Transcript
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Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, y'all. With all the sequels, prequels, spinoffs, reboots, and remakes coming out of Hollywood these days, it can be pretty hard to feel excited about new entries into old franchises. You're not alone if you initially shrug in response to Prey. That's the new prequel in the Predator franchise, but according to the film's producer, 20th Century Studios, Prey had the biggest-ever debut of any movie or TV show on Hulu. That's when it premiered earlier this month.
While exact metrics on streaming services are tough to pin down, it's clear that the buzz behind this new film is very positive. That's a large part because the creators behind Prey chose to center their film on characters who are part of the Comanche Nation as they fight off the Predator and a group of French settlers circa 1719. The movie star is Amber Midthunder, who is Lakota, Dakota, and Nakoda as Naru, a young Comanche woman who wants to prove herself as a hunter.
Naru: This morning in the sky, I saw a sign, the thunderbird. I've been practicing. It's time. I'm ready for my kuhtaamia.
Taabe: You really think you're ready? You want to hunt something that's hunting you?
Melissa Harris-Perry: The movie's director and co-writer, Dan Trachtenberg, is white, but he brought in co-producer Jhane Myers, who is Blackfeet and Comanche, to oversee the film and make sure the production got its Native representation right. Myers spoke with Native Voice One about her role on Prey.
Jhane Myers: We as Native people and you know when you watch shows that have Native content, hardly anything is right, right? Nothing's correct. You have people speaking different things or wearing different outfits or whatever. Being a traditional artist as well and being able to create these items, it was really important for me to make sure that I just kind of put my little touch everywhere that I could all the way down to language.
Melissa Harris-Perry: If you follow my next guest on social media, then you already know he really enjoys Prey and appreciated the work that Jhane Myers has done on the film.
Joey Clift: My name's Joey Clift. I'm a comedian, staff writer, and consulting producer on Spirit Rangers on Netflix, and I'm an enrolled member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Joey told me how he felt going into his first viewing of Prey.
Joey Clift: I was invited to the premiere in Los Angeles and I rode with a few of my friends, who are other Native folks working in the entertainment industry. Definitely, the conversation in the car driving to the theater was like, "Oh, I hope it's good." We watched it and it was a blast. It was so fun. It was a great movie for about a million different reasons. I think that what we're right for it as a movie is that it's just a great, well-directed story and entry in the Predator franchise.
That's about the rite of passage of a Comanche woman, who chooses as her rite of passage to fight and kill the freaking Predator, but I think that there's a lot of other stuff that really went right too. This is a historic movie as far as Native representation goes. This is the first-ever major motion picture in the history of Hollywood starring a Native woman, the amazing actor, Amber Midthunder. This is also, I believe, the first major Hollywood motion picture to have an all-Native lead cast in it. Everybody was so great in this.
They also, behind the scenes, hired Jhane Myers, who is an amazing film producer and also a member of the Comanche Nation who Prey is centered on the Comanche Nation in the 1700s. They really empowered her to just make sure that all the Native representation was amazing and spot-on and just like a fun movie that I could enjoy as a Native person in the entertainment industry who loves movies to just be able to watch a cool Native sci-fi action, bad-ass horror movie.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Is this a model of how to do better at Hollywood?
Joey Clift: Yes, I think that the way that Prey and how its director, Dan Trachtenberg, engaged with the Comanche Nation and hired Jhane Myers, who I mentioned is a producer, who is Native, early on in the production to help shape the film is, for me, the bar that all future movies and TV shows need to hit. That's not a high bar. If you want to tell Native stories about Native characters, hire Native people in high-level decision-making positions behind the camera to help you tell that story. Prey did it and it was a freaking dope movie and it was even better for it. Really, like all other film and TV shows that want to tell Native stories can do this too. It's really not that hard. I believe in them.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, on the one hand, that's a bar that feels like, "Okay, come on. Get over this bar," but that's a little bit of a higher bar too. Viewers can watch a version of this entirely in Comanche on Hulu.
Joey Clift: Oh yes, that's another thing too. This is, for sure, the first major motion picture to be released with a dub in the Comanche language.
Melissa Harris-Perry: [chuckles] I'm so for it.
Joey Clift: It's so cool. Something that I wanted to flag just for listeners is that's not easy to do. The Native languages are oftentimes not written down. They're oftentimes kept alive orally. It's like a lot of oral tradition in oral storytelling. Producer Jhane Myers had to reach out to elders in her tribe, the Comanche Nation, to ask for how to pronounce certain words and what the translations for different words are in Comanche.
She really put the work in to make sure that the command she dubbed was as accurate and dope as it could be. It speaks to how excited the Native cast and crew were in the project that the entire cast returned to dub the film in Comanche. It's like it's Amber Midthunder, it's Dakota Beavers. It's all the main Native cast re-reading their lines in Comanche for this and it's just cool that I get to watch a movie like that on Hulu.
Melissa Harris-Perry: On the one hand, I watched it on Hulu. I also, at moment, thought, "Huh, kind of wish I was seeing this in the theater." Talk to me about that decision to get the direct-to-streaming release.
Joey Clift: I didn't personally work on the film, so I can't speak for, necessarily, the internal conversations that went into where the film was going to live. Just for me as a viewer of films, I'm so disappointed that this did not get a theatrical run. It's so amazing in theaters. The sound is clearly mixed for the theatrical experience. The cinematography is beautiful. Some of the shots in the movie could be paintings and really just, I think, that for me seeing this film at the premiere in a theater full of just Native folks working in the entertainment industry, what a crowd-pleaser of a movie.
There's a scene, I guess spoilers, where the Amber Midthunder character just obliterates a bunch of French trappers who are in the process of trying to colonize her land. What an applause break that got. When Amber Midthunder was going toe-to-toe with the Predator, there were cheers and so many whoops and exciting shouts in this theater. I wish that this had a theatrical run because this was so fun to see in theaters. I would see this 100 times with friends in a crowded environment.
Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, we have to take a quick break, get some Predator traps, save the world. Just give us a minute, all right? More with comedian Joey Clift in a moment. This is The Takeaway.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: Back with you on The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. I've been talking with comedian and writer, Joey Clift, about Prey. It's the latest entry in the Predator franchise and it's been widely lauded for its on-and-offscreen Native representation. To say that Hollywood has long been guilty of mistreating and misrepresenting Native people is an understatement. As one reminder of that history of wrongdoing this week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced they will be officially apologizing to activist and actor Sacheen Littlefeather for the mistreatment she endured nearly 50 years ago when accepting an Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando.
Sacheen Littlefeather: I'm representing Marlon Brando this evening and he has asked me to tell you in a very long speech, which I cannot share with you presently because of time, but I will be glad to share with the press afterwards that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award. The reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry, excuse me-
[applause]
Sacheen Littlefeather: -and on television and movie reruns and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I spoke with Joey Clift about the long-overdue apology. I know that activist and actor Sacheen Llittlefeather herself has said that she was surprised to discover this, but it's quite something coming in the context of Prey being something you could stream and watch at your house and the Academy announcing that they're going to formally apologize to her. How significant does that feel to you?
Joey Clift: For me, the Academy offering a formal apology to Sacheen Littlefeather for how they treated her after her speech at the 45th Academy Awards nearly 50 years ago, it's really difficult for me to put into words how just truly meaningful that is. It's probably not a shock to listeners that Native people have been treated like garbage in the entertainment industry for as long as Hollywood has been a thing.
I often think about Native Hollywood now. There's a few hundred of us. We're not a huge community, but we're like a small village. We're all friends and supporting each other. I think that's really helped us deal with a lot of the constant racial microaggressions we run into as Native people. I can't imagine the bravery that it took for Sacheen to give that speech at the state of the Native entertainment industry in the '70s literally feet from John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, who were famous for killing Native people in their movies.
It's just like the bravery that it took for her to give that speech. It's just immeasurable and she was treated so poorly by the entertainment industry after that. She was blacklisted. It was really tough for her to find any acting opportunities. Literally, after she gave a speech, John Wayne had to be held back from physically assaulting her, which is horrible. Seeing her finally get the credit for that bravery and seeing her finally get the acknowledgment, the way that she was treated afterwards isn't okay, it's just incredible.
I'm like a fairly new person in Hollywood. I've only been in the industry for about 12 years or so. It's just, I think, to me, so cool to see, not just Hollywood celebrating the current successes of Native stories, films like Prey being the number one film/project in the history of Hulu, shows like Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls just tearing it up and doing a really great job. There are a lot of really great Native projects going on right now. We're really seeing a movement in Native storytelling.
To see an old Hollywood institution, not just celebrate the current stuff but rectify the wrongs of the past through this apology, I don't know, it feels like real healing. Very fortunately, I'm one of the lucky people to get a ticket to this event. I'm so excited to see not just the Academy issue their formal apology to her, but also it speaks to the growth that we've seen in Native storytelling, that her receiving this apology is going to be followed by her doing a Q&A with Bird Runningwater, who's a member of the Academy, who's done a lot of work in boosting up Native voices through his work with the Sundance Indigenous labs. To me, it really just feels like it's just a beautiful time to be Native.
[laughter]
Joey Clift: Like I mentioned, I've been working in the entertainment industry for about 12 years or so. I really feel like the gains that we've got are directly on the backs of our elders doing this work in less kind times to Native people. It's like I have just such appreciation for Sacheen for everything that she's done for Native activism. It's just beautiful to see her get her due.
Melissa Harris-Perry: What's next? What are you excited about in the next chapter? If this is a kind of important moment, one that is doing at least some reparative work and a lot of exciting work in this moment, what's exciting next?
Joey Clift: I think that, for me, a lot of people describe what we're going through in the historic amount of Native storytelling that we're seeing in the mainstream. Reservation Dogs with Rutherford Falls came out last year and they were the first TV shows in the history of the United States to be created by Native people for major networks and they're big, successful hits.
Now, we're seeing more shows and films, things like Prey. Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls, both getting season two. I don't want to define this as a moment because Native people have been telling stories for as long as time has been a thing. My hope is that seeing all of this stuff that we're seeing now that people reframe it as a movement, and it's a movement that's just getting started. For me, what I'm really excited about with what's next is for the movement to continue and to gain speed.
I'm working on a show called Spirit Rangers on Netflix that comes out in a few months. It's the first kid show in the history of US animation created by a Native person, the genius Chumash TV writer Karissa Valencia with an all-Native writers' room, Native characters played by Native actors. There are probably a dozen other amazing Native projects that are announced that are going to be coming out in the next few months to a year or two.
There are probably dozens more in development that haven't been announced yet. I really just feel so lucky to be alive in this time where Native people are finally getting the opportunity to tell our stories in mainstream spaces. People are listening and people are watching them. We're proving that Native stories are valid and dope and should have been given a spotlight a long time ago.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Joey Clift is comedian, writer, and member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe. Joey, thanks so much.
Joey Clift: Thanks for having me. This is fun.
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