Andre Gaines Interview – The Dutchman (2025)
The film is expanded from Amiri Baraka’s one-act play Dutchman. What challenges
did you face in adapting the play for the big screen?
The biggest challenge was honoring the power of Baraka’s language while accepting that
the play, as written, couldn’t simply be “opened up” and filmed. It’s a one-act that lives
almost entirely in metaphor, confrontation, and rhythm. The task wasn’t to pad the play,
but to ask: What psychological and social forces lead to that subway encounter, and what
does it destroy afterward? Once we embraced expansion as interpretation rather than
replication, the film found its shape.
The other challenge was resisting reverence. Baraka’s play is sacred to a lot of people,
understandably so, but reverence can be paralyzing. I felt a responsibility to engage with
the work as a living text — something meant to provoke rather than be preserved in
amber. That meant taking risks, allowing characters to contradict themselves, and trusting
that honoring the spirit of the play mattered more than literal fidelity to its form.
What attracted you to the play? How did you first come across it, and at what point
did you start thinking about it as something to adapt into a movie?
I first encountered Dutchman ten years ago and was struck by how alive it still felt — not
as a period piece, but as a provocation. It’s confrontational, seductive, funny, terrifying.
What stayed with me wasn’t just the racial politics, but the intimacy of the violence —
how desire, shame, and identity collapse into each other. I didn’t think about it as a film
immediately. That came later, when I realized that the questions Baraka was asking
hadn’t gone away — they’d just changed form.
Over time, I began to see the subway encounter less as a singular event and more as a
psychological rupture — the kind of moment that feels inevitable in hindsight. That’s
when film became the right medium. Film could explore the quiet compromises, the
emotional evasions, and the internal conflicts that precede an explosion like that. Once I
saw that possibility, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Was there a breakthrough moment in the writing stage, a moment when everything
started to click into place?
Yes, the breakthrough was realizing that the story needed to begin before the subway and
end after it. Once we framed the encounter as the psychological center of a larger
emotional journey — particularly around marriage, masculinity, and self-deception — the
structure locked in. From there, every added scene had a purpose: it either deepened
Clay’s interior life or sharpened the cost of denial.
That shift also freed us tonally. The film no longer had to rush toward confrontation; it
could simmer. Scenes that might seem mundane — therapy sessions, domestic moments,
fleeting encounters — became loaded with tension. Once we understood that the film was
about accumulation rather than explosion, everything started to feel inevitable in the best
possible way.
What was the hardest thing to get right, overall?
Finding the right tone. The material lives at the intersection of realism, allegory, genre,
and nightmare. Lean too far in one direction and you lose the others. We worked
constantly to keep the film grounded emotionally while allowing moments to feel
heightened, uncanny, even seductive. That balance was fragile — but essential.
Another difficulty was restraint. The themes are explosive, and it would have been easy
to underline them. Instead, we focused on implication — what’s unsaid, what’s avoided,
what’s misdirected. Trusting silence, glances, and discomfort required discipline from
everyone involved, but it ultimately allowed the film to breathe.
What was the casting process like? How did André, Kate and Zazie all get involved?
Did you do chemistry reads? Was there much rehearsal involved? Was there any
improvisation on set?
Casting was about finding actors who could hold contradiction — intelligence and
vulnerability, attraction and danger. André Holland was central from early on; he brings
an internal complexity that makes Clay readable even when he’s withholding. Kate and
Zazie came in through conversations about risk and curiosity — they weren’t interested
in playing symbols. We did targeted rehearsals rather than traditional chemistry reads,
focusing on rhythm and subtext.
There wasn’t much improvisation in terms of dialogue, because language and pacing
were very precise, but there was freedom in behavior. Actors were encouraged to explore
discomfort — to let moments linger, to resist neat emotional beats. Rehearsals became
less about memorization and more about building trust, which was crucial given the
intimacy and volatility of the material.
It’s always great to see Stephen McKinley Henderson on screen. How did he get
involved? And did any of the actors have a prior relationship with the play?
Stephen did. He knew Amiri Baraka personally and was also in Dutchman on stage. He is
one of those actors who brings instant gravity. We wanted someone who could feel like
both a witness and a warning. He understood the material intuitively and immediately
grasped that his role wasn’t about exposition, but resonance. His presence subtly reframes
the film without ever calling attention to itself.
Some of the actors were familiar with the play; others weren’t. I asked everyone to read it
— not as a blueprint, but as a philosophical anchor. The goal wasn’t imitation, but
orientation. Baraka’s voice hangs over the film, even when the story moves far beyond
the original text.
What are the key differences between the film and the play, and what are the key
similarities?
The difference is scope. The film expands the world, the relationships, and the
consequences. It allows us to see how ideology intersects with intimacy — how public
narratives shape private behavior. Characters who are implied or symbolic in the play
become emotionally specific in the film.
The similarity is confrontation. At their core, both versions are about exposure — of
desire, fear, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive. The subway scene remains the
spiritual heart of the work, functioning as both climax and reckoning.
Do you have a favourite scene in the film?
There’s a quiet scene between Clay and his wife that I keep coming back to. No
spectacle, no provocation — just the cost of emotional absence becoming undeniable. It
contextualizes everything that comes after and reframes what we think we’ve already
seen.
I’m drawn to it because it refuses easy villainy. It’s messy, unresolved, and painfully
human. That scene captures the film’s core interest: not accusation, but examination.
Did you cut anything out that you hated to lose?
Yes. There were a few moments that were beautifully written but tipped the balance too
far toward explanation. Losing them hurt, especially because they worked on the page.
But film is ruthless in that way. What reads as clarity can feel like instruction onscreen.
Letting those scenes go reinforced my belief that ambiguity, when earned, is more
powerful than certainty.
What do you hope audiences take away from the film?
I hope people leave a little unsettled — not because they were shocked, but because they
were challenged. The film isn’t about providing answers; it’s about asking uncomfortable
questions around identity, desire, and responsibility.
More than anything, I hope the film encourages reflection rather than reaction. If viewers
find themselves questioning their own assumptions — about attraction, power, or silence
— then the film has done something meaningful.
The film initially seems to head in an erotic thriller direction. Was that a conscious
decision, and did you look at any particular films for inspiration?
Very conscious. Baraka’s play is deeply erotic — attraction is the weapon. Using the
grammar of an erotic thriller felt like an honest way to lure the audience into the story
before revealing the deeper danger.
Films like Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, and Don’t Look Now were touchstones — not
stylistically, but structurally. Those films understand that desire destabilizes perception,
and I wanted the audience to feel complicit in that destabilization.
Do you remember the film or moment that made you want to become a filmmaker?
Oddly enough, I didn’t pick up a camera until I was around 36 or 37. I was a chemistry
and journalism dual major at Northwestern University with plans to study medicine. But
then I got my first internship working for Kevin Misher at Universal and decided I
wanted to produce movies. The year my medical school deferment ran out is the year I
got into NYU Tisch School of the Arts and started my career as a writer, then producer
and now director. I remember realizing that films could argue — not just entertain.
Seeing work that trusted the audience to think and feel at the same time made something
click.
That realization stayed with me. I became less interested in spectacle for its own sake and
more interested in cinema as a space for confrontation, ambiguity, and emotional risk.
Which directors do you most admire?
Directors who balance intellect and emotion: Stanley Kubrick, Claire Denis, Spike Lee,
Milos Forman, and Michael Haneke. Steven Spielberg of course. They all trust
discomfort and resist easy catharsis.
What they share is courage — a willingness to alienate, to linger, to refuse resolution.
That’s something I aspire to in my own work.
Do you have a dream project you’ve always wanted to get off the ground?
Yes, it’s in the works right now but I can’t talk about it. Frankly, it’s the last film I ever
need to make. It won’t be, but I’m just saying. I’m drawn to mythology and places where
it collides with private reality — especially figures we think we understand. Projects that
interrogate legacy, power, and memory tend to haunt me.
Those stories feel urgent because they ask us to reconsider the narratives we inherit. I’m
interested in work that complicates admiration rather than reinforcing it.
What’s next for you?
I’m remaking a major Spanish sci-fi horror thriller that I’ll hopefully be able to announce
soon. It’s another project that challenges comfort — mine and the audience’s – but in a
much different want than The Dutchman. I want each project to feel necessary, not just
timely.
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