Five Hotbed Issues from 'Lakeview Terrace'
By Hollywood.com Staff
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Friday, September 19, 2008
Lakeview Terrace stars Samuel L. Jackson as a veteran LAPD cop, with a rather large chip on his shoulder, who begins harassing his new neighbors, an interracial couple played by Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington. Yep, there’s a lot to read between the lines, and in our chats with the cast, they’ve pointed out some key hotbed topics surrounding the film.
Read our exclusive interview with Patrick Wilson
Check out Lakeview Terrace movie stills
#1: The obvious one: the Race Issue
Kerry Washington: “I love my character because I’ve never really seen a black woman like Lisa on the screen before. She’s this Berkeley graduate, Birkenstock-wearing, Prius-driving, granola, organic, white-boyfriend girl. Clearly, her parents have put her in the kinds of schools and socio-economic situations in which she’s very comfortable with white people. And really open to the idea of living in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic life. It’s evident in the dinner party they throw and who their friends are. Race is an issue, but it’s not the ONLY issue. And I think that is kind of the world we live in today. You look at a candidate like Barack Obama and of course being African-American is part of the issue. It’s part of the menu of who he is but it’s not the only thing and it’s really not the most important thing. It’s really about who’s the next best human being to run this country. And this movie is about human beings and how they are treating each other.”
Samuel L. Jackson: “[Lakeview Terrace] a treatise on race, I guess. One guy's harassment of a peace loving, beautiful little couple trying to start out life. But for me, explaining racism is not something that you can necessarily do. Having grown up in the segregated South, a lot of times you really don't need a reason other than somebody doesn't like you so you don't like them and you can be taught not to like a specific group or things happen with children. People say kids aren't born with hate. I don't know. Maybe. People say different things about what you're born with, what you're not born with but there comes a time when you have to make a decision or you know what's right and what's wrong or the things that you've been told about a specific group, you know aren't true because human beings are human beings unless you're an ignorant human being and then you believe what you want to believe but you cannot like people for whatever reason you don't like them. In this, I didn't think it was specifically necessary to explain a lot of what goes on inside Abel's head or how he got to that particular place. It's like cops work with other cops and at a certain point you stop being black, white, brown whatever and you become blue, but I don't think that's true either because inside the police department there are all these fraternal orders and different things that people do have racial specifics that they work with and at a certain point, yea they're blue but there's also the point where you see the racial divide and how another person thinks about another group because of the way they treat them. And at a certain point we'll explain what Abel's problem is but that's not necessarily why he's been the way he's been all his life. It's not something he carried with him all his life. There's a specific incident that happens that creates this thing.”
All Photo(s) by Sony Pictures Entertainment- © 2008- All Rights Reserved