THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ANDRÉ
Photo by Colin Gray / Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
André Leon Talley
Sunday, Feb. 17, 7 p.m., $10
Hillside High School, Durham
Before becoming a food writer, I worked in fashion in New York City in the early aughts. Going to fashion shows was one of the perks, but even more than the beautiful clothes and the models sashaying down the runway, I looked forward to seeing André Leon Talley, Vogue’s then editor-at-large. The man had such presence—literally. He towered over the diminutive A-listers who shared his front-row status, but there was also something regal about the way he carried himself (though the flowing capes and custom kaftans likely helped). He is revered in the industry for his flamboyance and witty fashion commentary—he’s been called “the Kofi Annan of what you got on”—in a career that spans five decades.
Talley comes home on February 17 to hold court at Hillside High School for a Q and A and screening of The Gospel According to André, a fashion documentary that spans his childhood in Jim Crow-era Durham and his rise through “the chiffon trenches,” as he calls the industry. The event concludes the Hillside Legacy Weekend honoring Talley and his former teacher, Wanda Garrett, who appears in the film, and a portion of the proceeds will benefit programs at his alma maters, Hillside and North Carolina Central University.
We spoke by phone with the film’s director, Kate Novack, to learn why Durham is the heart and soul of the film, and why Talley is a documentarian’s dream.
INDY: I’ve read that you’re a fan of fashion documentaries. What made you want to make one telling Talley’s story, and what made you feel that the timing was right?
KATE NOVACK: The fashion documentary genre is often about the act of becoming who one wants to be in the world. At the same time, they’re great vehicles to reflect the culture in which we’re living. So, that’s part of why the genre appealed to me.
You go to a fashion show, and, somehow, there’s nothing like seeing André. He’s such an anomaly in the world of fashion, which is part of what makes him such an interesting character. The movie is meant to show that his journey wasn’t always as easy as he made it look. He’s kind of a documentarian’s dream: He’s a larger-than-life character; he’s funny; he’s unpredictable. But at the same time, there is so much more to him than what you see on the surface. And I felt that, in many ways, the portrait that existed of him was a lot about his surface.
How did you approach him about the project, and how you were able to reveal some of those interior layers?
My producing partner and husband, Andrew Rossi, directed and produced a film called The First Monday in May about the Costume Institute at the Met. André was in that movie and helped promote it. I went to one of those screenings, and a young man in the audience stood up and said, “I moved to New York City to study fashion. My parents don’t believe that what I do is real, but I know that it is because I saw you do it.” It was a very poignant and moving moment. It felt like a glaring omission that there had never been a film about André made before.
I read his memoir before our meeting, and I said to him, “If we do this movie, I want to show another side of you. Really, the heart of the movie is going to be Durham.” The first thing he said to me was, “OK, if we do this, I have to take you behind my childhood church and walk you through the woods to the spot where I was baptized.” So, it was very clear from the beginning that I didn’t want to do a rehash of what we had seen of him already.
Can you share more about the tone you wanted to strike and how you achieved that by choosing to have Durham at the heart of the movie?
I wanted to situate André on the front porch of his home in Westchester, outside of New York City, and have him tell his own story. He’s a natural storyteller, and so the film, and the reason it’s called The Gospel According to André, is André’s telling of his own story. He was born in D.C. but went as a very young boy to Durham, so it begins in Durham, and Durham is very much in André still. His front porch is meaningful to him partly because he grew up sitting on a front porch with his relatives listening to their stories.
I think “gospel” is poignant, too, because the church plays a role in his upbringing, and it lends itself to dividing the film into chapters.
In André’s memoir, he talks about a song called “Precious Memories”—it’s actually the song that plays at the very end of the film—and how when he heard it in church, he would always cry. That song is about how memory can be a sustaining force. And André loves gospel music, so there was the gospel-music piece of it, and then this idea that this is André telling his story; this is his gospel. It was just this lightbulb moment of, “Oh, that’s the perfect title for the movie.” I also like it because it feels big and grand, and that’s very much André to me.
Can you share more about capturing Durham for Talley as a child, and how it’s continued to be this sustaining force?
In his memoir, he talks about some of his friends from childhood, some of his teachers, so there were people that I wanted him to get back in touch with. Anne Bibby is a friend; she was sort of his first muse. And then, Bruce Weaver, who is one of André’s best childhood friends. Seeing André with Bruce, I loved, because they’re like boys again. One of my favorite parts is when Bruce and André go back and see Mrs. Garrett, who had been such a formative force in both of their lives.
The Durham trip wasn’t easy for André. He loves Durham—it’s in his soul; it’s in his heart—but I think there are painful memories there. His beloved grandmother who raised him—he still owns and maintains her home there—passed away many years ago. One of the most difficult shoots was when he returned to her house and spoke about the difficulty of that loss. But it was one of the most important and poignant moments of the film.
Maybe it was also painful to go back because he grew up during Jim Crow; he talked about getting hit with stones crossing Duke University’s campus. How were you able to explore the tension between coming from the segregated South into this very exclusive, largely white world of fashion?
By having him tell his story, it helped bring to light where he came from, what he dealt with as a boy, and, in many ways, dealt with throughout his career. We no longer have legalized segregation, but he still faced racism as an adult in very “sophisticated” circles. Over the course of the movie, we go from President Obama, the first African-American president, to President Trump. In the beginning, when André would speak about how he wished that his grandmother had seen Michelle Obama on the cover of Vogue, there was a sense of, “Look how far our country has come.” By the end of filming, that had changed. We filmed when Donald Trump was being sworn in, and André doesn’t go quiet very often, but, in that moment, he becomes very quiet. I really feel his pain. In some ways, I think it helped bring that historical trajectory to light. But it made the urgency of André’s story even clearer.
What was it like working with Talley?
André goes back and forth between having childlike wonder and trust to being very self-protective. And in some ways, the movie is meant to unpack that, and to show how adeptly he can move between those two states. André needs space at times, and André needs to be embraced at times, and it was a question of a rhythm and really understanding that. When you make a film, especially about someone’s life, it’s also an exercise in empathy. I understand that André was looking back at a wonderful time in his life, but also telling a story about having rocks thrown at him, or remembering his grandmother’s death, that’s really difficult.
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