Middle of Nowhere

MIDDLE OF NOWHERE PUBLICITY CONTACTS Stacey Mooradian [email protected] 424‐ 288‐4392 Publicity Materials available at: www.affrm.com/press Rating: R TRT: 100 minutes CREDITS Written & Directed by AVA DuVERNAY Produced by HOWARD BARISH & AVA DuVERNAY Producer PAUL GARNES Co‐ Producer TILANE JONES Director of Photography BRADFORD YOUNG Editor SPENCER AVERICK Costume Designer STACY BEVERLY Music by KATHRYN BOSTIC Music Supervisor MORGAN RHODES Casting by AISHA COLEY CAST EMAYATZY CORINEALDI as Ruby OMARI HARDWICK as Derek DAVID OYELOWO as Brian LORRAINE TOUSSAINT as Ruth EDWINA FINDLEY as Rosie SHARON LAWRENCE as Alberta Fraine NEHEMIAH SUTTON as Nickie FELISHA ANOA’I as Pongesa TROY CURVEY III as Rashad MAYA GILBERT as Gina DONDRE WHITFIELD as Mr. Littleton ANDY SPENCER as Bus Hustler BRUCE KATZMAN as Mr. Averick ANDY DREW as Guard NISA WARD as Fraine’s Assistant SYNOPSIS What happens when love takes you places you never thought you would go? As Ruby (Emayatzy Corinealdi) rides a bus through the inner city streets, she wills herself to push away memories that crowd her. Four years earlier, she was a vibrant medical student married to the love of her life, Derek (Omari Hardwick). Now, she makes her way to the maximum security prison on the outskirts of town. This is where her love now resides. Behind coiled razor wire and forty foot concrete walls. As the couple stares into the hallow end of an eight-year prison sentence, Ruby must learn to live another life, one marked by shame and separation, by guilt and grief. Soon, her singular focus is to ensure Derek's survival in his violent new environment. She drops out of school to maintain her marriage from beyond bars. She fights to support her husband on the inside and survive her own identity crisis on the outside. But through a chance encounter and a stunning betrayal that shakes her to the core, Ruby is propelled in new and often frightening directions of self-discovery. As we chronicle her turbulent yet transformative journey, we witness the emergence of a broken woman made whole. ABOUT THE PRODUCTION AN EVERYDAY IMAGE The journey of MIDDLE OF NOWHERE began with an image of a woman on a bus. It was common for writer/director Ava DuVernay to see working women travel by bus to and from her native Compton, California. But in the spring of 2001, a specific picture came to mind and never left. “One day, I started thinking about a woman riding a bus at dawn,” she explains. “It was a mental image that stuck with me for a long while. I couldn’t shake it. Oddly enough, the screenwriting process for this film began with me investigating who she was and where she was going.” The first time the audience meets “Ruby,” the film’s complex heroine, she is riding a bus at dawn to visit her husband, “Derek” behind bars. And it is this image that begins the audience’s journey with “Ruby,” as she navigates a love lost, a dream deferred and hope for a better life. TIMING IS EVERYTHING DuVernay began writing the screenplay for MIDDLE OF NOWHERE in 2002 while heading her award-winning film publicity firm, The DuVernay Agency. After pitches to the usual Hollywood players yielded no traction, she placed her script in a drawer like so many other aspiring screenwriters. It wasn’t until years later - after DuVernay had successfully directed and self-distributed her first documentary, launched the grassroots film distribution collective known as AaFFRM (African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement), and released her narrative directorial debut I Will Follow - did financing come together for MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. One of the first to come on board was executive producer Howard Barish, who met DuVernay when she walked into his office two years earlier. “Ava’s agency offices were in my building. One day, she realized that in addition to the building, I also owned a full-blown production company,” Barish recalls. “She came in and said, ‘I’ve written a script and I want to produce it together, okay?’” It was a request that he had heard many times before. But DuVernay’s passion was persuasive. She asked Barish to read the script for MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. “The story and the writing touched a chord,” he says. “It was so human, so real. I couldn’t and didn’t say no.” A veteran in the industry and founder of Kandoo Films, Barish knew it was going to take a certain amount of capital to produce the project at that time. DuVernay had a specific production date in mind between two major publicity campaigns she was overseeing for studio clients. The time needed to raise the financing and the time in which she wanted to shoot didn’t line up. So, she sat down and wrote another script in six weeks with a specific goal to make it ultra low-budget. That film would become her first narrative feature, I Will Follow. “She brought me the new script and it was just as good,” Barish recalls. Together, they produced I Will Follow in 2011; with DuVernay financing from her personal savings and Barish providing in-kind equipment and expertise. Through I Will Follow’s indie box office success, Barish was able to marshal the financial resources in just three short months to make the next film, MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, with private equity. “The great thing about independent filmmaking for me is that we have no client,” Barish says. “We have no studio executives. There is no one that we’re accountable to except ourselves. This allowed us to do what we thought was best for the picture.” To Barish, MIDDLE OF NOWHERE marks a return to the foundation of filmmaking. “It was nice to get back to plain old simple storytelling,” he adds. DuVernay was on the hunt for a producer who wouldn’t mind getting his or her hands dirty. She called up Paul Garnes (Woman Thou Art Loosed), an old friend. Garnes remembered the script. He read it nearly seven years earlier when he and DuVernay worked together on the action film, Biker Boyz. He was one of the film’s producers and she was the film’s publicist. When she asked him for producer recommendations for MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, without hesitation, he said, “I’ll do it.” Tilane Jones rounded out the producing team. Jones heads DuVernay’s production banner, Forward Movement, and is the Managing Director of AaFFRM. “It’s amazing to be a part of the process from the screenwriting phase through the distribution. Being a part of that day-to-day building of a film is something I truly enjoy.” Casting Director Aisha Coley, who also worked on I Will Follow, was brought on immediately. “I always love to build a cast with Aisha because she brings me the faces, the faces of the faceless characters I’ve written. She drills down and goes beyond the usual suspects,” says DuVernay. DuVernay’s long-time editor Spencer Averick was a given. She and Averick have collaborated on all her filmed projects, from narrative to documentary to concerts to branded entertainment, since 2007. It was during their work on I Will Follow that DuVernay asked Averick to serve as the editor on MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. About the script, Averick states, “I loved it. It’s a simple story. Very subtle. Very emotional. You don’t see movies like this often. I loved every minute I worked on it.” MIDDLE OF NOWHERE’s director of photography Bradford Young, who won the award for Excellence in Cinematography at Sundance 2011, had collaborated with DuVernay previously on the music documentary, My Mic Sounds Nice. In an interview with the New York Times on Young, DuVernay described working with him: “The word that comes to mind when thinking of Bradford’s visual style is ‘lush.’ It is full. Every frame is full-bodied and potent and robust.” Young described his sense of working with DuVernay: “Ava is the first person I’ve met since Haile (Gerima) who gives me hope that you can control the way you shoot and distribute a film. That you don’t have to wait for the blessing of Hollywood or Indiewood to tell your story, your way.” FINDING RUBY – CASTING EMAYATZY Perhaps the most important decision in the pre-production process was the burning question: Who would play Ruby? “Ruby” was a role rarely seen in Hollywood: a complicated, emotionally nuanced black woman lead character that appears in nearly every frame of a fully-financed film. As a result, several actresses of note vied for the part. DuVernay met with a number of high- profile artists, but for her it was about finding the right energy over the starpower. “The journey is just as important as the destination, and chemistry between the filmmakers and the cast is crucial,” she explains. “So, it became less about finding a ‘name’ and more about finding the right person regardless of their past work. Someone with chops, who we also wanted to hang out with day after day.” Emayatzy Corinealdi (The Young & The Restless, Gun Hill) originally read for the part of “Rosie,” Ruby’s sister. Watching her audition via tape, DuVernay asked that Corinealdi read for the lead. “As soon as she started,” DuVernay says, “I knew that was her.” It helped that DuVernay found Corinealdi to be “sweet as pie.” “I prepared for ‘Ruby’ by thinking about the women who have crossed my path who have had those experiences [of loving someone who is incarcerated],” says Corinealdi. “I worked to tap into how they felt, and I thought about my own personal experiences with love.” She delved into the nuances of Ruby’s character.

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