Kevin Willmott’s objective was to reduce the distance between home and his destination, not only in terms of mileage.
“That was the thing that I was dealing with as a kid, when I wanted to make movies early on, and I’m trying to figure out, how am I going to get from Junction City to Hollywood?” he said.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker has reached emeritus status at the University of Kansas after teaching students in the Film and Media Studies department since 2000. While an active professor, he was building a career that took him around the world.
“It’s not just the physical distance,” Willmott said. “It’s the distance of, you know, how do you make your dream come true that’s in your head to this whole industry that you have no connection to? And that’s kind of what I wanted to do when coming home with that, and going to class with it, and keeping it fresh with them, and letting students know — you can do this from Lawrence, Kansas.”
Willmott, 65, embodies the “living artifact” and “living history” his character in his 2013 film, “Destination Planet Negro,” references.
That movie along with three of his others will be screened as part of the Kevin Willmott Film Festival, set for Tuesday through Friday, Feb. 18-21 at Liberty Hall. Tickets are on sale through Liberty Hall’s website.
We sat down with Willmott via Zoom to tap into his life and career — from being kicked out of his first high school, to winning a 2019 Academy Award without an agent, to the upcoming festival in his honor.
Power in satire
Filmmaking for Willmott is a response, he said.
Using humor to expose reality has been a crucial component for him, and his independent films have allowed him to explore racism in America, unfettered.
“It’s exposing the absurdity of it,” Willmott said. “And then that makes us smile, it makes us laugh, it makes us go, ‘I’ve seen that, I’ve experienced that, I know that, I’m so so sick of that, I’m so angry about that’ — all the reactions that you have. And that’s what makes it connect with the audience.”
The creation of Willmott’s 2004 film, “C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America,” was sown from his anger about the confederate flag being flown over the South Carolina State House for more than 40 years.
The flag was taken down in 2015, but Willmott said he’s not fooled by performative gestures.
He said now to be living through the era of Trump and Project 2025, people desperately need channels to feel they have some control. Satire is one.
“It’s a way of owning it,” he said. “And when you own something, you can laugh at it.”
Full circle moment
Willmott acknowledges being expelled from school in 1975 following local race riots proved to be a defining event — the best thing that could’ve happened for his future, he said.
Though Willmott wasn’t involved in the riots, he took leadership in a counter movement. The Junction City High School principal at the time was one of the most racist people he’s ever met, he said. Chaos had ensued at the school the day the principal threw him out.
“It was a real riot,” Willmott said. “I mean, there were people that got attacked and people beating the hell out of each other, and it was Black against white. And of course, it really wasn’t Black against white; it was really students and administration.”
In his youth, he knew all too well the implications of his identity as a Black boy in America. He wasn’t shy to speak out through civil rights activism.
Willmott said he was lucky to be admitted to St. Xavier Catholic High School afterward, where he was taught by the Sisters of St. Joseph. One semester in his English class, he picked up Gordon Parks’ book, “A Choice of Weapons.”
“(Parks) took his anger, his frustration, all this stuff, and he placed it within that camera, and that camera became a weapon to fight back,” Willmott said. “That was a huge lesson for me, and that’s really what I’ve done my whole career.”
Fast forward 30 years, Willmott found himself face-to-face in Lawrence with his former Junction City High School principal’s son. In a moment when he could’ve lashed out, Willmott reflected.
“I said to myself, you know, success is the best revenge,” he said. “It was a great moment because it allowed me to see how I’d come full circle.”
In 2019, Willmott achieved a paramount success as a filmmaker when he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work alongside director Spike Lee on the film “BlacKkKlansman.”
At the time he was nominated, he had felt he could do more independently, so he didn’t have a Hollywood agent representing him. That’s an anomaly heading to the biggest stage for TV and film, he said.
Willmott’s theory
To both stay within a low production budget and show life for people of color in rural Midwest towns, Willmott prioritized setting many of his films in Kansas. He aimed to show racism was never unique to the South, he said.
Willmott theorizes about the indoctrination by “reunion films.” He said in many of the western films about Lawrence made in the ‘40s and ‘50s, William Quantrill was the good guy and John Brown was the bad guy.
His theory is that the north and south came together after the Civil War — “but at the expense of the memory of slavery” and by unifying under white supremacy. Movies like “Gone With the Wind,” he said, deliberately ignore the atrocities of history. Willmott said he aims to push back through truth-telling.
“The other big lesson I learned from ‘C.S.A.’ was that we kind of go back and forth in this country between living in the USA and the CSA,” Willmott said. “The Civil War really never ended. We’ve kind of been living in a cold Civil War. Now we’re living in a warm Civil War.”
Rapid-fire Q&A with Willmott
Q: Who were some of the coolest people you worked with on a film?
A: I’ve worked with Jamie Lee Curtis. I really like her a lot. I wrote a script for her, and I’m working with her on another project right now. And of course, Wes Studi is my guy. We’re really great friends. And Mykelti Williamson, you know, who was (Forest Gump’s) Bubba.
Q: What was your favorite place you traveled to, and what were you doing there?
A: I got to go to Spain with “C.S.A.” And really, Spain, if America falls, that’s probably where I’m gonna go. But the most beautiful place I’ve ever been was the Canary Islands. That place was like, wow, and again, C.S.A. took me there also.
Q: What was your favorite spot in your hometown of Junction City, Kansas?
A: The Kaw Theatre.
If our local journalism matters to you, please help us keep doing this work.
Don’t miss a beat … Click here to sign up for our email newsletters
Click here to learn more about our newsletters first
Maya Hodison (she/her), equity reporter, can be reached at mhodison@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
Latest Lawrence news:
Cuyler Dunn/Lawrence Times
Nathan Kramer / Lawrence Times
