Is God Is

You should make sure to check out the new film Is God Is. It’s a kinetic movie about twin sisters (Kara Young and Mallori Johnson) who set out to kill their abusive dad (Sterling K. Brown). It’s an exciting road trip movie akin to Thelma & Louise mashed up with the affecting themes of sisterhood in The Color Purple. The promising feature debut from acclaimed playwright Alesha Harris also features Janelle Monáe, Vivica A. Fox and Erika Alexander. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/letterboxd.com/nprpopculture http://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhour https://plus.npr.org/happy See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:28Aisha Harris?

  If you took the affecting themes of Sisterhood and The Color Purple and mashed them up with the exciting road trip revenge narrative of Thelma and Louise, you might get something like Is God Is? It's a kinetic movie about twin sisters who set out to kill their abusive dad, who's played by Sterling K. Brown. Their performances are great, and you'll recognize a few familiar faces, including Janelle Monae and Vivica Fox. And I think it marks a promising feature debut for an acclaimed playwright. I'm Aisha Harris, and today, we're talking about Is God Is on Pod Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

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• 2:19Aisha Harris?

  Joining me today is BA Parker. She's one of the hosts of NPR's Code Switch podcast. Hello, Parker.

• 2:25Speaker 04

  Hello. Thanks for having me.

• 2:26Aisha Harris?

  Great to have you. And also with us is Soraya Nadia McDonald. She's a culture critic, journalist, and the senior criticism editor for The Rumpus. Hello, Soraya.

• 2:35Speaker 05

  Hello.

• 2:36Aisha Harris?

  I am so very excited to talk about this movie with both of you because there is a lot to chew on here. Is God Is stars Cara Young and Mallory Johnson as twins Racine and Anaya. As kids, they experienced traumatic events that left them with permanent severe burn scars across their bodies. This was at the hands of their father. Man, he's played by Sterling K. Brown. Years later, they receive word that their long-lost mother, Ruby, is on her deathbed. She's played by Vivica A. Fox. Ruby gives them a task: kill their dad as payback for the abuse and pain he inflicted upon them and her. So a warning, we're going to be talking about domestic violence in this episode. The twins set out to find their father, though first they have to go through many

• 3:18Aisha Harris?

  of the people he's dealt with in the years since Racine and Anaya last saw him. Alicia Harris directed Is God Is, which she's adapted for the screen from her off-Broadway play. It's in theaters now and is an Amazon original film, so we should note, Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content. Now, Parker, I'm going to start with you. I know you've not seen the play, but you've read the play.

• 3:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:41Aisha Harris?

  How do we feel about this adaptation?

• 3:43Speaker 04

  I loved it. I love that you compare it with, like, The Color Purple and Thelma and Louise. And oddly enough, while watching the movie, this is an odd comparison, is like Scott Pilgrim.

• 3:55Aisha Harris?

  Oh. Yeah, I can see that, actually.

• 3:58Speaker 04

  I'm like, you have to get through these, like, the layers of their father's past to get to him.

• 4:04Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:05Speaker 05

  That's where I know you were going. No, that's great.

• 4:07Aisha Harris?

  No, I know. But it works. I think it works.

• 4:10Speaker 04

  It was like, we give you this mission in order to get to, I don't know. That's what I, part of me was thinking about that. But yeah, I loved it. I read it around Halloween. I was given, like, this list of spooky black plays to read. Is God Is was on the list. And- And I went like, oh, wait, this is gonna be a movie? This is great. I feel I have no idea how this is gonna get filmed. And I just. If you read the play, you're like, I don't even know how this was on a stage. So the fact that it is on my screen and it's like, it's like it pops. There's all this like bright music, the performances, like Kara Young, who I am a huge fan of. I feel like I've seen her in like four things in the past two years.

• 4:53Speaker 04

  I think I saw her in like probably Victorious Purpose, Gruesome Playground Injuries.

• 4:59Speaker 05

  Proof.

• 5:00Speaker 04

  I gotta take it, I'm gonna see her in Proof.

• 5:02Aisha Harris?

  She's big on Broadway, yes, yes.

• 5:04Speaker 04

  I also think she's in like I Love Boosters.

• 5:06Aisha Harris?

  I Love Boosters, she, she is.

• 5:08Speaker 05

  Cara is booked and busy.

• 5:09Speaker 04

  She's booked and busy. She's so dynamic.

• 5:12Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 5:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  And so captivating, like from her voice and the way that like she comes across. Cause she is supposed to be, I think she's described as like the rough one.

• 5:23Aisha Harris?

  Yes, she's very scrappy.

• 5:25Speaker 04

  She's scrappy.

• 5:26Speaker 05

  Scrappy.

• 5:27Speaker 04

  And she's able to show off the multitudes that she has.

• 5:31Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 5:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, I feel like if you're putting together like a racing action figure, like she comes with her own little tub of Vaseline.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  Vaseline and crop tops.

• 5:41Aisha Harris?

  Yes.

• 5:42Speaker 04

  Long braids.

• 5:43Aisha Harris?

  Yes, yes, and no, no earrings. She's just gonna have to take them off anyway.

• 5:49Aisha Harris?

  Soraya, how did you feel about this adaptation?

• 5:51Speaker 05

  I loved it so much for so many reasons. I mean, I absolutely just love the work of Alicia Harris, both as it's presented on the stage, but also as a writer. She's a very like accomplished and respected off Broadway playwright here in New York. It's really interesting, I think, how Alicia works because you can see how fluidly she adapts between forms.

• 6:17Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 6:17Speaker 05

  She moves between them, I think, with a lot of ease that sometimes like escapes playwrights, especially when they are moving from working on stage work to the screen. Like TV is, is a really nice way to break into that and kind of bridge those two skillsets and see where they work and where they don't. I think. Moving from plays to cinema, sometimes that can be more of a challenge, especially if you're a director and you can get a little bit lost and kind of end up with like a series of sort of uninteresting shots where the camera doesn't really move a whole lot.

• 6:54Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 6:54Speaker 05

  You know, you're speaking more in the language of a play than you are with theater. Even as much as I adore George C. Wolf as a theater director, I think some of his films kind of, you know, suffer from that. But you're able to sort of hide it a little bit because his adaptation of August Wilson, right? Like very sort of like serious, award-winning black plays.

• 7:14Aisha Harris?

  That are also tend to be set in like very limited spaces, right? Like with August Wilson plays, you're not often moving.

• 7:20Speaker 05

  Right.

• 7:21Aisha Harris?

  There are rooms, there are houses, there are spaces, but it's not like you're moving too much. Whereas here, this is a play that travels.

• 7:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, she takes advantage, I think, of the sprawl, right?

• 7:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, the country sprawl.

• 7:33Speaker 05

  It's a road trip story. They're moving in all these different places across the South. When I interviewed Alicia for American Theater Magazine about translating this story, she talked about being inspired by Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

• 7:48Aisha Harris?

  That too, yeah.

• 7:49Speaker 05

  As an adaptation of The Odyssey.

• 7:51Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 7:52Speaker 05

  One of the films that like, I just couldn't wait to say, like, I was like, oh, my God, I was like, finally, somebody's like taking shots at Quentin Tarantino.

• 8:04Speaker 05

  There are frustrations that I have with say Kill Bill or When's the Point of Time in Hollywood that I feel like she gets to create them on screen justice in some ways. But the thing is, like, Is God Is, even as a play, was always described as like this Afro punk spaghetti western. She's extremely dynamic, much like Racine.

• 8:24Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:25Speaker 04

  It's just such a confident debut. I feel like it's just been like percolating inside of her and her brain for so long that when she finally got the opportunity, like she hit the ground running.

• 8:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:35Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 04

  And a contemporary in that regard of like the playwright to filmmaker in like in that respect, I think probably be more like a Martin McDonagh.

• 8:44Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 8:45Speaker 04

  Of just like.

• 8:46Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 8:46Speaker 04

  Being able to translate. The work to the screen. The fun thing about Is God Is is that it kind of also still embraces the fact that it was a play.

• 8:54Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 8:55Speaker 04

  If you've read the play on the page, some of those pages actually are projected onto the screen in the movie as dialogue and like captions across the screen, which is so clever and like such an interesting take on crossing both worlds together. I was like, oh, she's still being true to herself in this really fun and dynamic way. I just, oh, it's just like, it's so good and so rightfully angry.

• 9:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:22Speaker 04

  In a way that I feel like black feminine rage is something that is not always showcased.

• 9:32Speaker 05

  No, or respected.

• 9:33Speaker 04

  Or respected or like supported.

• 9:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:37Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 9:37Speaker 05

  Because people are afraid of us.

• 9:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:39Speaker 05

  Because they know we have a lot to be angry about.

• 9:42Speaker 04

  And if you said that to Racy, she'd be like, yeah, you should be scared of me. Like, you should be afraid.

• 9:46Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, I mean, I haven't read the play. I haven't seen the play either.

• 9:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:50Aisha Harris?

  So I was coming at this completely fresh. But those moments that you mentioned, Parker, about the dialogue appearing on screen, that is actually coming out of the fact that one of the things I love about this movie is the way Harris is really dialing into this relationship between these two sisters and how they are bonded, not just by their trauma, but also by just growing up together and having to lean on one another. And those moments of the dialogue, they're so intertwined, they're so simpatico that they can communicate telepathically, like they don't have to speak. And I love those little touches. I love the way that when we get moments where we're seeing flashbacks,

• 10:33Aisha Harris?

  flashbacks can be so hard to do, but like hearing someone tell a story and seeing those flashbacks, she kind of goes in and out in the way plays can sometimes do, where it's like you're seeing the action happen. But then Vivek Fox's character Ruby is telling the story about what exactly happened because the the girls don't actually fully remember exactly how they got their scars. So she's reminding them and telling them. And while she's doing that, every once in a while, you'll see Vivek Fox, and she looked directly at the screen and she'll mouth the words. Like, I love those little touches of like slipping in and out of. Both theatrical and cinematic language.

• 11:09Speaker 05

  Very stylish.

• 11:10Aisha Harris?

  Very stylish. I also just like, I happened to see this the day after there was a killing in Shreveport, Louisiana, where a man, police said, his name was Shamar Alkins, he killed seven of his children and his nephew. This was obviously a domestic violence dispute. And then just days before that, we had gotten news that Justin Fairfax, the ex-lieutenant governor of Virginia, who police said killed his estranged wife, Dr. Serena Fairfax, and then himself. So those are things were top of mind for me while I was sitting here watching this movie. And they really resonated with me because that's the thing, right? It's with these movies. I mentioned Thelma and Louise, I mentioned The Color Purple. And

• 11:54Aisha Harris?

  part of the reason why I remember them is because they're great movies. Like, they are very well done and they capture feminine rage and sisterhood and all those things in a really beautiful way. But also, they stand the test of time because they're still relevant. And just like, subject matter, topic wise. And the fact that like, this movie could come out just around the time that this is happening, and there will inevitably be more examples of this because this is just the way the world works. I think that it's the type of movie that is going to be held up and should be held up with those other films we've mentioned, because it does such a good job, as you said, Parker, of like, capturing rage. And I just re-slightly because I do think the media has no problem

• 12:36Aisha Harris?

  presenting black female rage, but it's often in service of like, supporting these ideas about black femininity as like, being animalistic, as being-

• 12:44Speaker 05

  Irrational.

• 12:45Aisha Harris?

  Irrational. And this is a movie where these women have every right to be angry. And I'm curious what you think about, we haven't actually gotten into sort of like, what happens after they get this summons from their, from their mother, this mission, this like Wizard of Oz, like, bring me the broom, you know, like all that stuff. What I found so fascinating is that it's not just about them seeking revenge, but it's also about the ways people, not just men, but women, sort of support these- Men and offer cover.

• 13:17Speaker 04

  Complicit.

• 13:18Aisha Harris?

  Complicit.

• 13:19Speaker 05

  Especially when it redounds to their own comfort. Which is like, that's Janelle Monae's character in a nutshell, right?

• 13:26Aisha Harris?

  She's playing his current wife, man, played by Sterling K. Brown, and she's playing his current wife. And she's the one who's gotten quote unquote, the best deal because she's in this sort of beautiful mansion that looks like it could have been in like a music video or something. It's like one of those types of things.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  But she's still living with a monster.

• 13:42Aisha Harris?

  Obviously, yes. I mean, what do we, what do we make of that? I loved it, but like, I'm curious how you all responded to that.

• 13:49Speaker 05

  I have so much to say. Like, Alicia knows that there are these films that exist in the culture. That to the extent that there's still some semblance of monoculture that we experienced, like growing up in the nineties. And Alicia is also millennial, she's forty four. That sort of iconography of The Color Purple, of Kill Bill, of these films that garnered like broad audiences and then discussion. She's playing with those. One of the things that she told me about casting Sterling was that it was a little diabolical because she knew that he existed in the culture as this very like stand up, hyper competent, loving man.

• 14:35Speaker 04

  So smart to cast him.

• 14:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, after I saw it, it made me go back and look up responses, particularly responses from black men to The Color Purple, not the most recent version. Where you have Spike Lee, he's mad. You know, he thinks that the fact that like Mister has been rendered on screen is just completely unfair. And he's not alone in this, like this is echoed by Ishmael Reed. Even though the thing that sits at, I think, the heart of The Color Purple and that has contributed to its endurance is that it is so clearly about this bond of sisterhood, right? Like, right down to this clip of Ceeley and Nettie playing patty cake with each other.

• 15:23Speaker 05

  And that is also, you know, when you see these two little girls. Beginning of Is God Is with their little plaits and their Easter dresses.

• 15:29Aisha Harris?

  And the black and white. Yeah.

• 15:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:31Speaker 05

  You cannot help but think of the color purple. Like, I'm very curious, particularly because I feel like I'm seeing more conversations on social media, in part driven by these real life examples of intimate partner violence that are occurring in ostensibly straight relationships that men are exacting on black women.

• 15:53Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 05

  In terms of of speaking candidly about the violence that black women experience, you know, we have the highest rates of intimate partner violence in the United States, aside from Indigenous women. And what there is to be done about that, about either sort of just suffering silently, or when we do sort of process that suffering, that it has to be done with this great deal of sort of quiet and dignity and being very protective and managing, you know, the feelings of usually men who don't necessarily like having these truths, not even just be presented on a big screen, but that feeling of being exposed, of having this dirty laundry be aired.

• 16:36Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:37Speaker 04

  For me, the fact that this film got made is a miracle.

• 16:41Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 16:42Speaker 04

  We're currently in a film drought when it comes to like, good cinema.

• 16:46Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 16:47Speaker 04

  The fact that we are here with like, an original black female idea on screen that she took full advantage of the resources she got.

• 16:57Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:57Aisha Harris?

  And in theaters, and it's in theaters, too.

• 16:59Speaker 04

  Theaters.

• 17:00Speaker 05

  A real theatrical release.

• 17:02Speaker 04

  And made such a like, a bombastic film that hearkens to like, the color purple, that hearkens to black cinema that like.

• 17:11Aisha Harris?

  Eves Bayou even a little bit.

• 17:12Speaker 04

  But the nineties are calling.

• 17:14Speaker 05

  Down to the wardrobe, right, to the Tommy Hilfiger and the crop tops and the baggy pants.

• 17:21Speaker 04

  Outfits, the blonde box braids.

• 17:23Aisha Harris?

  Oh, so good.

• 17:24Speaker 04

  So good. Seriously, the fact that it's like, this film got made and is getting the distribution that it has and that like, something that we, the three of us, like, this is diabolical. The fact this isn't, no shade. But like isn't like Tyler Perry presents is God is. Is a miracle. Like that this is not being shoved onto Netflix. It was gonna be on Amazon later on.

• 17:48Aisha Harris?

  Eventually, yeah.

• 17:49Speaker 04

  Eventually, but the fact that like I was so excited when I got into the theater because this should not feel like such a novelty. And the fact that it was and that it has something very strong to say about the way that black women are being treated, the way that's being treated by men, but also by the women who like uplift these men.

• 18:11Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, Erika Alexander too is.

• 18:14Speaker 04

  Erika Alexander was so good.

• 18:17Aisha Harris?

  Another woman.

• 18:19Speaker 04

  I love that you're dealing with the sins of the father and having to kind of like be go through like your father's demon.

• 18:28Speaker 04

  To like get to the man.

• 18:29Speaker 05

  I call her Pentecostal Miss Havisham.

• 18:32Speaker 04

  That scene is so fun and so silly. I'm like, I don't think you're supposed to say all those words.

• 18:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's so much humor and farce.

• 18:40Speaker 04

  It's so funny, so silly. There's also like a lot of like pathos. I just think about, I don't know, like having Sterling K. Brown as this evil character. And the way that he's able to like weaponize those like Randall Pearson tears. Where he's like, he's doing like this is us crying. I'd be like, no, you a demon. No.

• 19:06Speaker 04

  With your pain right now.

• 19:08Aisha Harris?

  It's not even those tears, though. It's also like he has such a soft kind of a high pitched voice, like higher pitched than usual. And that's that seems like a very deliberate choice. He's giving sort of like creepy, quiet sociopath. And I think it mostly works for me. I did find it a little bit hard at times to fully latch on to that. But this isn't the first time he's been able to do that. Like he's played not to this extent as horrible, but not enough people saw Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul.

• 19:37Speaker 05

  That's true.

• 19:39Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, he's playing kind of again against what I think most people think of when they think of him, which is like, he's like a huckster. He's kind of not a demon, but he's definitely doing some shady stuff. I think he mostly works here. I would love to hear, because we were talking about this before we started taping, but I felt at least a little bit. There's so much buildup and so much good stuff that happens that like the last act felt a little like, not a letdown, but I, I, not fully satisfying in the way that I had hoped it would be. And we don't need to go into details about that, but I did feel as though some things were left unsaid, unfinished, in a way that I just could, I was like, oh,

• 20:22Aisha Harris?

  man, I kind of wish like, we had had some sort of payoff, but at the same time, there is something sort of poetic about a revenge narrative that doesn't necessarily satisfy in the way that you would hope it would. I mean, I, I don't know, I, I struggle, I, I want it both ways.

• 20:39Speaker 04

  It was a little unsatisfactory. I understand. I will say that the play actually is slightly different than the movie. It more works like a full circle moment and it, there is like some kind of payoff.

• 20:50Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 20:51Speaker 04

  Uh, so I, maybe I now understand that choice, but I, I don't know, I like the play's ending better.

• 20:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:59Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 20:59Speaker 05

  There's an ambivalence.

• 21:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:01Speaker 05

  With this one.

• 21:02Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 21:03Speaker 05

  But also a, a heartbreak that I think makes it that much more sort of like unsettling when you walk out, particularly because you've spent like, the majority of the movie just having these, like delicious kikis and really some like brutish violence. I mean,

• 21:20Aisha Harris?

  Yes.

• 21:20Speaker 05

  and no more brutish than like, prison violence, like literally the weapon of choice is a rock and a sock.

• 21:27Aisha Harris?

  Yes.

• 21:29Speaker 05

  It's challenge, it's, it's a little challenging.

• 21:31Aisha Harris?

  Look, we've talked a lot, this is such a rich text, we didn't even get into the idea of beauty and femininity that this movie is conjuring and trying to interact with, like.

• 21:41Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 21:41Aisha Harris?

  There's a lot, and we all loved it, we want everyone to go see it. That is what we will leave you all with, but.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  More black playwrights become filmmakers.

• 21:51Aisha Harris?

  Yes.

• 21:51Speaker 04

  That's my, also my wish.

• 21:52Speaker 05

  Your conversations would be just so much more enriched.

• 21:55Aisha Harris?

  Absolutely. Well, look, I, I always want to give grace to a first time filmmaker, and I think we're all banging the drum really loudly for everyone to go see this movie. So absolutely do go see this movie. That brings us to the end of our show, BA Parker, Soraya Nadia McDonald. Thanks so much for being here. This was so fun, so fun. And I hope people take your word and our word and go see this movie. Thank you.

• 22:22Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 22:23Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 22:24Aisha Harris?

  This episode was produced by Mike Katsev, Liz Metzger, and Hufsa Pathima, and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. And, look, I'm going to remind you again, signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio. You get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free if you do. So, go find out more at plus.npr.org/happyhour or visit the link in our show notes. Thanks so much for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris, and we'll see you all next time.

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  This week on Short Wave, truth and fraud. That is the beating heart of the movie You Can See Everything. But can you spot a liar in action? Lying doesn't come with emotional and behavioral stereotypes that we think. How to detect deception for real. On Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.