A Tomb With a View

THE Serpent and the Rainbow comes out of a collaboration between two Harvard graduates, executive producer, Rob Cohen '71 and author of the book, Wade Davis '75. In an interview with The Crimson, Cohen and Davis shed some insight on the making of the film.

Crimson: How did the project come about?

Cohen: It was an emotional thing. I had read the book and I had also studied anthropology at Harvard. I read it and said to myself, "God, this is the road not taken. If I had been an anthropologist maybe I'd have had some of these great experiences like this guy, Davis." So we optioned the book and talked with Wade.

Crimson: Was there any resentment from people who were involved or who are still involved in voodoo while you were filming in Haiti?

Cohen: We had active voodoo priest advisors all through the making of the picture both in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And I would say that if they did not like what we were doing, we would not have been able to complete the movie.

Davis: I think that one of the wonderful things about this picture is that recently I have objected to certain pictures that have dealt with the issue of voodoo, [notably] Angel Heart, which I felt was racist, both subliminally and explicitly. This was a film where every black person was shown to be barefoot, illiterate, with the exception of Lisa Bonet, who was shown to be a Valley Girl. But on the most dangerous level, a really nefarious suggestion was made that voodoo was somehow satanic.

Crimson: It's obvious that you feel very strongly about the misrepresentation of voodoo in the media.

Davis: The most important thing is that voodoo is not an aberrant cult. It's only the American culture that has portrayed it in this way. When the U.S. Marine Corps occupied Haiti, everyone above the rank of sergeant got a book contract, and those books got names like Cannibal Cousins, Voodoo Fire in Haiti, Puritan In Voodoo Land. And they were full of zombies crawling out of the grave attacking people, and voodoo dolls and pins that don't even exist. This led to Hollywood movies like I Walked with A Zombie and Zombies on Broadway. I think what [Serpent] attempts to do is give a positive portrayal of a culture at the thrust of change. The whole point of The Serpent and the Rainbow is to take a phenomenon which has been used in an explicitly racist way to denigrate an entire people and turn it on its head and hopefully show something good.

Crimson: But do you think the public is going to see the movie in this sort of idealistic view? Do you think the public is going to come away with this sort of cultural education?

Davis: I think you have to be realistic about what a movie is. On one level it is entertainment and on another level it's a statement. This film, however, more than any other, is going to expose the stereotypes. I mean, Bill Pullman doesn't become a zombie, he's a poison victim, and it's completely consistent with my own hypothesis about how this kind of thing could work.

Crimson: How is Universal planning to market this film? It's obviously not just a horror film, according to what you are saying.

Cohen: Obviously, Universal, like every movie studio, wants everything. We know that the target audience is obviously from the Wes Craven crowd. That is the most certain way we're going to pull an audience in. Everyone that loved Nightmare on Elm Street 1, 2, and 3 will say, "OK, I want a really good scary movie. I want my girlfriend to grab my arm," and the whole thing. We are hoping that through the reviews and by talking with journalists and us going on the road, we can begin communicate that there are other levels to this movie that can also be enjoyed, and hope we get a broader, or what we call a cross-over audience.