Black fatherhood, police, war and the new Spike Lee joint

A conversation with Kevin Willmott I and Kevin Willmott II

by

Madisonians with even a passing familiarity with the local music scene have likely encountered Kevin Willmott II, the gregarious musician and bartender who is a ubiquitous presence at The Sylvee, the High Noon Saloon and Mickey’s Tavern. He performs in the Otis Redding tribute band Don’t Mess with Cupid. But even before COVID-19 benched all Madison musicians, Kevin has been less omnipresent lately; he and his wife, Addie, have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Lily, and are expecting a second child in July. 

Get to know Madison’s Kevin Willmott a bit and you’ll learn that his dad, Kevin Willmott I, is an independent filmmaker and film professor who has collaborated on three films with Spike Lee. Pre-Spike, Willmott I released a number of indie films, including The Only Good Indian, Ninth Street and Jayhawk. His first collaboration with Lee was the 2015 musical Chi-Raq, and the writing team won a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for BlackKKKlansman. 

Their latest, Da 5 Bloods, was released on Netflix on June 12. The film is about four Black Vietnam vets who reunite to honor a dead comrade and recover a stash of gold they buried during the war. It’s classic Spike Lee — an engaging and over-the-top mix of comedy, drama and Black history. It examines ideas of patriotism and loyalty and the relationship of Black soldiers to each other, and to their country. And, just in time for Father’s Day, one of the film’s strongest subplots involves the relationship between Paul (a breathtaking performance by Delroy Lindo) and his son, David (Jonathan Majors).

I wanted to talk with both Kevin Willmotts about the film, the unrest in the streets of the Midwest cities where they reside in response to the killing of George Floyd, and Black fatherhood. We spoke via Zoom.

Congratulations on the release of a new Spike Lee joint. You and Spike received an Oscar for BlackKKKlansman, long overdue. This must be a weird time to release a film into the world.

Kevin Willmott I: It’s weird, but it’s actually really a great time, at the same time. The pandemic has made everybody have the focus, and with stay-at-home orders no one can venture out like they usually can. So it’s given a great audience to movies and to TV shows. And the pandemic has helped put people in the streets as well. So with all the negative and all the loss that’s come from the pandemic, it has had a couple of positives as well. George Floyd’s murder gave people an opportunity to express their anger and their desire for change.

It brought people to the streets, and it also brings people to their screens to try to understand more about the history of white supremacy. I think Da 5 Bloods brings a whole new dimension to the screen — Black soldiers, Black veterans, and what it’s like to go to war for a country that does not appear to value your life here. 

Willmott I: I grew up in a small town, Junction City, Kansas, which is adjacent to Fort Riley, so I grew up being able to see firsthand that camaraderie of Black soldiers, specifically Black soldiers that went to Vietnam and came back. The dap handshake in the movie and the term “Bloods,” that was everyday life for us. And what was really special about that was the fact that these guys were fighting for rights they did not have. And that is the story of the Black soldier until the last couple of conflicts. They’ve always been fighting for rights they did not have at home. And you could still even argue that today. 

But as a whole, Vietnam was very different because there was a war going on at home for those rights while they were in Vietnam fighting. And that put them in a really precarious, unique and uncomfortable position. When Martin Luther King was assassinated, there were problems in Vietnam, there were fights between Black and white soldiers. That was part of the American story that I think people don’t know nearly enough about. And this is something Spike really wanted in the film — I don’t think they really know how much African Americans have sacrificed for the country with the hope that one day we may get our rights. And that started literally in 1776 and is still going on today.

I wanted to talk a little bit about race in the Midwest, because you are in Lawrence, Kansas, and your son is here in Madison, Wisconsin. Progressive Madison, home of some of the worst racial disparities in the country.

Willmott I: It’s funny how that happens, isn’t it.

Willmott II: Turns out white progressivism isn’t that progressive. George Floyd died in Minneapolis. That’s three hours from here. So being from Lawrence and moving to Madison, and seeing the Northern segregation that’s really alive here is definitely one of the more eye-opening things I’ve noticed since being up here. 

Has being a father changed anything for you?

Willmott II: Being a father definitely changes everything. I’m not out there on the streets right now. I have a baby, and we are expecting our second baby in July. But the thing that’s so cool about this is people are being activists on social media and being a part of city council meetings when they haven’t ever been a part of them before. I think people really are engaging from home, because they know that not everyone can be on the streets. Also I love the Midwest. I think the Midwest is the best representation of America. Growing up with my dad, there was always so much material for me to learn from. He was making a movie, Ninth Street, my whole childhood, basically. And it was a Vietnam movie, so I was always around that history. The Midwest is interesting. It’s not a coincidence that it [Floyd’s murder] happened in the North, where segregation is still alive.

I just watched I Am Not Your Negro and James Baldwin had interesting things to say about the North and the South, and how they “lynch you differently.”

Willmott II: In the South, they have a sign that says “We hate you.” In the North, you have to walk around with this cloud around you where you’re always wondering. And it’s neighborhood to neighborhood. In Milwaukee and a lot of more urban communities that’s why brothers are getting shot and murdered; they are killing Black people in those neighborhoods.

And what does it look like in Lawrence, Kansas, right now?

Willmott I: Well, we’ve had some protests here and in some neighboring cities where you rarely see this kind of activity, which is pretty great for us. There are still people out there every day protesting, which is great. There are young people out there. It’s really tremendous to see that, and there are mixed groups, which is really great as well. I think the thing about the George Floyd murder in terms of how it relates to the Midwest is just what Kevin was saying. There’s a lot of racial incidents that happen in the Midwest that go unchecked and unacknowledged, and that’s been a big problem for a long time. And towns like Madison and Lawrence — in Lawrence we’d like to claim that “Madison hip” progressive — it’s easy to kind of live in a town where on the surface things seem to be really great. But underneath the surface, there is a lot of bad stuff that’s always happened. And that’s the thing about this moment that we’ve having in America right now with everybody trying to deal with policing, but it’s more than policing. Clearly, policing is where they get the opportunity to kill you. But the problem comes in every facet of society. And every facet of community life, and that’s going to be the harder part to get rid of; institutional racism is absorbed into everything that we are. 

How does that show up for you?

Willmott I: A big part of the problem is so-called liberal, hip people don’t want to deal with that. I deal with that in Hollywood all the time. People think they know but they don’t know. They think “We’ve seen that movie before,” and all of a sudden George Floyd happens and they are all about that movie. And that’s one of the most frustrating elements of it all. You see kind of the phoniness of the response. I’ll try to give a concrete example here. You see corporations come out and they are embracing Black Lives Matter right now, and that’s a great thing, but probably the best example is the NFL where [Colin] Kaepernick was just a Black troublemaker. And now to go “Oh, we’re sorry. We should have supported the protest.” And that is kind of the best example of what it is to live in the Midwest, because the thing with George Floyd’s death is that was such a horrendous murder. His murder I would argue is the worst murder that we’ve seen on film. And there’s a lot of murder on film. But I think that seeing this man sit on his neck with his hand in his pocket while other people off to the side are pleading for George Floyd’s life, and you see the smirk and the disconnect, and the pure cruelty of it. It’s a lynching photograph. It’s lynching footage. And that footage is like Emmett Till’s photograph — it’s gone all over the world, and it’s affected people all over the world and it’s affected America. And it’s sad that you have to see something like that before you believe that the police murder us. And that sums up kind of the thing about the Midwest: There are a lot of great people here, but it takes so much, it takes something so extreme to get them to understand what’s happening every day.

Willmott II: The complacency, the comfortability of the Midwest. They are so self-absorbed in their own world. There are people that are dying all around and they don’t see them. But it takes Selma or it takes Dr. King being murdered or it takes George Floyd’s death to wake people up. It is the most terrifying thing about liberal/progressives. It’s the same with the #metoo movement. When are you going to start believing? People are not lying about this stuff.

Kevin the Elder, what was it like raising your sons here? 

Willmott I: It’s like any other father raising a kid until you deal with the fear factors, like being out late, and the other major factor is being pulled over by the police. And the one fear factor with the police is that typically my white friends when their kids get pulled over they’re going to just be given a scolding. They find a little weed, or they find they’re drinking, they’ll pour the liquor out and they won’t arrest them.

Willmott II: And when they do get arrested they get diversion, it’s off their record. The whole system works for them. We were lucky that we were always “the Willmott family.” I was a Boy Scout, senior class president. I was a very good kid. Never got in any trouble. Because I was terrified of the repercussions; it was like my life was on the line.

I know you are proud of your dad, and I wonder what it was like growing up having that example of a father who is telling stories, on a national level, stories that need to be told that aren’t being told elsewhere.

Willmott II: The thing that I cherish most about my father being an artist, a father and a Black father is that he kept us in Lawrence, Kansas, and all six of my siblings we got to have that wholesome neighborhood existence when it still existed in the ’90s. And he was an independent filmmaker his whole career until he made Confederate States of America [an alternate history mockumentary based on the South winning the Civil War] in 2004, and that really gave him that national spotlight. For me, I was always just watching my dad, and it was like, we’re making posters today, kids. Gotta go do this scene, or we gotta go hang out at this thing all day long. But I also got to see so many cool things and meet so many people that have been an inspiration to me and still are today. The thing that I am thankful for is that my dad is being recognized the way I’ve always thought he should. He’s getting his due, and he deserves it. He’s a hardworking man, and he works his butt off to write every single day. He would wake up at five in the morning before all the kids would wake up and would be in there writing for hours before we all had to wake up and ruin everything. My dad’s story is different from most people but also it’s similar to many people from that generation, and I think my dad would definitely be the one to say that he was very lucky. He didn’t have to go to Vietnam. He didn’t have a lot of those experiences. But he always taught me what it was to be Black. And history is really where it’s at.

History is where it’s at.

Willmott I: And I just want to say that occasionally Kevin would tell me stories about being pulled over by the police….

Willmott II: I was driving through Missouri with my buddy from the Milwaukee Art Institute on the drive back to Lawrence. I get pulled over for driving in the left lane for too long and there’s nobody out there. He pulls me over, comes to the window. I go, “Hello officer,” and he says, “Will you get out of the vehicle?” and I said, “What did I do wrong, officer, may I ask?” and he says, “You were driving in the left lane too long. Will you please get out of the vehicle so we can have a conversation?” He said everybody gets out of the vehicle. I was escorted to his car where he asked me about assault rifles and guns. I was a kid, I was probably like 19, and he was trying to con me to get me to say something stupid. He asked me if I ever drank, if I’d ever done drugs. And I was like, “Why are you asking me these things? You’re a state patrolman in Missouri?” And would my white friends get pulled over? They just wouldn’t get pulled over. If you are a white family in the Midwest and you have money and your kid gets in trouble, you’re going to be okay.

Willmott I: I’ve been pulled over before. Any time I would drive a rental car in Missouri I’d get pulled over, especially when I’d drive through St. Louis. They would say “You were weaving a little bit.” And then they would question me and let me go. That kind of harassment. I lived in Topeka for a couple years, and my first day in Topeka I was driving to the library and they pulled me over and they just said “We just want to check you out.” See, white people don’t have to experience that. They don’t have that relationship with the police — of just being checked out and harassed and monitored. You’re being monitored, and that’s kind of the worst part of it. And they wonder why Black people have this bad relationship with the police. 

Talk more about that.

Willmott I: To be specific, when they are asking him about weapons and drugs, he sees a Black young man as an adult and a dangerous person. They treat young Black people as criminals and they don’t treat young white kids as criminals. And that’s really the difference. That’s really why so many young Black men in particular are shot and murdered by police because they enter the conversation with them believing that they are criminals, and that is a huge part of the problem. 

Willmott II: It all goes back to slavery, and my dad’s film Confederate States of America really shows how slavery and the way that we were treated are very similar today. And that patrolman, that overseeing, definitely feels like some kind of slavery.

I wanted to talk about the father/son relationship in Da 5 Bloods. Paul is an interesting character. He clearly voted for Trump, he’s wearing a MAGA hat, and his son, David, shows up in Vietnam to join the group of returning vets on this expedition into the jungle. Maybe you can talk about that choice, to show a character — a Black conservative veteran with PTSD — that’s a character you don’t see on the big screen.

Willmott I: We made him a Trump supporter because I think a lot of Trump supporters are like Paul; they are damaged, kind of broken people. And I think the damaged, broken part of them is what creates grievances. Most Black people don’t become Trump supporters when they are broken and damaged, but Paul’s got that kind of personality that is not going to be part of the community. He’s not going to reach out. He’s not going to get counseling. He’s not going to get help. And that individualism is also part of Trumpism. That’s why they typically end up blaming others for their problems: It’s immigrants, we need to build a wall. It’s the gay folks. I grew up with some Pauls, because the military also tends to make you conservative. But I think with Paul, in particular, his relationship with “Stormin’ Norman” [a deceased fellow soldier] has also made him that way. I don’t want to give anything away, but that’s the broken part. Enter his son, and his son is the exact opposite of him. His son is who Paul would be if all the bad things hadn’t happened to him. His son David is who he would be if Paul got some help; he’d be closer to David and their relationship would be reconciled on some level. And American life tends to break up families, it tends to break up relationships. I mean, look at all the relationships and friendships that have been lost because of Trump. And it’s not Trump; it is really racism that has broken those relationships up. And that racism that’s breaking up families and relationships and marriages, that is all a part of the desperate need that we have in this country for some sense of unity, and we can’t seem to find it.

Willmott II: My dad is the most humble man you could ever grow up around and he helped so many people. He always had a community of people that was helping him make his movies because I think he always said that if the movie has a message, that’s all that matters. And it doesn’t matter if you make it on $2,000 or with Spike Lee, the message is always there. I think that now people want to hear those messages more, and that’s why they’re calling his name now.

Willmott I: As proud as he is of me, I’m even more proud of him. He’s a great father, and he’s a great son, and Kevin has always been a real hustler, and that’s something that you try to teach all your kids. And I’m talking about hustling in the positive context. We are all out here trying to do our thing in some kind of way, and he’s found a way to make a really fine life for himself in Madison and I’m very proud of him.