Director Jeff Stilson talks about ‘Good Hair’

admin | July 16, 2010 | Comments (1)

An Emmy winning writer on The Chris Rock Show and The Osbournes, Jeff Stilson directs the documentary Good Hair in which his friend, Rock, explores the multi-billion dollar African-American hair industry.

Good Hair tells a remarkable story, what was your reaction when Chris came to you with the idea?

‘Well when he first brought this idea to me we went to the Bronner Bros. Hair Show down in Atlanta, and that blew me away. I’m a white guy with really boring hair, and I had no idea that world existed. There were hundreds of thousands of people at this convention, the floor is packed for three days. At that point it became clear to me that there was more to this story than I had originally thought.’

So you delved into the history too?

‘That’s what I was most impressed by, when we talked to the Reverend Al Sharpton he told us that once the churches started being bombed in the south during the Civil Rights era a lot of the meetings started to take place in barber’s shops and beauty parlours because white people hadn’t really figured out a way to get their hands on the black hair money yet. It didn’t make it into the movie, but we interviewed Martin Luther King’s barber and that really affected me because this guy was an independent black business owner. His kid integrated a school in Birmingham, and he told me stories about that which just broke my heart because I’m a parent too. So it works on so many levels, with the contemporary side too, so it’s multi-faceted.’

Did the fact that it was Chris Rock fronting the film open any doors and get people to talk, because he is such a huge star and personally very charming too?

‘You’re absolutely right, he has a lot of charm but people also know that they’re not going to get softball questions from him. They know they’re going to get some tough questions and they’re up for that. That was another thing that was good for us, we knew weren’t going to get defensive people, we didn’t have to trick them or anything. They knew it was Chris Rock and they knew what they were in for. If they agreed to be in it they were game for it.’

Did you all have to curb your comedic instincts to tell a factual story?

‘We did a lot of factual pieces on the tv show for five years and this was a longer form of that. We’d usually start at some political place and then explore it and be funny along the way. Not to force a point of view down people’s throats, just to show this world and let people judge it for themselves. Of course Chris has his own point of view, but it’s not jammed down your throat. When he does his stand-up he’s very aggressive, he prowls the stage and he’s throwing all the punches. But when he does these documentaries he listens and then he counter punches. Most comics just go full bore, they want to get their joke in and they don’t give a damn what anyone else says, but Chris is not like that. He counter punches.’

Has this documentary given you a taste for more?

‘Documentaries don’t open a lot of doors. They’re really fun to do, and they’re educational. You actually feel that you’ve grown as a human, whereas most other showbusiness projects make you feel as if you’ve shrunk. But after this one I actually go ‘my God, I’m a junkie now, I’m a black hair junkie,’, if I see a black woman walking down the street now I’m walking behind her looking at her trying to figure out if it’s a weave or is she using relaxer.’

So what’s your hair like?

‘My hair is really fine and boring. We would go into these salons and they’d talk about bad hair and good hair, and they would look at my hair and say ‘you don’t have bad hair, you have the worst hair, because your hair doesn’t hold curl,’. I was at the bottom of the ladder because it’s just bland. One of our daughters has hair like mine and our other daughter has curly hair like my wife so I don’t know how it’s going to play out when they’re older. They’re pretty young right now.’

In the film you explore the use of Indian hair for weaves which is curious isn’t it, the fact that some of the poorest people in the world are donating to this billion dollar industry?

‘That’s another irony. It’s this humble act, you’re basically humbling yourself before your God saying I’m giving you this in thanks for what you’ve done for me and then your hair is used purely for vanity’s sake. We spoke to people at Tirupathi about that and they said they didn’t care. Most of them didn’t know that it was being auctioned off and processed and sold overseas for huge amounts of money, but they said they didn’t care because this was between them and their God. They didn’t care what happened to it after they cut it off. Coming from the west, that’s still so hard for me to grasp.’

How much was that detour to India pre-planned? And to what extent did you respond to events by following up stories like that?

‘There was a lot of that, you try to cover all aspects – the fashion side of it, the economic side of it, the religious side of it. In the beginning we didn’t know anything about that. All we heard about it on the floor at Bronner Bros. was Remy Hair from India, that was the hair that everybody wanted and that’s where most of the hair came from. It comes from all over, there’s Russian hair, there’s Malaysian hair, there’s Chinese hair but it seems that the Remy hair – that just comes from an individual head – from India was the hair that everybody wanted so we thought we’d go there. And then we started to research about how many people tonsured their hair every day, and it’s in the thousands. Just seeing how big this business was, well we just had to go there. And it was fantastic. And let me say they’re right, I’ve never seen better hair than that in my life, it is amazing, beautiful hair.’

What has been the most gratifying response to the film?

‘I don’t know, I can’t really take any credit for it, it was all Chris’s idea. What’s gratifying is that people see him in a different light now. People who watched our show knew he could do this kind of thing. He’s really smart and thoughtful. I can take 1% credit for it, at most and I even feel guilty saying that. I love that he’s patient enough to sit and listen and open his mind. I think that’s beautiful. And I love that some people will still ask what Chris feels about this subject. It’s a nice blend. If people appreciated that and saw him doing this and would like to see him do it again I’d find that gratifying.’

Rated 12A (see IFCO website for details)

Good Hair was released on 16th July 2010

Good Hair – Official Website