Channing Godfrey Peoples is an auteur filmmaker who has become a darling of the critics. And all she wants to do is film in Fort Worth and tell its story.
It’s not a stretch to presume that Channing Godfrey Peoples’ debut feature, “Miss Juneteenth,” is the most critically acclaimed movie ever filmed in, makes reference to, or was produced by people who live in Fort Worth. With a 99% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the go-to ratings aggregate that has a finger on the general pulse of the critics, “Miss Juneteenth” is also one of the best-reviewed films of 2020.
“The movie tackles multitudinous themes in its roughly 100 minutes,” Lovia Gyarkye wrote in a review for The New York Times, “from the significance of Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, to the legacy of racism in predatory bank lending practices. But what’s most impressive is the amount of space Peoples’ Black female characters inhabit in the narrative.”
So, perhaps we should amend our previous statement: “Miss Juneteenth” is one of the most critically acclaimed films, period.
“That’s very kind of you,” Peoples, who wrote and directed the film, says in response to my assertion. “You don’t think about it [the reviews]. I didn’t, at least; I guess some people do. When we were about to premiere [the film], I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, people are about to see this movie.’ I took it for granted that it was going out into the world. It wasn’t mine anymore. It was going out there for people to experience in whatever way.”
The film — which was shot entirely in Fort Worth and produced by Sailor Bear’s James Johnston, also a Fort Worthian — is about a young single mother and former beauty pageant queen, Turquoise, who registers her unenthusiastic daughter, Kai, for the annual Miss Juneteenth competition. Turquoise, once crowned Miss Juneteenth herself, couldn’t take full advantage of the competition’s scholarship money due to the birth of Kai and now works two jobs — at a bar and a mortuary — to make ends meet.
While her hopes for Kai, and the pressures she places on her daughter, are no doubt fueled by her nostalgia for her own hopes and dreams, the film brilliantly doesn’t suggest regret. “I ain’t sorry for putting food on the table,” Turquoise tells Kai after her daughter approaches her after discovering that Turquoise was once a stripper. Turquoise is a good mom. In fact, she’s a great mom, who tackles crummy circumstances with a combination of grace and determination. “I wanted to tell a story about a Black woman with a dream deferred, who just knows that she wants something for herself,” Peoples says. “I didn’t learn until later that felt more radical — getting to see a Black woman in that way.”
Shot in a fly-on-the-wall style that allows people on screen to, I don’t know, just be, the film also employs natural dialogue and relatable circumstances that make it an easy task to invest oneself in the characters.
And one of the most important characters in the film is Fort Worth itself.
The historical Southside’s row of near-dilapidated, porch-laden houses; brief views of the downtown skyline; the now-endangered Grand Theater; and the typical characters whom we frequently encounter all make significant appearances. The same way Chicago often plays a role in 80s-era John Hughes flicks — or New York for the contentious Woody Allen — “Miss Juneteenth” films Fort Worth with affection and treats the city as a living, breathing thing. The events in the film don’t just happen in Fort Worth; the city and its cast of characters play a significant role in driving the plot forward.
“Miss Juneteenth” is, for lack of a better expression, the quintessential Fort Worth film.
It’s clear Peoples has an affinity for the city. After all, she is a born-and-raised Fort Worthian who counts the city and its cast of characters as the film’s main inspiration.
“I tell stories about Black Texans,” Peoples says. “That’s because I was growing up in such a culturally rich environment. A lot of folks, where I grew up, had grit, but they also had a grace about them. Those kinds of people stayed with me and really inspired me to want to be a filmmaker.
“The people that I knew and experienced growing up in Fort Worth, I never got a chance to really see in films and on TV. I never got a chance to see the people who I felt were ordinary people doing extraordinary things. To me, growing up in the community, I felt like people carried themselves with this sense of pomp and circumstance that I wanted to see put on screen.”
Peoples’ knack for storytelling was clear at a young age. Thanks to her mother Deborah being involved in the local theater company Sojourner Truth Players, Peoples was frequently exposed to live performances of complex narratives. Sojourner Truth Players, which was founded by Erma Duffy Lewis, received national recognition for many of their performances and nontraditional casting of Black actors in plays by white playwrights, including Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcaår Named Desire” and Ernest Thompson’s “On Golden Pond.”
“I would see these really intricate and complex Black plays right in the neighborhood in which I grew up,” Peoples says. “I think that really spurned this love of storytelling.”
And, like Kai in “Miss Juneteenth,” Peoples was raised by a single mother. “[My mother Deborah] was juggling both her dreams and raising children. She had hopes and dreams for herself, but really had hopes and dreams for her children and would expose us to things like community theater because she wanted this better life for us. And, ultimately, that translated to me wanting to be involved in the arts and ending up as a filmmaker. She’s a big part of the reason I’m a storyteller, for sure.”
Her first love was theater, and Peoples admits she wasn’t drawn to cinema until later in life when she discovered filmmakers like Charles Burnett, Jonathan Demi, and Richard Linklater.
Peoples would eventually go to film school at the University of Southern California, where she would begin writing the script for “Miss Juneteenth.” Highly involved in the institutes of filmmaking, Peoples would attend filmmaking workshops, including at Sundance and the Austin Film Society, where she would fine-tune the script, develop relationships, and partner with producers who would push the film forward. You see, without a studio backing her vision, Peoples had to rely on the resources and communal spirit of film institutes.
“You have mentors who are there to guide you but, also, to protect the story,” Peoples says. “Going through the process of getting it produced, these stories can very easily change away from a filmmaker’s vision. And I was lucky to have organizations and mentors on the ground who were like, ‘OK, we’ll focus on the reason that you initially made the film.’”
After completion, Peoples would submit the film to the Sundance Film Festival. In the American independent cinema world, having a film play at the Park City, Utah, festival is akin to medaling in the Olympics. This is where auteur filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, David O. Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Steven Soderbergh all got their big breaks. And not only was the film selected to show at the festival, but it was selected to show in-competition, meaning it could compete for the festival’s prizes.
“That was pretty incredible,” Peoples says. “I mean, you don’t know what you have because you’re just so in it; you have so much tunnel vision. I couldn’t believe it. This little movie that we made on the Southside, just essentially bare bones, I wanted it to go into the world. And Sundance, these incredible curators of cinema, is a tool for that. But also, for me, I wanted the community to feel proud. The community invested so much into this film. They were our sets and our actors. It was important to me that they felt good about what we’d done.”
A lot of people are from a lot of places. Many directors, in fact, were not born and raised in Southern California, despite their location preferences suggesting otherwise. They use the tricks of the trade to tell the stories that fill the seats at movie theaters: superhero and car-chase flicks or rinse-and-repeat romantic comedies. For a city to have a filmmaker with a global reach who prioritizes telling the stories that reside within his or her hometown is, well, a blessing.
“I really consider myself a community filmmaker,” Peoples says. “I’m also a very interior filmmaker because I always want to be with the character instead of outside of them. That idea of just letting people be, to be authentic, is important to me.”
Following the release of “Miss Juneteenth,” which you can now stream on Netflix, Peoples remains coy concerning her next project and whether it will remain an independent film. “I got my space to really define my style through independent film,” Peoples says. “I’ve done studio work, and everything has its benefits and drawbacks, but I think you have more autonomy as an independent filmmaker. You have to be more creative because there’s less money. You’re not going to have cranes and drones, so you’ve got to figure it out.”
Pressed on whether she has studio backing for her next project, Peoples responds, “We’ll see. You never know.”
Whatever her next project may be, one thing is for sure: You’ll get a taste of the Fort Worth Peoples saw while growing up.