“Crown Heights” Director Matt Ruskin on How to Tell an Important True Story on a Limited Budget

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Before this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the name Matt Ruskin might not have meant much to anyone, even though he had been producing and directing films for 15 years, mostly in the documentary space. However, Ruskin’s fourth feature, Crown Heights, turned a lot of heads at Sundance, not only because it won this year’s coveted audience award, but also because its subject matter is incredibly timely and relevant.

CROWN HEIGHTS tells the true story of Colin Warner, a young man of West Indian descent living in Brooklyn, who is suddenly picked up by the police when an eyewitness ties Colin to a local murder. Played by Lakeith Stanfield from Atlanta and Get Out, Colin maintains his innocence, but despite having no actual evidence, he still winds up convicted and put into jail. Colin’s best friend Carl (Nnamdi Asomugha) is convinced Colin didn’t do it, and over the next 20 years, he does everything he can to get Colin’s conviction overturned.

While Ruskin has experience as a producer on several narrative features including the Bryan Cranston thriller The Infiltrator and the horror movie The Boy, it’s his background as a documentary filmmaker that helps him tell Colin’s story in a dramatic and comprehensive way. Aided by Stanfield’s emotional performance, Ruskin really makes you feel what Colin must have gone through behind bars, and you leave with a greater understanding of what institutionalization can do to a man.

Ruskin spoke with the Tracking Board by phone for the following interview about Crown Heights, which is in theaters now. Enjoy…

I read that you found out about Colin, either when he was on This American Life or were they just talking about his case on the show?

No, I just heard the story on This American Life a little over five years ago. And I was just really blown away by Colin and Carl, for Colin to survive 20-plus years in prison, and to come out with his humanity and his dignity, I thought was really extraordinary. And for his friend Carl King, to decide — really when everybody else gave up — that he just couldn’t accept living in a world where an innocent man could be left to die in prison, and to devote multiple decades for fighting for his friend’s freedom, and just to advocate for him, really made an impression on me. I thought they were extraordinary people and they were sort of my way into telling this relevant story.

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Was Colin still in prison at the time when you first heard of him or had he already been released?

No, he had been released in 2001. I first heard the story almost 10 years later.

How do you go about approaching Colin to get him involved? Had somebody already bought his life rights, and there were producers already working on something?

Yeah, it’s actually funny. I tracked down the reporter from This American Life, who is actually a reporter for 60 minutes. She did the piece for This American Life. I tracked her down, told her I was really interested in making a film. She introduced me to Colin and Carl, and I met with them and it turned out, I actually heard a rebroadcast of the episode, it had originally aired five years earlier.

In 2005, when it first came out, a big studio in Hollywood optioned the story, but they never scripted it, and then, another studio picked it up apparently, and they never scripted it. By the time I came around, those options had lapsed, and I think the guys were really looking for another way. I represented the other end of the spectrum, being at the time, an independent filmmaker living in Brooklyn.

This is an amazing story to take on as an independent film, because there are so many locations and characters, and the story takes place over so much time. Did you have a pretty good idea of how to tell Colin’s story without a studio budget?

No, I knew it would be a challenge, but the world I was living in was making movies in much smaller budget range than a studio film, so I knew there was a way to do it. It just required a lot of just being smart about trying to extract as much value from a production budget as we could.

I’ve seen your documentary “The Hip Hop Project” but was it a fairly smooth transition to doing narrative features?

You know, they are two completely different things. One thing is like riding a bike, and the other one is swimming. I discovered in my own personal experience, that there aren’t a lot of transferable skills. I had decided that I wanted to make narrative films after making documentaries for more than 10 years, and I had written a script that required a bit of a budget right when the financial crisis hit, and the bottom fell out in the independent film industry. The model for films was changing, and nobody was going to take a chance on me and finance that film. So I got tired of waiting, and I sort of picked a date on the calendar with a friend, and said, “Let’s just make a movie and make it.” So we shot a film for $50,000, which a friend of mine ended up being a film producer, and I realized, coming out of that process, that there’s no such thing as a quick and easy little movie. So I left that process, really wanting to care about whatever material I developed next, and it was right around that time, that I heard Colin and Carl’s story on the radio.

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Colin’s story could have been told as a documentary as well, so do you approach your research similar to how you might if you were doing a doc?

Yeah, there’s no question. I did a ton of research in the initial phase of developing the script, which really was a bit like working on a documentary. I recorded interviews with all the key players, the lawyers. I went through court transcripts and found all the source material I could. Researching for the script did indeed feel like the process of digging into a documentary, which I love. That was a very enjoyable part of the process for me, and it formed the development of the script and the tenor of the film moving forward.

What kind of questions did you have for Colin? Was he kind of the first step of that research or was he kind of the middle or ongoing though the whole thing?

It began with him and Carl, so the first interviews I did were with Carl King and Colin Warner, I spend hours with both of them. Carl was in Georgia, I went down and over several days recorded several hours of interviews in just our first session. Then I’d call them up all the time, whenever a question came up about one aspect of their story. They were always available. We would just talk on the phone for hours. I made numerous trips to go see Colin in Georgia, I spent a ton of time with Carl in Brooklyn, and then Carl also tracked down some people for me like one of the witnesses, introduced me to the trial lawyer, and the lawyer that helped with the final. And everyone was really open and willing to support the film. I think Colin’s story, his case, none of these people ever forgot. They really took pride in helping me make this film.

You said Colin was in Georgia, so did he get sick of New York completely and decided he wasn’t going to stay here?

Yeah, I think after he was released, he lived in New York for a few years, he and his wife Vanessa, and I think they just decided they wanted to get out of the city. He lives just outside of Atlanta in this really beautiful town, and I think they have a very much more peaceful existence, much more connected to nature.

How did you go about finding Lakeith Stanfield to play Colin? I feel you must have got him before he was in a lot of these big projects he’s done lately like Atlanta and Get Out.

I saw him in a film called Short Term 12, and I thought he had this very extraordinary ability to make himself vulnerable, and I thought there was a very honest quality about him and his performance in that film. I met with him, and he was really passionate about Colin’s story, and he was really open and thoughtful. I thought we had a real basis for collaborating. He’s an enormously talented guy, has a lot of raw talent and kind of threw himself into the role.

You also found someone to play Carl who was probably a little lesser known. Did you have a lot of auditions to find the rest of the cast?

It’s funny. Nnamdi got ahold of the script and actually reached out to me. I wasn’t aware of him as an actor, but he was really persistent, and we eventually just scheduled a time to read. He showed up so prepared — he prepared an accent, he asked incredibly thoughtful questions, and he was just really, really good. He responded to direction really well. I brought a camera, and I filmed the scenes that we read and workshopped. I left that session being convinced that he was the guy for the role. I cut the scene, showed a couple people. They all agreed, and he was one of the best collaborators I’ve ever had. So very talented, unbelievably humble and a hard-working guy.

When you have a true story like this where the people involved are still alive, how much do you want them to be involved? As a filmmaker, you want to have a vision of how you’re going to tell their story, but you also want to keep it true to what really happened.

In terms of researching and developing the material, there’s no such thing as too much involvement. In terms of just a discovery process, obviously you want to make the best film possible, but you take whatever liberties you need to take. There were very few liberties to take in this film, but the end results, the end game is to make a really honest film. Then while we were shooting, I wanted them to have a very light presence. I didn’t want the actors to feel like they were being watched, while they were trying to depict somebody. I just wanted there to be some separation there. So they were welcome on set to visit, but we kept a bit of a space between actors doing the scene and these guys, who are standing there watching them.

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I know you have a background producing other people’s movies as well. Are you able to of separate those heads when you’re producing other directors or working as a director yourself and not have to be worrying about the budget? Obviously, that’s a big part of making a movie like this.

Yeah, this was a unique project for me, and that I was just sort of a driving force from day one, so I never was able to completely take off my producer’s hat. There’s never enough time or money for any film, it seems like. So it’s always a bit of a puzzle and a challenge, and I love the challenge of it. In the limited times I’ve produced for other people, I’ve really enjoyed the challenge of trying to schedule films, and facilitate a production in a way that allows the director the most breathing room to do their best work. I just love physical production. I’m really in my element, in that setting. I surrounded myself with really talented producers, with a great DP and a wonderful AD department for Crown Heights but I always had two hats on at all times. I was thinking both creatively about the film, and also about the enormous challenges of shooting a film with so much scope on a small budget. There’s never enough time.

You probably have some good insight on Colin’s case. I know that “The Innocence Project” was created to use DNA to get people wrongly imprisoned exonerated. Was there anything like this out there when Colin was arrested? Did the police actually have any DNA or other evidence to convict him?

So this is interesting. If you recall the case, there was no physical evidence. He was convicted solely on the false testimony of an alleged eyewitness, 14 year-old kid claimed he saw what happened. He was railroaded by police, and that’s what the basis of these convictions, so the Innocence Project would not have been able to take this case, but one thing we’re really excited about, is the Innocence Project has just expanded their mandate to include cases with no physical evidence, so of course, coerced confessions or false identification, which is one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions.

Right, that happened a lot and was similar to the case of the Central Park Five. When I saw your movie a few weeks ago, there was a lot of conversation surrounding Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit and whether she was the right filmmaker to tell that story. Did that ever cross your mind, that you’re a white guy telling the story of this black man who was unfairly jailed?

No, for me, I would have told this story no matter what background these guys were. What hooked me was how extraordinary these two people were. Their story of friendship and hope, and how resilient their principles were. That for me transcends everything. The fact they are two young black guys of West Indian accent, those are obviously important details, but they’re all secondary. I didn’t set out to make a movie about the criminal justice system, I didn’t set out to make a movie about people from a certain background. It just happens to be the background. Look you can’t talk about Colin Warner’s story and not talk about race or the criminal justice system, but for me as a filmmaker, I want to tell human stories that make people think about what it means to be really extraordinary in difficult circumstances.

I think this movie is first and foremost about the people at the heart of this story, and the issue is secondary. To me, It has always been a very powerful aspect of movies that I’ve loved over the years is that they’ve given me the opportunity to connect with people that have had experiences that I haven’t. I’m not an expert in other people’s cultures, I’m not an expert in mass incarceration, but I became an expert in Colin and Carl’s story. It really moved me, and I feel very lucky to be able to share their story with more people.

I remember seeing your doc, The Hip Hop Project, and I never really thought about whether the filmmaker was black or white, and it wasn’t something I knew when I watched Crown Heights either.

Look, Steve McQueen told the Bobby Sands story (in Hunger), and my guess is that he told that story because he thought it was really compelling. Really, that was the same basis for me, something that I found was worth the effort. And distributed something that was also really moving and make a really compelling film. It’s a story worth telling.

Have you thought about what you’re doing next? Are you going to continue writing stuff or are you looking for other scripts?

Yeah, I have some things I’m interested in writing, but I just got involved with a film called Carried by Six, by this incredibly talented writer named LaToya Morgan. It’s just this beautifully written thriller, on the border, about this female cop who becomes sort of the last line of defense against the warring drug cartels in a small Texas town. It has these really remarkable characters, and it’s a really gripping thriller.

Are you going through the studio system with that, or going to still do it independently?

Right now, I’m not sure what direction it’s going to go.

Crown Heights is now playing in New York and L.A. and will expand to other cities soon.

 Edward Douglas | East Coast Editor