and worked on it for 10 years. Much of the way the film lays out is the way I would see a narrative playing out. In terms of how the story unfolds, from the way the folks are not fully identified in the beginning, it’s not
8 about good guys versus bad guys. It’s about people, and the choices that they make and the consequences of those actions.
If you’ve seen American Crime, if you’ve seen Guerrilla, you can see the similarities in the way we deal with the grey, the way we try to represent people as people. They didn’t wake up that morning and plan to be a hero. They are flawed, but not evil, oftentimes caught up in circumstances. All of those elements are things that I’m attracted to.
Q: You interviewed about 40 people and you chose 25 for the film. How did you decide on which people to include?
A: It was difficult. With some people it was very clear, but with other individuals we thought ‘Do we keep them in, or do we excise them?’
What was very important was that with almost every individual in the film there is a moment where they can say with a personal investment ‘There was a point where I had to do this.’ A moment where their actions-- or the flow of actions to them-- turned the story. Ultimately, that was the litmus test: The decision about who remained and who was excised from the final cut was based on their level of personal involvement in the story.
Q: How did you decide on the overall decade of 1982-1992 as a focus for this story?
A: There’s certainly an argument to be made that you could go back 15, 25 years, or even to the 1960s and Watts riots. This particular 10-year period was a good way to create a demarcation. There are a couple of obelisks on this timeline that allow us to present the story in a larger context that wasn’t unwieldy, that wasn’t reaching too far back.
Some people have asked ‘Why don’t you take it to Ferguson or Baltimore?’ It was very important for us not to draw a straight line and create what might have been an over- simplistic equation of all these events. What happened in Los Angeles is very particular. What happened in Baltimore, Ferguson, or Charlottesville is different. There are certainly, without a doubt, similarities. There are similar systemic issues, but they deserve their own examinations.
They’re called the Rodney King riots. I think a lot of people assume Rodney King was somehow involved in it, or that he was beaten and there was an uprising. It’s very important that people realize there was a cascade of events, that this wasn’t about one thing that happened to one person that went down in one community that affected one type of individual. It was a series of events that led to this uprising.
Q: Karen Toshima’s death happened in 1988, four years before the uprisings. This tragic slaying in Westwood woke up the entire city to the extent of gang violence.
9 It was an interesting choice to include as a key moment leading to what happened in 1992. How did you decide on that?
A: It was one of those moments that really changed the trajectory. You can see the reaction, news reports coming out saying if it’s happening in this section of Los Angeles, now there’s a problem. Now things need to be handled in a very particular way, with a very particular show of force.
I was not living in Los Angeles then but I remember hearing about Operation Hammer and the reaction that ‘we’ll do what it takes now.’ At that point you just thought that gangs were this pervasive evil. But you didn’t hear about them in the same way when they were more particular to South Central. They were just this localized problem and not an epidemic. It was very important to include that moment in the story.
Q: It must have been hard to track down people more than two decades after these events. What were some of the challenges?
A: Not all of these individuals were still living in Southern California. We had to suss out folks who are now living in Mexico, Canada, Nevada. People had moved around. We had to find them, and even track down the four officers who were involved in the Rodney King beating. They chose not to speak with us, but we were able to engage with them at least and explain what we were trying to do. I could not have done it without Jeanmarie Condon, our producer. She and her team were able to get so many people to participate by spending time with them in their environment. Because we were a news documentary, we didn’t pay for any of these stories. This was not checkbook journalism. Jeanmarie and her team were coming at it because they do news. I was coming at it because for a decade this was a topic I wanted to tell. We came well-armed, but it was really about what we were able to walk away with.
Q: Your film examines Los Angeles at a very specific time. You captured aspects of LA that many don’t know about.
A: So many people migrate to Los Angeles, myself included. Yet it becomes our city. We become invested in our city. There is no other city of hopes and dreams and aspirations and so much culture quite like it. But we end up in our cars. We drive from one place that we’re familiar with to another place that we’re familiar with and we don’t interact. We feel free to get aggressive because we have a ton of steel around us. It’s such a unique place. It needed to be personalized.
Where Rodney King was pulled over in Lakeview Terrace is so far away from the epicenter of this film. Simi Valley is so far away. People unfamiliar with the massiveness of Los Angeles had no idea how spread out this is. Yet, we were all connected. What was going on in the LAPD’s Foothill Division affected what was going on in Westwood. What was going on in Westwood affected what was going on in South Central. It was very important to show that although these seem like very disparate, disconnected
10 communities, the connections are wound much more heavily than sometimes we even like to acknowledge or understand.
Q: You must have had massive amounts of footage. Making editing choices on what to include and what to cut must have been very difficult. What was your guiding principle?
A: We interviewed 35, 40 people. Each of those interviews was several hours per person and then we had the archival footage. We had everything that ABC News and KABC did. There were years worth of footage. I have to give so much credit to Colin Rich, the lead editor. There was so much that he was able to sift through to get to the heart of the matter. His work was just stellar.
I worked with Colin on American Crime and he’d also worked with me when I was trying to make this a narrative. So it was very fortuitous because he understood the style of editing and storytelling that I like and just had an energy and attention to detail that made it possible to cull it down to resonant moments.
Q: I’m intrigued by your use of the term uprising vs. riot. Why are word choices particularly important in this discussion?
A: I don’t want to turn it into a battle of semantics. I use the word riot and I think there are circumstances where it’s perhaps more appropriate. But around these set of circumstances, riot is the word that is most used, as in The Rodney King Riots, and I do think that is incorrectly applied.
We wanted to try to make sure that it didn’t seem like it was about one person and one place being affected in one way. It was something that people arrived to over time. And it was an uprising that affected many communities. This wasn’t spontaneous violence. It wasn’t even, at least initially, a direct reaction to the verdict in Simi Valley.
So, I think at the very least by saying “uprising” people have to engage with the story in a different way than if you say the LA Riots or Rodney King Riots. Words have power and how they’re used and applied can change people’s perspectives.
Q: Your ending was so powerful: the last few lines, the starkness of the statistics: $1 billion in damages. More than 50 deaths. The majority of those killed were black. How did you decide on that simple, compelling method of bringing the film to a close?
A: There was so much emotion and so much personal contact throughout the story. It was very important to me to make sure that people understood the size and scope and scale of what was going on. It’s a quarter of a century later and there are so many individuals who are not fully aware of all the circumstances. I don’t think people realize the impact in terms of political structure, in terms of financial damage and obviously
11 most importantly in terms of the human toll and the fact that so many lost their lives. And the majority were people of color.
I don’t say that as though one individual based on race, gender or sexual orientation has more or less value, but we went down this road because of the way the law was dispensed: people of color were being overly targeted. Their lives were being marked. And in the end, after all of this—whether you think of it as a riot, or an uprising or a rebellion—the people who were most affected remain most affected. Ultimately, the demographic that was most victimized was most hurt by this. I think people were not aware of this. I think that’s something people really need to take into account. Were there any other ways to engage? Was any of this worth it?
Q: With the recent events in Charlottesville, your film feels more timely than ever. What can the actions and viewpoints expressed in Let it Fall teach us? What role can your film play in the ongoing battle against racism and towards the goals of humanism, understanding, compassion and equality?
A: We can’t be surprised when these things happen. They happen because so many people have allowed and encouraged them. The normalizing of bigotry really isn’t new. What I hope this film offers is a chance to be with these people for a moment, as they share their stories. Feel their stories. Then walk away and process it a little bit. Take those stories and be slower to judge. Be quicker to react to distress in our communities, but slower to judge.
There is such a rush to carve out our own personal positions and not much space to say ‘Let me hear what you are saying, let me just feel it and find the similarities between us.’ That is where we’re falling apart. I don’t know if we’re two societies more than we were in 1965, or 1865, but the ossification of our ideas, the hardening is a problem. For all the reach we have, all the social media, we don’t seem any more social. We don’t seem to have any more capacity for listening. Something like Let it Fall, if nothing else, puts people in the space where they feel empathy. We’re saying: Sit with these folks and we challenge you to not be surprised.
12 ABOUT THE CREW
JOHN RIDLEY Director/Producer
John Ridley’s critically acclaimed documentary about the Los Angeles uprising LET IT FALL: LOS ANGELES 1982-1992 premiered in theaters and aired on ABC in April. It will return to theaters this fall. Ridley previously won an Oscar® for writing “12 Years a Slave” and was the creator, director, and executive producer of ABC’s Emmy-winning series “American Crime.” His limited series “Guerilla,” with Idris Elba, Freida Pinto, and Babou Ceesay, recently aired on Showtime and Sky.
JEANMARIE CONDON Producer
Jeanmarie Condon is currently Sr. Executive Producer for documentaries at ABC’s Lincoln Square Productions and is a veteran producer, writer and director of both documentary and news programs. Prior to joining Lincoln Square she was a Sr producer for ABC’s acclaimed documentaries series Peter Jennings Reporting and the Executive Producer of the iconic late night magazine program Nightline. Her work has earned 3 DuPont, 3 Peabody, 13 Emmy Awards, 40 Emmy nominations, 5 Edward R Murrow, and 3 NABJ awards among other awards and recognition.
Along with her work with Mr. Jennings she has partnered with Ted Koppel, Diane Sawyer, Christiane Amanpour, Martha Raddatz, Anderson Cooper, and currently director John Ridley. She has specialized in in depth reporting on humanitarian crisis, social justice and history of ideas. Jeanmarie has made documentaries on topics ranging from the birth of Christianity, the rise of militant Islam, spousal abuse, sexual assault, governmental failures in Waco, Texas and during Hurricane Katrina, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the war in Iraq, and the divisive events in Ferguson, Baltimore and Charleston.
During her tenure at Nightline, she leads coverage of two American Presidential elections, the Arab Spring including the last interviews with Presidents Mubarak and Ghaddaffi, and the wars in Syria and Libya. Under her leadership the team broke important investigative ground on corporate and government abuses, child trafficking, and chronicled the difficulties of returning war veterans and natural disasters from the Haiti Earthquake to the Japanese Tsunami and nuclear meltdown to Hurricane Sandy.
She has travelled extensively for print and television to conflict zones throughout Latin America, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East and has served as a Sr. Fulbright Fellow teaching documentary filmmaking to students in the West Bank.
13 MORGAN HERTZAN Executive Producer
Morgan Hertzan is Senior Vice President and Executive in Charge at Lincoln Square Studios at Disney-ABC Television Group. He is an Emmy Award-winning producer, entrepreneur and media executive who joined ABC in April 2013. He serves as executive in charge of Lincoln Square Studios as well as Vice President of non-fiction content development business in cable, broadcast and digital, reporting to James Goldston.
Lincoln Square Studios produces original content for broadcast, cable and digital distribution specializing in entertaining ways to tell fact based stories. Lincoln Square are producers of some of the most popular truth based entertainment on television including ABC’s “What Would You Do?," ABC’s award winning True Medicine franchise (NY MED, Save My Life, Boston EMS), the OSCAR Red Carpet Opening Ceremony LIVE, ABC Family’s Next Step Realty, Discovery ID’s “Barbara Walters Presents American Scandal," Travel Channel’s "Watt’s World," HGTV’s “Flipping Moms” as well as documentary programming for a wide array of partners including Discovery Communications and A & E Networks. They are producers of ABC’s upcoming Original Movie Event “Madoff” starring Richard Dreyfuss and Blythe Danner. Lincoln Square Productions is a wholly owned subsidiary of American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.
Prior to his tenure at Disney/ABC, Morgan served as senior vice president at NBC Local Media as well as general manager of LX.TV, the lifestyle production company that he co-founded in 2006 and that NBC acquired in 2008. Under his leadership and as executive producer, LX.TV launched several successful syndicated and network shows including “OpenHouse”, “George To The Rescue” and “LX.TV 1st Look”, as well as the daily talk show “New York Live” and a variety of major entertainment projects and special series. Morgan oversaw all aspects of t
Before creating LX.TV Morgan spent many years at MTV developing new businesses and programming. Morgan created and successfully launched mtvU, a 24-hour college cable network that currently reaches 750 campuses and over 7.5 million college students nationwide.
Morgan lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters.
MELIA J. PATRIA Producer
Melia Patria is a journalist and producer for Lincoln Square Productions and ABC News. She has produced documentaries and specials for A&E and PBS, as well as hundreds of domestic and international stories for ABC’s venerated late night news program Nightline, in addition to reports for World News and Good Morning America. She’s earned a Gracie for individual achievement in news producing, and a
14 number of her projects have received national recognition, including Murrows, Gracies and Front Page awards. She is a Pulitzer fellow graduate of Columbia Journalism School.
FATIMA CURRY Co-Producer
Fatima Curry is a producer based in New York. A true citizen of the world, Curry’s gregariousness has allowed her to both witness and get permission to tell some of the most important stories of our era. Her work has ranged from capturing visual stories of Kenyan Masai women living on the fridges of modernity to going door to door in South Central, Los Angeles archiving first hand accounts of what led to the Rodney King uprising. Curry’s past roles include producing/creative direction for Nickelodeon and Sony Music; photography for Newsweek and founder of creative studio GWonders. Currently in production is her documentary, Rearview, a startling look at the potentially deadly world of butt augmentation.
MICHAEL ‘MICK’ GOCHANOUR Post Producer
Mick is a producer/director who has been working in documentaries and film restorations for over 30 years. His body of work includes films for The Rolling Stones, Albert Maysels, Jean-Luc Godard, and Chilean surrealist Alejandro Jodorowsky. He won a Grammy in 2004 for the production of Sam Cooke: Legend, the first biography of the 60’s icon. His own film Charlie is my Darling: Ireland 1965, was a critical success, and won the Grammy for best Historical Recording in 2013.
COLIN RICH Editor
Colin Rich is a motion picture editor and a graduate of the University of Michigan. He has worked on numerous pilots and Vena Sud’s detective series The Killing. Most recently, he was on John Ridley’s critically-acclaimed television drama, American Crime, where he worked under Emmy-nominated editor Luyen Vu.
SAM PAINTER Director of Photography
Sam Painter has over twenty-five years of experience as a Director of Photography and camera operator and has lensed many award-winning documentaries, including Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, History of the Eagles, Sinatra: All or Nothing, Water and Power: A California Heist. Sam’s love of photography began when he started taking stills and home movies as a child in Charlotte, NC. His first job was at
15 the local TV station, WBTV in the Art department as a Still Photographer. He later became a News Cameraman working in Washington DC on documentary shows, as a member of the White House Press Corp, and later as a cinematographer in London, New York, and Los Angeles. Known for his situational awareness and keen artistic eye, Sam’s work has appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, HBO Documentaries, Showtime, Jigsaw Productions, and NFL Films.
BEN MCCOY Director of Photography
Ben McCoy is a nationally recognized Director of Photography with more than thirty years in the television and corporate film business. While his primary clients have been PBS, HBO, Showtime, CBS and ABC, Ben has filmed more than 50 PBS Frontline documentaries, and he worked with ABC anchor Peter Jennings for more than 10 years on ABC documentaries and specials. Other shows include PBS Nova and American Experience, CBS 60 Minutes and many corporate and institutional clients.
A number of the projects Ben worked on have received national recognition, including Emmy, Peabody, and Alfred I. duPont - Columbia University Awards. He has extensive overseas experience - including the civil wars in Lebanon, Nicaragua, and El Salvador; the India/Pakistani conflict in Kashmir; multiple trips to Israel and the Palestinian territories filming both historical and contemporary subjects; and the emergence of China as an economic superpower.
Ben is a versatile Director of Photography known for his creativity and his collaborative nature. He enjoys working on all types of projects and looks forward to new challenges.
MARK ISHAM Composer
Mark Isham is an electronic music innovator, musician and prolific film composer. His work has received accolades including Grammy and Emmy awards, as well as Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. He has performed worldwide and collaborated with celebrated artists in multiple genres including Robert Redford, Tom Cruise, Brian De Palma, Frank Darabont, John Ridley, Jodi Foster, and Robert Altman. Isham’s inimitable musical voice can be heard on over one hundred film and TV scores including the Oscar-winning Crash and A River Runs Through It, along with Golden Globe winning Bobby, and The Black Dahlia. Additionally, A River Runs Through It and Men of Honor both received Grammy nominations. His latest films include Fallen, directed by Scott Hicks, and the international hit The Accountant, starring Ben Affleck. This film marked a happy reunion between Isham and director Gavin O’Connor. Currently Mark is also scoring and collaborating on songs for the upcoming animated film Duck Duck Goose with first time director, animation veteran Christopher Jenkins
16 (The Lion King, Aladdin). Isham’s past film credits include Eight Below, The Cooler, Nell, Warrior, Dolphin Tale, and the Jackie Robinson biopic 42. His TV credits include scoring his sixth season of ABC’s Once Upon a Time and Oscar-winner John Ridley’s ABC drama American Crime.
In 1991, Isham claimed a Grammy win for his Virgin Records release, Mark Isham. His signature sound has been represented on albums of music icons including Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Ziggy Marley, Joni Mitchell, The Rolling Stones, Chris Isaak, and Van Morrison. Mark Isham was awarded the highest honor for a composer by The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), the prestigious Henry Mancini Career Achievement Award for musical excellence. He continues to display a boundless ability to electrify listeners with his talent for crafting evocative new musical works in varying genres and mediums.
17 CREDITS
Directed By John Ridley
Produced By Jeanmarie Condon p.g.a. John Ridley p.g.a.
Producer Melia Patria p.g.a.
Co- Producer Fatima Curry
Executive Producer Morgan Hertzan
Edited By Colin Rich
Music Supervisor Madonna Wade-Reed
Music Editor Louie Schultz
Original Score Mark Isham
Directors Of Photography Sam Painter Ben McCoy
Associate Producers Emilie de Sainte Maresville Asta Jonasson
Post Producer Michael Gochanour
Additional Reporting: Spencer Wilking Rayner Ramirez Laura Reddy Lisa Garcia
18 Steven Gomez
First Assistant Editor James Oda
Second Assistant Editor Torrie Goedtel
Additional Camera Jeremy Evans Brad Serreno Janine Trudell
Grip Keith Barefoot
Sound Technicians David Mitlyng Jason Pawlak
Production Associates Elizabeth Jurcik Yeong-Ung Yang Lawrence Dechant
Production Manager, Lincoln Square Productions Grace Kim
Post Production
Line Producer Megan Harding
Supervising Sound Editor Walter Newman
Re-Recording Mixers Rick Norman Ryan Davis
Dialogue Editors Darleen Stoker Bruce Honda
19
SFX Editors Kenneth Young Rickley Dumn
Asst Post. Editors Deron Street Josie Nericcio
Level 3 Post Colorist: Randy Beveridge Online Editor: Michael Sohcot DI Producer: Daniel Hawley Flame Artist: Richie Hiltzik Online Edit Assist: Lukasz Druzynski Video Engineer: Martin Hernandez Video Operator: Ben Guzman
PostWorks Technicolor Christopher DiBerardino Nicole Guillermo Kim Coluccio
Title Sequence and Visual Graphics Design Me & the Bootmaker Creative Director & Designer: Manija Emran Designer: Parwin Menar Producer: Lusia Boryczko
Motion Graphics Artist Kevin Bartels
FuseFX: Visual Effects Supervisor Jason Piccioni
Graphics Associate Producer James Yates
Graphic Artists Christian Zeiler Jason Richardson Jeremy Melton Josh Miyaji
20 Makeup Artists Mila Grass Michelle Quach
KABC Archives and Research: Milli Martinez Jennifer Moya Julie Sone
Additional Archival Research: Rachel Antell Jennifer Petrucelli
Archival Footage and Photos courtesy of: KABC, Los Angeles AP Celebrity Footage Derard Barton Film Archive Getty Images Global ImageWorks, LLC. Historic Films Johnson Publishing Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved Korea Daily Los Angeles Times****still finalizing language LPE360/Launchpad Entertainment NBCUniversal Archives Oddball Films Producers Library Sgt. Don Jackson Shutterstock Sony Pictures UCLA Film & Television Archive UCSB Special Research Collections Timothy Goldman
"All Night Long (All Night)" Written By Lionel Richie Performed By Lionel Richie Courtesy Of Motown Records
"O.G. Original Gangster" Written By Tracy Marrow & Alphonso Henderson Performed By Ice-T Courtesy Of Sire Records By Arrangement With Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing
21
Original Score Performed by Mark Isham, Mike Valerio and The Lyris Quartet Additional music by Allison Geatches and Michael Simon Orchestrated by Brad Dechter Recorded And Mixed by Jason LaRocca Engineered by Tyler Parkinson Mixed at Wetdog Studios
Unit Publicist Sylvia Desrochers
Edit facilities provided by: Ronal Ellison, ABC ABC Studios
The producers wish to thank: The Family of James Mincey, Jr. The Family of Latasha Harlins The Family of Karen Toshima The Family of Edward Song Lee
Copyright Lincoln Square Productions, A Division of ABC News
22