Jordan Peele hasn't revealed what his third feature directorial effort will be yet, but while we wait to find out that information, and wait to hear more about the future of his Twilight Zone revival and the CANDYMAN reboot / "spiritual sequel" he has produced and co-written, he is still earning accolades for the work he did on his first two movies, GET OUT and US.
Every year the Hammer Museum picks two different artists to honor at their Gala in the Garden fundraiser. Peele was one of the artists honored this year, and had some interesting things to say during his speech at the show.
After being greeted with a standing ovation from the nearly 500 guests in attendance, Peele started off with a joke about certain arguments that have been going around over what qualifies as "cinema", and the merits of his own work.
I feel particularly humbled to receive such an honor so early in my film career. I know this is an institution that’s honored artists whose incredible work elevates the discourse of our time. Artists whose work is brilliant, beautiful, eternal, nuanced. I made a movie about brain transplantations. A family that performs brain transplantations in their basement. I followed that up with a little flick about some clones that live underground and eat rabbits so, uh, you can see how this is an unexpected turn of events to be here. Sometimes the Hammer don’t give a f*ck and that’s cool. I love that and I’ll take it. I can buy the premise for a second that this is a deserved thing, after all I spent so many hours growing up watching great cinema and absorbing arthouse classics of the 20th century like GHOSTBUSTERS 2, GREMLINS 2, and C.H.U.D. 2, all the twos. That’s my pathway of this great thing that Martin Scorsese calls cinema."
Peele then began to dig into his own creative process, saying that his passion is to entertain and get reactions from the audience, whether the reaction is a laugh or a scream. He said that finding ways to get these reactions involves a search for truth and an exploration, through his horror stories, of "the human demon."
This is the idea that no matter what there is, whatever you do, there is an evil embedded into our DNA. It crystallizes when we get together. It’s in our tribalism, our nationalism, and our capitalism, our mob mentality, our obsession with categorization. We’re so good at masking our own evil from ourselves and so my obsession evolved to pulling down this mask. I figured why not try to reveal the truth in my language. Do it as entertaining as I could. I found early on that this would require a certain amount of vulnerability. if I was going to tap into fears that would resonate with others, I would need to explore and understand my own fears and my own faults."
Peele said that making something that connects with an audience is special to him because,
Where there is that fundamental sameness that brings us all together, makes us scream in a theater, there’s a hope that as long as we continue to strive for truth, we can combat our barbarism. It is a fight that we can never stop."
Peele recently signed a deal to write and direct two more movies for Universal, the home studio of GET OUT and US, so he'll be having a chance to connect with the audience again very soon.
Meanwhile, the new CANDYMAN is scheduled to reach theatres on June 12, 2020.
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